"Could I do some more buttons, Sleepy? Mom thinks more would get more attention in the Palace."

I was surprised he talked to her that long. Boys his age are surly at best. He was rude to his mother all the time. He would have been ruder and more defiant still if he had not been blessed with so many "uncles" who would not tolerate that stuff. Naturally, Tobo saw all that as a grand conspiracy of adults. Publicly. In private, he was amenable to reason. Occasionally. When approached delicately by someone who was not his mother.

"Maybe a few. But it's going to get dark soon. And then the show will start."

"What'll we go as? I don't like it when you're a whore."

"We'll be street orphans." Though that had its risks, too. We could get caught by a press gang and forced into Mogaba's army. His soldiers, these days, are little better than slaves, subject to a savage discipline. Many are petty criminals given an option of rough justice or enlistment. The rest are children of poverty with nowhere else to go. Which was the standard of professional armies men like Murgen saw in the far north, long before my time.

"Why do you worry so much about disguises?"

"If we never show the same face twice, our enemies can't possibly know who they're looking for. Don't ever underestimate them. Especially not the Protector. She's outwitted death itself more than once."

Tobo was not prepared to believe that or much else of our exotic history. Though not as bad as most, he was going through that stage where he knew everything worth knowing and nothing his elders said—particularly if it bore any vaguely educational hue—was worth hearing. He could not help that. It went with the age.

And I was my age and could not help saying things I knew would do no good. "It's in the Annals. Your father and the Captain didn't make up stories."