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before he was able to shake his head.
    “That can’t be true!” he denied in a husky whisper, the look in his eyes haunted. “I can’t have been sending young people to death or slavery! They would have told me…!”
    “I get the impression that you aren’t lying,” Lorand said in a gentler way after a brief moment. “And since Jovvi confirms that, I’ll just say how sorry I am for you. I wasn’t lying either, and you don’t have to take my word for it. Talk to the rest of the people we’rewith, and they’ll tell you the same thing because they also went through it. The nobility has it arranged that way so they won’t have any trouble keeping the empire under their collective thumbs.”
    “What was that you said about dummy challengers for the Seated Highs?” a voice called out from the far left side of the room. “My boy went to Gan Garee two years ago, and if
he
faced one of those Highs, it was no dummy challenge.”
    This time Vallant joined Lorand in hesitating to answer, touched by the loving pride which had been in the man’s voice. It’s hard for another man to trample on something like that, but it seemed that women didn’t see it quite the same.
    “They’re
all
dummy challenges, because the Seated Highs are no such thing,” Tamrissa said with a sniff of disdain. “I faced the Seated High in Fire magic, unofficially, of course, because he thought I was drugged and helpless. He was no better than an ordinary Middle, and when he tried to match
my
strength he burned himself out. He was a noble, like they all are, so he never
won
his place. They gave it to him, and then they cheated to help him keep it.”
    This time the muttering sounded more like an uproar in the making, anger and indignation mixed thoroughly throughout. Vallant wondered if the emotions were directed toward the nobility or toward Tamrissa for saying what she had, and a moment later he found out.
    “Why ain’t I s’rprised?” Idroy Welt demanded of no one in particular, then he eyed the people who sat or stood together in front of the audience. “So th’ first lady’s a High in Spirit magic an’ th’ second in Fire magic. Thet mean you men’r th’ same?”
    “I’m Earth magic, Vallant there is Water magic, and Rion over here is Air magic,” Lorand replied after a short but obvious pause. “Do you understand now why the ladies are with us?”
    The uproar suddenly quieted, almost as if someone had closed a heavy door on the noise. They did understand—or were afraid that they did—even though Lorand had been gentle in breaking it to them.
    “Yes, what you’reprobably thinkin’ is true,” Vallant confirmed, again trying to be just as gentle. “We were thrown together by the nobles as a challengin’ Blendin’, because this was a twenty-fifth year. We lasted until the final challenge, when we faced the last of the five noble challengin’ Blendin’s, and then, when we began to win, they knocked us out with hilsom powder. But that’s somethin’ for
us
to take care of once we get back to Gan Garee. Right now there’s still that advancin’ army to worry about.”
    Vallant had been trying to take their minds off the fact that they had a real, actual Blending sitting in front of them, and to a certain extent it seemed to work. No one jumped up screaming to run out of the hall, but that might have been because they were too frightened to move. Well, whatever the reason, Vallant meant to take advantage of it. Seeing that the man Lugal had collapsed onto a bench near where he’d been standing, Vallant began the story that it looked like no one would be interrupting again.
     

CHAPTER THREE
     
    It didn’t take as long as it could have for Vallant Ro to tell Lorand’s former neighbors about what we’d gone through, but that was only because he glossed over many of the details. These people not only didn’t need to know them, they probably didn’t
want
to know. Any number of them kept glancing at the rest of