Captain Rogelio came up to him. "Anything?" he asked.

"No, sir." Fernao shook his head, and felt the ponytail flip back and forth on his neck. Like most Lagoans, he was tall and on the lean side. In some lights, his hair was auburn; in others, a rich brown. His narrow eyes, with a fold of skin at the inner corners that made them look set at a slant, told of Kuusaman blood. "All seems as quiet as if we were still at peace."

Rogelio snorted. "Lagoas is at peace, I'll thank you to remember. It's all the other fools who've thrown the world into the fire." He twiddled at his mustache: he wore a big waxed swashbuckler, in Algarvian style.

"As if the world were at peace." Fernao accepted the correction; like any mage worth his salt, he craved precision. After a moment, he went on, "In the Six Years' War, we chose sides."

"And a whole great whacking lot of good it did us, too," the captain of the Leopardess said with another snort. "What did we get out of it?"

Thousands - tens, hundreds of thousands - dead, even more maimed, a war debt we're just now starting to get out from under, half our shipping sunk - and you want to do it again? Here's what I think of that." He spat - carefully, over the leeward rail.

"I never said I wanted to do it again," Fernao replied. "My older brother died in the woods in front of Priekule. I don't remember much about him; I was only six or seven. I lost an uncle - my mother's younger brother - and a cousin, and another cousin came home short a foot." He shrugged. "I know it's not anything special. Plenty of families in Lagoas have worse stories to tell. Too many families simply aren't, after the Six Years' War."

"That's the truth," Rogelio said with an emphatic nod. Everything he did was emphatic; he aped Algarvian style in more than his mustache. "So why do you sound so cursed glum about staying at peace, then?"