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"I'll take you up on that meal," Luke called to him. "How about you,
Merle? Hungry?"
"Lord, no!" I replied. "I just sat through a state dinner. "
"Oh?" he inquired almost too casually. "What was the; ocasion?"
I began to laugh. It was too much for one day. I was about to tell him
that we hadn't the time or the rivacy. But Julian had just reopened the tent
flap and was calling for an orderly, and I wanted to throw a few curve balls
through Luke's broken field just to see what they did to his composure.
"Oh, it was for the Begman prime minister, Orkuz, and some of his
staff," I explained.
He waited while I pretended to take a long drink of wine. Then I
lowered it and said, "That's all."
"Come on, Merlin. What's it about? I've been relatively square with you
recently."
"Oh?" I said.
For a minute I didn't think he'd see the humor in it; but then he began
to laugh, too.
"Sometimes the mills of the gods grind too damned fast and we get
buried in grist," he observed. "Look, how about giving me this one for free.
I don't have anything brief to trade right now. What's he want?"
"You'll bear in mind that this is classified until tomorrow?"
"Okay. What happens tomorrow?"
"Arkans, Duke of Shadburne, gets crowned in Kashfa. "
"Holy shit!" Luke said. He glanced at Julian, then back at me. "That
was a damned clever choice on Random's part," he said after a time
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