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reclining officers.
    ‘Sirs!’
    ‘Hello, Jed,’ said Shiban. ‘Let’s see it.’
    The Clown, Jed, held out a diorite head. It was chipped and incomplete, about the size of a grapefruit. Soneka really missed grapefruit.
    Shiban looked at Soneka. Soneka raised a considering eyebrow.
    ‘Put it in place, Jed,’ Shiban invited.
    The Clown walked across the hot sand in front of the awning, panting hard, and bent down over the line of heads laid out in the sun. They were arranged in graduating size, seed- and pea-sized at one end, fist- and apple-sized at the other. The head Jed had brought was clearly the largest. He set it down triumphantly at the end of the row.
    ‘Point, Clowns,’ said Shiban.
    Soneka nodded graciously.
    ‘Get a cup, Jed,’ said Shiban, and the Clown ran off eagerly to help himself to the cold wine on the stand behind them.
    Shiban took a pinch from his gold box, sniffed, and sat back. He sighed. ‘The lho’s good,’ he said, ‘but I miss the combat fix.’
    Soneka nodded.
    Shiban had a face like a monkey, with a long brow, a long upper lip and a button nose. His tanned forehead was high, and his long white hair poured down off the back of his head like a cascade. The shrapnel bumps covering his throat and chest were the sort of thing a man couldn’t ignore. The warty mass was quite fascinating. The medics had drained and lanced some of them, but the rest, they had advised, would work out in time. He looked like he had a goitre of blisters.
    As he had told it to Soneka, Shiban had surprised a Nurthene war party in the business of planting bombs. During the firefight that had resulted, the Nurthene had set the bombs off, killing themselves and wounding Shiban and his men. Some of that shrapnel was organic. Some of it was Nurthene bone.
    ‘I hear there’s fighting at Mon Lo,’ Shiban said.
    ‘I heard that too,’ said Soneka.
    Another man ran up. It was Olmed, a Dancer. He held out the head he was carrying.
    ‘Place it,’ said Soneka.
    Olmed took it to the line. His diorite head was bigger than any of them, except the one the Clown had just placed.
    ‘Adjudication!’ Shiban called.
    The Munitorum aide emerged from the cool gloom of the doorway in the terracotta building behind them, a long-suffering look on his face. The hetmen had been calling him outside all afternoon. This time he brought the digital measure without being told.
    ‘Again with this, sirs?’ he asked.
    Shiban waggled his fingers at the row of heads. ‘My dear friend, we value your impartial judgement.’
    The aide trudged out into the sunlight and applied the measure to the heads while Olmed stood, breathing hard, watching, his torso gleaming with sweat.
    The aide straightened up and turned to face the hetmen, reclining side by side in the shade.
    ‘Oh, don’t keep us in suspense,’ Soneka said.
    ‘The head is smaller by eight microns than the head at the line end,’ the aide sighed, ‘but it is larger by two microns than the one behind it.’
    Olmed punched the air and did a little victory dance. Shiban tutted. Soneka grinned.
    ‘Point, Dancers,’ he said. ‘Olmed? Do the honours.’
    Olmed nestled his diorite head into position at the head of the line, picked up the head Jed had brought, and threw it with all his strength out into the open field below them, where it was immediately lost again amongst millions of its kind.
    ‘Help yourself to a cup,’ Soneka told Olmed. He glanced at Shiban. ‘Sundown in, what? Eighty minutes?’
    ‘Everything still to play for,’ Shiban replied, confidently.
    ‘I think,’ said a voice from behind them, ‘you have far too much time on your hands.’
    Soneka leapt up from his canvas recliner. Hurtado Bronzi stood in the shadow of the awning, smiling at him.
    ‘Hurt, you old bastard!’ Soneka cried, embracing his friend. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
    ‘A matter of twenty crowns and interest growing,’ Bronzi replied, grinning.
    ‘This is Dimi Shiban,’