In the afternoon, it began to rain. A dull, misting rain that covered the town and seeped through the castle walls, so that the air was damp and our robes clung to our skin. The princess walked through the halls, and Vaenahma and I walked with her, pacing along, our hands on our swords’ pommels. By evening, I was half hoping that someone would leap out of the shadows and attack her, just to break the tedium. If Prince Dasuekoh won, if he were now sitting in Rahasabahst, triumphant, how long would it be until his thoughts turned to the wife he didn’t want? How long until he sent assassins to do away with her? They could reach Nhadtereyba in half a day if they were riding hard. We paced, and I timed it out. Four hours for the flotilla to reach Doefrit’s Bend. Another hour from there to Rahasabahst. Several hours, if not longer, spent in battle. Perhaps the king was dead. Perhaps Chahsaeda was captured. Allow some hours for milling about, consolidating power, taking care of little revolts. If there were assassins, we wouldn’t see them until the next day. Still, I kept my hand on my pommel.

  We found ourselves on the battlements, looking across the river at the old chain tower and the watch tower behind it. Iyedraeka stood with her hands on the rough stones of the balustrade, ignoring the rain. I looked across the river and imagined other plots, other ways that the tedium might be interrupted. Why shouldn’t the King of Pahyangoeda decide to take advantage of the chaos in Rahasabahst and attack? I looked for skiffs on the water, Pahyangoeda soldiers steering hard for us and looking up with violent and expectant faces. They didn’t materialize. The princess got wet, and then she shivered as we went back to pacing through the hallways.

  In the kitchen, we came upon a manservant disporting with a kitchen wench. Both were quite old. We were all embarrassed. In the wine cellars, we discovered the ancient uncle, drunk and napping on a stool beside an open cask. There was a yellow cat in the storerooms that provided some amusement for a while. There were some portraits in an antechamber that the princess stared at for a long time. We returned to the great hall at supper time, and no one had any stories to tell. We ate in near silence, and the ancient uncle didn’t join us.

  That night, Vaenahma and I resumed our traditional duties, standing outside the door of the princess’s sleeping chambers. We had requisitioned a room across the hall, and Vaenahma slept first as I stood and tried to keep from fretting. I was worried about my boys, and Grandahlae, and my grandchildren. It felt like circles were being carved in my mind by worry, just as the ghosts of Taokeihla had carved circles in the marshlands to the west. The monster that floated through my inner circles wasn’t a lady in tapestried robes, but Prince Dasuekoh himself, handsome and gloating, a snide and bullying revenant whom I couldn’t manage to vanquish.

  Guardsmen have keenly developed ways of dealing with boredom. To stand guard in a dark hallway as all the world sleeps around you is to fight a long and inconclusive battle with yourself. Your body wants you to doze. Your senses want to burrow into themselves and forget the world, or go drifting along in a dream. Your back hurts from standing, your legs ache. Your feet swell in your boots. It is all highly unpleasant and rather absurd. You have to cajole your mind into alertness, and one of the best ways to do this is to give your thoughts a game to play.

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  The best thing you can do for a comrade is give them a riddle to worry over when they relieve you. I had been a guardsman for a long time, and I knew many riddles, and I amused myself by trying to remember them and select the best one to give to Vaenahma when they awoke. *I never stop my roving, and no mountain or ocean can block my path. All hear my voice as a cry or a laugh, and I move through your laughter and your crying. Yet no one sees me at any time, and I can be accused of neither kindness nor crime.* That was a good one, and I spent some time making sure that I had the words right in my head. Then I worked at recalling another one. *I never was, am always to be. No person or place has ever seen me. Yet I am inevitable, I cannot be stopped. No feet can flee me, yet I can never be caught.*

  When Vaenahma came out of the room and nodded at me, I told them the riddles. They looked at me strangely and said, “Go to bed, captain. The morning will come soon enough.”

  I went and laid down in the bed they’d abandoned. The room we’d requisitioned was small, a servant’s room with little more than a bed and a wash basin and a chamberpot. Some poor maid slept here, always listening for a call from the chamber across the hall, for some querulous, noble voice, demanding a cup of water or a thicker blanket. I lay in her bed and waited for sleep to come. If Dasuekoh had won, would he be hanging his enemies in the streets? Would he be parading them, and would the crowds be throwing filth at the prisoners? Would Thaeto be arrested for having served the old king? Surely Dasuekoh would need bureaucrats to run the kingdom. Surely he wouldn’t disassemble the structure of clerks and seneschals that scratched away at the center of things, making sure that order prevailed in the city.

  I slept at last, and when I awoke I could tell that it was still raining because of the dampness of the walls. I sat up and gazed blearily at Vaenahma through the open door. Perhaps it was morning. The only light was from a flickering torch in the hallway. I swung my legs out of bed and pulled my boots on. My lieutenant watched me. I shut the door partway so that I could relieve myself in the chamberpot with some degree of privacy.

  When I was finished with these ablutions I emerged and stood in front of Vaenahma. “Well?” I asked.

  “Well?”

  “The answers to the riddles. Have you worked them out?”

  “I already knew them, Captain. The first is wind and the second is the future.”

  I felt deflated. Strangely, I wanted to cry. “So how did you amuse yourself, during your watch?” I asked.

  They reacted as if I had asked a very rude question. I was subjected to a long and penetrating glare. “I am the most private thing that a person may possess. The thing that we all have that is the most useless. Don’t talk about me, for to name me is to yawn. I’m close to despair, but despair is short and I am long.”

  I nodded, as I knew the answer. I knew the answers to all of the riddles that guardsmen tell each other, which was another sign that it was time for me to retire. “Boredom,” I said, and knocked on the princess’s door to see if the ladies were awake.