‘Caalador will keep working on that. We’ve got their password now, and that can open all kinds of doors for us. Vanion’s drawing up a list of names. Before long, we’ll know everybody in Matherion who’s been talking about the Hidden City.’ He looked at Sarabian. ‘Have I your Majesty’s permission to detain those people if necessary?’ he asked. ‘If we move first and round them all up before they can set their scheme in motion, we’ll break the back of this plot before it gets too far along.’

‘Detain away, Sparhawk,’ Sarabian grinned. ‘I’ve got lots of buildings we can use for prisons.’

‘All right, young lady,’ Sparhawk said quite firmly to his daughter a few days later. ‘One of Caalador’s beggars saw Count Gerrich in a street not far from here. How did you know that he’d be here in Matherion?’

‘I didn’t know, Sparhawk. I just had a hunch.’ Danae was sitting calmly in a large chair, scratching her cat’s ears. Mmrr was purring gratefully.

‘A hunch?’

‘Intuition, if that word makes you feel any better. It just didn’t seem right that Krager and Elron would be here without the others being here as well – and that would logically include Gerrich, wouldn’t it?’

‘Don’t confuse the issue by using the words “logic” and “intuition” in the same sentence.’

‘Oh, Sparhawk, do grow up. That’s all that logic really is – a justification for hunches. Have you ever known anyone who used logic to disprove something he already believed?’

‘Well – not personally, maybe, but I’m sure there have been some.’

‘I’ll wait while you track one down. I’m an immortal, so time doesn’t really mean all that much to me.’

‘That’s really offensive, Aphrael.’

‘Sorry, father.’ She didn’t sound very contrite. ‘Your mind gathers information in hundreds of ways, Sparhawk – things you hear, things you see, things you touch and even things you smell. Then it puts all of that information together and jumps from there to a conclusion. That’s all that hunches really are. Intuition is just as precise as logic, really, but it doesn’t have to go through the long, tedious process of plodding along step by step to prove things. It leaps immediately from evidence to conclusion without all the tiresome intermediate steps. Sephrenia doesn’t like logic because it’s so boring. She already knows the answers you’re so laboriously trying to prove – and so do you, if you’d be honest about it.’

‘Folk-lore is full of these hunches, Aphrael – and they’re usually wrong. How about the old notion that thunder sours milk?’

‘That’s a mistake in logic, Sparhawk, not a mistake in intuition.’

‘Would you like to explain that?’

‘You could just as easily say that sour milk causes thunder, you know.’

‘That’s absurd.’

‘Of course it is. Thunder and sour milk are both effects, not causes.’

‘You should talk to Dolmant. I’d like to see you try to explain that he’s been wasting his time on logic all these years.’

‘He already knows,’ she shrugged. ‘Dolmant’s far more intuitive than you give him credit for being. He knew who I was the moment he saw me – which is a lot more than I can say for you, father. I thought for a while there that I was going to have to fly in order to persuade you.’

‘Be nice.’

‘I am. There are all sorts of things I didn’t say about you. What’s Krager up to?’

‘Nobody knows.’

‘We really need to find him, Sparhawk.’

‘I know. I want him even more than you do. I’m going to enjoy wringing him out like a wet sock.’

‘Be serious, Sparhawk. You know Krager. He’d tell you his whole life story if you even frowned at him.’

He sighed. ‘You’re probably right,’ he conceded. ‘It takes a lot of the fun out of it though.’

‘You’re not here to have fun, Sparhawk. Which would you rather have? Information or revenge?’

‘Couldn’t we come up with a way to have both?’

She rolled her eyes upward. ‘Elenes,’ she sighed.

Bevier took a detachment of newly-trained Atan engineers west toward Sarna early the next week. The following day Kalten, Tynian and Engessa took two hundred mounted Atans north toward the lands being ravaged by the Trolls. At Vanion’s insistence the parties filtered out of Matherion in twos and threes to assemble later outside the city. ‘There’s no point in announcing what we’re up to,’ he said.

A few days after the departure of the two military expeditions, Zalasta left for Sarsos. ‘I won’t be very long,’ he told them. ‘We have a certain commitment from the Thousand, but I think I’d like to see some concrete evidence that they’re willing to honour that commitment. Words are all well and good, but let’s see some action – just as a demonstration of good faith. I know my brothers. Nothing in the world would please them more than being able to reap the benefits of allying themselves with us “in principle” without the inconvenience of actually being obliged to do anything to help. They’re best suited to deal with these supernatural manifestations, so I’ll pry them loose from their comfortable chairs in Sarsos and disperse them to these troublespots.’ He smiled thinly at Vanion from under his beetling brows. ‘Extensive travel might toughen them up a bit, my Lord,’ he added. ‘Perhaps we can avoid spraining any more of your ankles in demonstrations of how flabby and lazy they are.’

‘I appreciate that, Zalasta,’ Vanion laughed.

There were always more things to do than there was time for. The ceremonies and ‘occasions’ that surrounded the state visit by the Queen of Elenia filled their afternoons and evenings, and so Sparhawk and the others were obliged to work late and rise early in order to conduct their surreptitious operations in the city and the imperial compound. They all grew short-tempered from lack of sleep, and Mirtai began to badger Sparhawk about the condition of his wife’s health. Ehlana was, in fact, beginning to develop dark circles under her eyes and an increasingly waspish disposition.

The break-through came about ten days after the departure of the expeditions to Sarna and to the newlyoccupied lands of the Trolls. Caalador arrived early one morning with a kind of exultant tightness of his face and a large canvas sack in one hand. ‘It was pure luck, Sparhawk,’ he chortled when the two met in the royal apartment.