ahead.

"Hey there!" The guard's voice was loud and harsh. "Get down there and—"

The voice of the toll-keeper died away. Kesley looked around and saw van Alen down on his knees in the well-trampled mud, rooting in the filth for the coin. The nobleman seemed to show no compunction about crawling before the toll-keeper.

"Here you are, sir." Van Alen obsequiously deposited Kesley's dollar in the tollbox, added one of his own, and handed a third coin to the toll-keeper.

"The boy is sick," van Alen murmured, gesturing significantly. "He does not know what he does."

The toll-keeper nodded curtly and pocketed the dollar. "Get moving, both of you," he snapped.

Kesley, who had trotted a few feet further, halted to let van Alen catch up with him.

"That's a good way to assure a short life," the Antarctican said. "Toll-keepers are notorious for their quick triggers. Don't make needless trouble for yourself, boy."

"Sorry," Kesley said. "It riled me to see him sitting there so smug and taking our money. I didn't really mean to throw the coin on the ground."

Van Alen shook his head sadly. "It riled you," he repeated, his voice mocking. "You've been lucky so far—each time you've lost your temper, you've survived. But better learn to curb it. These people are your superiors, whether you like it or not, and if a Duke wants a dollar to enter his city, you put down your dollar or you ride the other way."

"Superiors, hell! They've got no right—"

"You're just so much dirt, Kesley," the Antarctican said with sudden force. Oddly, the words did not stir Kesley to anger. "Learn that lesson now. Whatever you may think you are, that doesn't alter the fact that you're nothing more than dirt."

Kesley swallowed hard, but said nothing. Van Alen was right, he was forced to admit. The Twelve Dukes ruled supreme, and beneath them came a complex and sharply-defined hierarchy in which, as a farmer, Kesley was close to the bottom. He had no call to flare up at toll-keepers.

But yet—

He shook his head. The fact of his insignificance was one he could accept intellectually, but he couldn't believe in it. And he never would. He had 

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