Bernicia sat at the table, turning over yesterday’s conversation with Malamphoro in her mind. This is what it means, she thought, to live after the Fall. To know that things can be done, but to be unable to do them. To know there are other paths, but never to find them. To know that there is a different way of seeing, but to be blind. She looked toward her brother, who was staring out the window toward the sea. She thought she understood a little better now what was in his mind. We are all frustrated, she thought, all of us struggling to do things that were once so easy but are now impossible. The Mages gave us five hundred years of peace and wealth, but they never told us how they had done it, or what we should do when they were gone.

  Bernicia’s maid Alyzza entered and curtsied. “My Lord, My Lady, the Lord Admiral is here.”

  “Bring him in,” said Mercutio.

  The old man came into the room. To Bernicia he did not seem his usual commanding self, but somehow weakened. She said, “Come, sit with us. Will you take wine?”

  The Admiral sat and shook his head. Mercutio came and sat down next to his sister. Bernicia said, “We summoned you because we seek your wisdom. We wish you would expand on what you said in the council.”

  The Admiral looked at her, then at Mercutio, then back at Bernicia. “I fear,” he said, “that I have already said too much. It was not my place to bore the council with old stories.”

  “That was hardly a boring story,” said Mercutio.

  “Indeed you know very much,” said Bernicia. “That is why we need your advice. If you have any more stories you think we should hear, we welcome their telling.”

  The Admiral sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. When he spoke he was looking away toward something no one else could see.

  “I know nothing that I think you should hear. This is not my day. I am a man of another time, the time before the Wave and the Fall. That was my world, that was where I knew my way. I learned to sail on the galleys of the Mage Lords, trusting that they knew best. I fought in their last great war, against the Delta Pirates, but I will not tell that story. It was too long ago to matter now. That world is gone, and if it left us any lessons I do not know what they are.

  “After the Wave I was forced to become our admiral. Our ships were wrecked but I still had my uniform and my sword, so they turned to me, asked me to lead them. I did as I had to do, since there was no one else. I helped raise the rubble wall, defended the city against the Marauders, helped build our fleet. I fought the Red Admiral’s ships at the Battle of Drowning Man Rock. But I was like an exile in a foreign land who does not know the customs, or even the language. I was lost and uncertain. Always I looked to the past, trying to remember the old way, wondering how it would have been done in the old days. Never did I think to do anything differently. Every day since the Wave came I have pretended that it might all come back, that one day I might wake up and find the lighthouse standing and the white banners flying, that commands might come from Quaestor so we would know what we should do.

  “I have lived too long, in a world where I do not belong. I will give no more advice. I fear we have faced too long in the wrong direction. The past is gone and there is no going back. I would have offered you my resignation last night but that I swore to your father that I would look after you until you come of age. I think you are coming of age now. I think if you win this battle all will begin to forget your father and put their trust in you. My Lord Viscount, when I heard you command this attack I knew that the world belongs to you now. I could never give such a command, for I do not know this world well enough to act in it.

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  “This will be my last war. Whatever happens I will trouble you no more once this fight is over. Until then I will help you as I can, as an old sailor. But do not ask me for advice.”

  Bernicia felt a horrible sadness descend on the room. This man, who has done so much to rebuild the world, even he now despairs. He washes his hands of our future.

  Mercutio said, “Let us speak of Malovana. I know you have been there, not too long ago.”

  The Admiral nodded. “The harbor is the mouth of the Cerulean River. It is perhaps a mile long and a quarter mile wide at the widest. The old city was on the north shore, but it is all gone, nothing left but sand and reeds. The new city is to the south. A great rock rises up there, and there is an old fort of the Empire on a sort of shelf fifteen feet above high tide. That is the core of the new town. But the fort is not large, and the town spills out beyond it. A street lined with houses and inns runs along the shore between the wall and the harbor, and the houses also straggle off inland along the road that follows the river. The houses along the shore might help us, for they could screen our landing from any archers on the walls. We could use their cover to get almost to the wall’s base.”

  Mercutio nodded. “What of the river?”

  The Admiral considered. “If I remember correctly, it has a strong current when the water is high, very strong when the tide is also running out. It is likely to be high after such a wet summer. But we can use that. If our lead ships beat into the harbor and turn toward the town, the current will push them toward the walls and we can approach at greater speed.”

  “The harbor is large enough for such maneuvers?”

  “For a few ships, perhaps six galleys.”

  Mercutio looked thoughtful. “It seems we can work out a good plan of attack for perhaps half our force. Some will go directly from the harbor mouth to the town, while the others sail up the river and turn to attack the wall with the current behind them.”

  “Yes. The rest will have to follow in a second wave. The smaller ships can perhaps come to shore inland of the town and see if the men can wade to solid land. But if we reach the harbor in good order we should be able to land a force strong enough to attack the wall.”

  “You make this sound almost easy, and yet you spoke against it.”

  “The last time I sailed to battle in this season we went straight into a storm.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing. We had a Mage Lord with us, one of the truly great, and he quieted the storm so our whole fleet passed through it unscathed.”

  Bernicia said, “We see now why you began by speaking of how much the world has changed. For one used to such feats we must seem very weak to you.”

  “Yes,” said the Admiral.

  After a moment of silence, Mercutio spoke. “A minute ago you spoke of longing for commands from Quaestor to tell you want to do. This great mage you sailed with – did you speak with him? I wonder how he acted that made men trust him so.”

  The Admiral looked toward the window again. “He was a mage. He could quiet great storms, summon up a wind if one was needed. He had powers no one who did not live then can imagine.”

  “How did he speak and act, when he was not quieting storms?”

  “He was direct, manly. He wasted no words. He spoke clearly and, so far as I could tell, truthfully. The campaign went as he predicted it would. He told us all to concentrate on our own tasks, on our own parts in the fighting. He said he would do his own part and trust us to do ours.”

  Mercutio nodded and seemed if he were about to speak, but the Admiral went on. “And when he ordered us to slaughter every person in the Pirate city, down to the sucking babes, he gave no explanation. And none dared ask for one.”