The Cutting Edge by Dave Duncan

sensed that he had revealed everything he knew on one topic, she would switch easily to another. Her questions were shrewd and her range of interests enormous-seamanship, the current state of agriculture in the Impire, fashion, trade, and of course politics. Her attention was the most flattering experience he had known in years.
    Kadie swept in wearing a ballgown and her mother's tiara again, and was firmly sent away. A younger jotunn girl named Eva appeared a couple of times to complain that Kadie was being beastly to her, utterly horrid, and the queen settled the matter each time with patient good humor. It was only much later that Efflio realized that the Gath boy had been sitting all the time in a corner, listening to the whole conversation without saying a word.
    The queen apologized for her husband's absence-quite needlessly, had she only known ... or perhaps she did. The king was on the mainland, inspecting the beehives, she explained. He had promised to return before the tide turned. Never would be too soon for Efflio.
    He had rarely met a woman who cared a spit for politics, but then he had never met a queen before. Fortunately he had some interest in the subject. He found himself telling her of the goblins' raids and their defeat at the hands of the legions, of dwarf trouble in Dwanish and troll trouble in the Mosweeps-even the trolls seemed to be organizing these days, and who could ever have imagined that?-and especially of the djinns. He watched her nimble fingers and the play of shadows on her features until the light grew dim. The fire hissed and scented the room with its friendly smoke. At times he wondered about Impport, if the old place had changed much, and if he still had a daughter there, and whether she might even have a place near her hearth for an old retired sea captain.
    Eventually Inosolan laid away her sketch pad with a mutter of annoyance. She clasped her hands and stared a while at the fire. There was a frown showing on those gold-inlay eyebrows. Then she looked up and smiled at him sadly.
    "I know Bone Pass. It is a horrible place."
    Zark and Krasnegar were about as far apart as it was possible to be in Pandemia.
    "Er, I expect it is worse now, m'lady."
    "Of course!" She sighed. "Why must men behave like that? I knew the caliph quite well. A very remarkable man. "
    Now that was pushing things a bit too far ...
    His face had given him away. She smiled mischievously. "I can be even more improbable. I was married to him!"
    Efflio wondered what color he had turned now and hoped it would not show in the dimness.
    She had turned her attention back to the smoldering peat. "The marriage was annulled by the imperor. In Hub, of course. Azak ... he was only a sultan then. He went back to Zark, and I came on to Krasnegar. Later he proclaimed himself caliph and began his conquests. I have often wondered if the humiliation he suffered that night ... More ale, Captain?"
    Efflio declined, sure that he had already indulged unwisely. "You have traveled widely, ma'am."
    "Yes. My husband even more widely." She frowned at the windows. "He is late. We shall have to eat without him if he does not come soon. I do hope he hasn't missed the tide. "
    "They say . . ."
    The queen's smile seemed to sharpen. "That he is a sorcerer? He always denies it."
    "Er, yes." That disposed of the subject without resolving much.
    "I have never witnessed my husband using sorcery!" Inosolan said with a royal finality that sent a sudden shiver down his back. Her eyes flashed green in the gloom.
    "I do not doubt you, ma'am!"
    "Good." She relaxed to being just a beautiful woman again. "If he has missed the tide, Captain, then he has missed the tide. He won't walk across the waves, I promise you. What is the news of Prince Shandie?"
    Efflio forked over his steaming brains. "I think I have told you everything I know, ma'am. He remains legate of the XIIth. Everyone thinks he should be a proconsul at least, but his grandfather . . . " This was not