In their hatred of Algarve, they and the rest of the folk of the Kingdom of Forthweg agreed. After the constable waved traffic forward, Ealstan watched the woman's hips work in those revealing pants. He licked his lips. Forthwegian women went out in long, loose tunics that covered them from neck to ankles and kept their shapes decently disguised. No wonder people talked about Kaunians the way they did. And yet the woman strode along as if unaware of the spectacle she was creating, and chattered with her companion in their own sonorous language.

Sidroc watched her, too. "Disgusting," he said, but, by his avid voice and by the way he eyes kept following her, he was perhaps not altogether disgusted.

"Just because they dressed that way in the days of the Kaunian Empire, they think they have the right to keep on doing it," Ealstan agreed. "The Empire fell more than a thousand years ago, in case they hadn't noticed."

"Because the Kaunians de-gen-er-ated from wearing clothes like that." Sidroc pronounced with exaggerated care the long word he'd learned from the history master earlier in the year.

He and Ealstan had gone a couple of more blocks when someone came running up the street behind them shouting, "He's dead! He's dead!"

"Who's dead?" Ealstan called, but he was afraid he knew.

"Duke Alardo, that's who," the man answered.

"Are you sure?" Ealstan and Sidroc and several other people asked the question at the same time. Alardo of Bari had been at death's door more than once in the nearly thirty years since his domain was forcibly detached from Algarve in the aftermath of the Six Years' War. He'd been vigorous enough to pull through every time. If only, Ealstan thought, he'd been vigorous enough to sire a son…

But the man with the news was nodding vigorously. "I have it straight from my brother-in-law, who has it from Count Brorda's secretary, who heard the message with his own ears when it reached the keep by crystal."