"Yeah. Be a lot of mud. Ought to think about a drainage trench. Hey, Pop, there's nobody in this thing. Looks like the rest of his armor, too." Stancil had recovered a gauntlet and uncovered part of a greave.

"Yeah? I hate to turn it in."

"Turn it in? Why? Tokar could get a fortune for it."

"Maybe so. But what if friend Men fu did spot it? He'll tell Besand out of spite. We've got to stay on his good side. We don't need this stuff."

"Not to mention he might have planted it."

"What?"

"It shouldn't be here, right? And no body inside the armor. And the soil is loose."

Bomanz grunted. Besand was capable of a frame. "Leave everything the way it is. I'll go get him."

"Sour-faced old fart," Stancil muttered as the Monitor departed. "I bet he did plant it."

"No sense cussing. We can't do anything." Bomanz settled against his pack.

"What're you doing?"

"Loafing. I don't feel like digging anymore." He ached all over. It had been a busy morning.

"We should get what we can while the weather is good."

"Go ahead."

"Pop…" Stancil thought better of it. "How come you and Mom fight all the time?"

Bomanz let his thoughts drift. The truth was elusive. Stance would not remember the good years. "I guess because people change and we don't want them to." He could find no better words. "You start out with a woman; she's magical and mysterious and marvelous, the way they sing it. Then you get to know each other. The excitement goes away. It gets comfortable. Then even that fades. She starts to sag and turn grey and get lined and you feel cheated. You remember the fey, shy one you met and talked with till her father threatened to plant a boot in your ass. You resent this stranger. So you take a poke. I guess it's the same for your mother. Inside, I'm still twenty. Stance. Only if I pass a mirror, or if my body won't do what I want, do I realize that I'm an old man. I don't see the potbelly and the varicose veins and the grey hair where I've got any left. She has to live with it.

"Every time I see a mirror I'm amazed. I end up wondering who's taken over the outside of me. A disgusting old goat, from the look of him. The kind I used to snicker at when I was twenty. He scares me, Stance. He looks like a dying man. I'm trapped inside him, and I'm not ready to go."

Stancil sat down. His father never talked about his feelings. "Does it have to be that way?"

Maybe not, but it always is… "Thinking about Glory, Stance? I don't know. You can't get out of getting old. You can't get out of having a relationship change."

"Maybe none of it has to be. If we manage this…"

"Don't tell me about maybes, Stance. I've been living on maybes for thirty years." His ulcer took a sample nibble from his gut. "Maybe Besand is right. For the wrong reasons."