Eventually he caught up with Casimir, who was watching his master with some concern. "Knees," Ammas panted, doffing his hat to wipe sweat from his face. "Be grateful you have them as long as you do, lad." With a pained laugh he began climbing again, toward a copse of gnarled trees whose leaves retained the deep green of high summer. "Wait just a moment, Casimir," he called out as his apprentice appeared ready to plunge through the treeline to see what lay beyond.

Dutifully the boy waited for him until Ammas was at his side, panting, turning about to gauge the height of the hill, momentarily stunned that he had actually managed to climb the damned thing. "Getting old," he muttered to himself, and took a healthy drink of water from his skin. Casimir politely refused, looking entirely bemused that Ammas should be so out of breath. "If this hill is where I think it is," he said after he had regained a bit of equilibrium, "there should be something past those trees I think will interest you." Stowing his waterskin at his waist, he put an arm around Casimir's shoulder and led him across the hilltop.

Past the trees the land fell away sharply into a series of hills, all varying shades of white and green. At the edge of those hills ran a regular gray shape almost like a frozen river. Ammas pointed to it. "That is Kyrantine's Wall. It dives deeper into the ground than most people realize. You saw its foundations -- saw them and survived things few men have."

Casimir nodded, his eyes huge.

Ammas now spread one hand toward the enormous and geometric swathes of farmland beyond the wall, ultimately ending at a great promontory of stone that jutted into the sea. The promontory bustled with a vast walled city, complete with towering structures, great fortresses and villas and manses, and the unmistakable shapes of various temples. In the waters beyond it were foaming white streaks, the wakes of ships of all sizes as they cut their way to and from the harbors. "Do you know what that is, Casimir?"

Casimir stared, but after a while he shook his head. Ammas supposed a goldfish scooped from its bowl might feel the same: able but unwilling to make the connection necessary to understand the true scope of its world. The boy had looked at maps in the Othillic Libraries, Ammas knew, and of course he had taught him what he could in the last few months about geography and the surrounding regions, but there was a vast difference between seeing your home on a map and seeing it from a vantage such as this.

"That is Munazyr."

Casimir's jaw fell open. "It is not."

"It is. See? That's Brightmoon Bay, and down there is Fathoms Gate. It's a clear day -- look past the waters, across the Straits, and you can see the Wicked Cliffs. You can tell by how black they are. At sunset they gleam like a polished blade. If I had a spyglass, I could show you right where the Old Godsway is. I doubt we could see the Prideful Lioness, but you could probably pick out our temple."

Casimir stared for minutes, utterly mesmerized. "It's so small, Ammas. How can it be so small?"

"It's not, really. It's one of the largest cities in the world. Munazyr is not small. Say instead the world itself is so large." Ammas began pointing to various distant landmarks. "The road north from Peddlers' Gate leads into the edges of Dyroth, the closest of the Anointed Realms, along with the Vilain Reaches. West is Nocturne Gate, which will bring one to the Torchlight Coast, if one follows it long enough. We're bound that way, though we won't be on the road itself for a while yet." Ammas smiled down at his awestruck apprentice. "It's as I told you, Casimir. It's a world with a thousand roads for you to follow, tens of thousands. You have the chance to follow whichever one you want. And I will be your teacher for as long as you want me, no matter which one it is."

Casimir had nothing to say to that, overwhelmed as he was with the notion he could see in a single blink of his eyes the city where he had spent his entire life. Ammas straightened, enjoying the view himself and letting his apprentice soak it in on his own for a while, until he heard a rustle behind him. He turned with one hand on the hilt of his dagger, only to see Vos breaking through the treeline, his expression uncertain.

"Quite a view," Vos said in what Ammas considered to be a fantastic understatement. "I imagine the Sultan's men must have camped along this ridge during the last siege. Do you suppose they left any cannon behind?"

"If they did I have no intention of meddling with it." Ammas studied Vos curiously. He had shed his tunic and was dressed in a simple shirt, sweat standing out on the rangy muscles of his upper arms. On his left bicep was a tattoo the cursewright recognized. "I was surprised to see Lord Marhollow training with you. He was under explicit instructions to rest."

"I think he prefers not to show any weakness in front of the princess."

"I'd be more anxious of showing weakness in front of Barthim."

"As would I." Vos cast a glance at Casimir. "Might we speak alone, Ammas?"

"Certainly." Ammas nodded to his apprentice. "Go see what Barthim is doing for meals today. And try to stop him from sparring with Denisius."

Casimir grinned and took off down the hill, scrambling to the sculpted ground of the horseshoe tomb with a surefootedness Ammas could only envy.

"Youth," he muttered, turning to Vos again. "How did you manage the climb so easily yourself?"

Vos glanced over his shoulder at the slope behind him. "It's not so steep a hill, after all, Ammas. I've climbed worse in heavy armor."

"Have you," Ammas grumbled, privately resolving to keep in better shape in the future.

"At times." Vos gazed out over the sweeping view of Munazyr, one hand on the hilt of his blade. "I wanted to speak to you about the Princess Carala. And Lord Marhollow as well, I suppose."

"Yes?" Ammas's tone was polite, but he was really rather curious.

"I just wanted to remind you -- they are both young, and sheltered from certain truths."

"I'm aware of that, Vos."

"Maybe you don't know just how sheltered. Or how deliberately."

"I have no doubt that the version of history Carala knows is one I would barely recognize."

"It's true of Denisius as well. Erstan Gallis is deeply committed to the Malachite Throne and the House of Deyn." Vos glanced at Ammas, whose expression remained merely polite, if open enough. "I thought you were aware of the Lord Marhollow's allegiances."

"I know very little about Marhollow or its lords, other than what I learned as a boy. I assumed he must be a faithful Prefect if the Emperor promised one of his daughters to his son."

"What did you know of Briarcliff?"

"A fine academy. But a small one. I heard it said it had a lovely view of the stars. Doyen Cyrik was a seer-magistrate of no small distinction. One of my father's teachers, actually."

Vos nodded, looking away from Ammas back toward the somehow dreamlike shape of the city miles away from them. "We both know stories their parents kept from them for many reasons. We lived them. I don't believe Lord Marhollow has quite the same sense of self-righteousness as the princess does at times -- "

"Naturally. His father isn't the Emperor."

"No. But neither of them is stupid, and the fact she's willing to follow you at all tells me she's more open-minded than Somilius Deyn would care to believe. I'd just ask you keep that in mind when they opine on things they don't truly understand."

"She may simply be desperate rather than open-minded, you know. I have no illusions about my chances of coming out of this alive once my usefulness to the Throne comes to an end."

"You're even more cynical than I expected, Ammas."

"I have my reasons." But he remembered the way Carala had looked at him, how she had whispered her thanks against the corner of his mouth in the darkness of the Munazyri tunnels, and he wondered just how pragmatic she really was.

"You do, I can't argue that." Vos sighed and looked back over the vista. After a long moment, he spoke in a more subdued tone. "I bore witness to some of those reasons. I thought you might have known that."

"I can see the mark on your shoulder," Ammas said slowly. Faded, clearly a tattoo from Vos's youth, but there was no mistaking the Deyn eagle with a maul clutched in its talons. "What of it? I served under Silenio Deyn myself. Just long enough to be inked with the same mark you bear."

Vos smiled thinly. "Yes. And spent a good deal of time with a razor scraping it off. I noticed."

"Of the crimes I'm wanted for in the Anointed Realms, dishonoring my former unit is assuredly the least of them."

"Well, I certainly won't be the one to turn you in. I don't know what you did down there under Munazyr, but I've never seen anything like it. Gods know I have no desire to be your enemy, Ammas." Vos hesitated. "I wonder if you feel the same way about me."

Ammas looked at Vos, who again seemed unable to meet his gaze, utterly perplexed. "Why? Because you served in the Emperor's armies? I've sworn a vow to protect and cure the man's daughter. Surely I can put aside my hurt feelings for the sake of a former footsoldier."

"Yes, I served in the Emperor's armies," Vos said quietly. "And I was at the siege of Losris Nadak. I was there when Silenio Deyn took Shattercrown."