Selatre gazed at him with amused fondness. "Anyone would think he had you for a father," she murmured.

The Fox tried to glare again, but ended up laughing instead. "You know me too well-and you have altogether too little respect for your king." That made Selatre laugh, too. But Gerin quickly sobered. "Can we use Ferdulf as a weapon against Aragis if we do go to war?"

"I would be happier trying it if he were the son of any other god than Mavrix," Selatre said.

"Why do you say that? Because Mavrix is about the least predictable god in anyone's pantheon, or because he's shown he isn't fond of me in particular?"

"Yes," Selatre said, as Gerin had with Marlanz. He made a face at her. Despite her joke, though, both halves of the question could legitimately be answered yes. Mavrix was the Sithonian god of wine, beauty, fertility, creativity… and of the chaos accompanying all those. He did not know, from one moment to another, what he would do next, nor did he care. And his encounters with the Fox over the years had mostly ended up alarming both the god, who was a coward at heart, and the man, who was anything but.

Gerin said, "For once, I'd like to use a weapon against my foes that isn't stronger than I am, so I won't have to spend so much time worrying whether it will turn in my hand and end up being worse than simply losing whatever fight I happen to be making."

"The question, then, it seems to me, is, if we go to war with Aragis, whether we can beat him without resorting to… extraordinary means," Selatre said.

Gerin paused a moment to admire the precise phrasing of that. He tried to answer with similar precision: "We can-if everything goes right. If Adiatunnus chooses to remember he's my vassal, and doesn't take the fight as an excuse to throw off his allegiance and set up on his own, for instance."