– Sparhawk.

‘Isn’t that just a little blunt, dear?’ Ehlana said, reading over her husband’s shoulder. She smelled very good.

‘Komier’s a blunt sort of fellow, Ehlana,’ Sparhawk shrugged, laying down his quill, ‘and I’m not really very good at writing letters.’

‘I noticed.’ They were in their ornate apartments in one of the Church buildings adjoining the Basilica where they had spent the day composing messages to people scattered over most of the continent.

‘Don’t you have letters of your own to write?’ Sparhawk asked his wife.

‘I’m all finished. All I really had to do was send a short note to Lenda. He knows what to do.’ She glanced across the room at Mirtai, who sat patiently snipping the tips off Mmrr’s claws. Mmrr was not taking it very well. Ehlana smiled. ‘Mirtai’s communication with Kring was much more direct. She called in an itinerant Peloi and told him to ride to Kring with her command to ride to Basne on the Zemoch-Astel border with a hundred of his tribesmen. She said that if he isn’t waiting when she gets there, she’ll take it to mean that he doesn’t love her.’ Ehlana pushed her pale blonde hair back from her brow.

‘Poor Kring,’ Sparhawk smiled. ‘She could raise him from the dead with a message like that. Do you think she’ll ever really marry him?’

‘That’s very hard to say, Sparhawk. He does have her attention, though.’

There was a knock at the door, and Mirtai rose to let Kalten in. ‘It’s a beautiful day out there,’ the blond man told them. ‘We’ll have good weather for the trip.’

‘How are things coming along?’ Sparhawk asked him.

‘We’re just about all ready.’ Kalten was wearing a green brocade doublet, and he bowed extravagantly to the queen. ‘Actually, we are ready. About the only things happening now are the usual redundancies.’

‘Could you clarify that just a bit, Sir Kalten?’ Ehlana said.

He shrugged. ‘Everyone’s going over all the things everyone else has done to make sure that nothing’s been left out.’ He sprawled in a chair. ‘We’re surrounded by busybodies, Sparhawk. Nobody seems to be able to believe that anybody else can do something right. If Emban asks me if the knights are all ready to ride about one more time, I think I’ll strangle him. He has no idea at all about what’s involved in moving a large group of people from one place to another. Would you believe that he was going to try to put all of us on one ship? Horses and all?’

‘That might have been just a bit crowded,’ Ehlana smiled. ‘How many ships did he finally decide on?’

‘I’m not sure. I still don’t know for certain how many people are going. Your attendants are all absolutely convinced that you’ll simply die without their company, my Queen. There are about forty or so who are making preparations for the trip.’

‘You’d better weed them out, Ehlana,’ Sparhawk suggested. ‘I don’t want to be saddled with the entire court.’

‘I will need a few people, Sparhawk – if only for the sake of appearances.’

Talen came into the room. The gangly boy was wearing what he called his ‘street clothes’ – slightly mismatched, very ordinary and just this side of shabby. ‘He’s still out there,’ he said, his eyes bright.

‘Who?’ Kalten asked.

‘Krager. He’s creeping around Chyrellos like a lost puppy looking for a home. Stragen’s got people from the local thieves’ community watching him. We haven’t been able to figure out exactly what he’s up to just yet. If Martel were still alive, I’d almost say he’s doing the same sort of thing he used to do – letting himself be seen.’

‘How does he look?’

‘Worse.’ Talen’s voice cracked slightly. It was still hovering somewhere between soprano and baritone. ‘The years aren’t treating Krager very well. His eyes look like they’ve been poached in bacon grease. He looks absolutely miserable.’

‘I think I can bear Krager’s misery,’ Sparhawk noted. ‘He’s beginning to make me just a little tired, though. He’s been sort of hovering around the edge of my awareness for the last ten years or more – sort of like a hangnail or an ingrown toenail. He always seems to be working for the other side, but he’s too insignificant to really worry about.’

‘Stragen could ask one of the local thieves to cut his throat,’ Talen offered.

Sparhawk considered it. ‘Maybe not,’ he decided. ‘Krager’s always been a good source of information. Tell Stragen that if the opportunity happens to come up, we might want to have a little chat with our old friend, though. The offer to braid his legs together usually makes Krager very talkative.’

Ulath stopped by about a half hour later. ‘Did you finish that letter to Komier?’ he asked Sparhawk.

‘He has a draft copy, Sir Ulath,’ Ehlana replied for her husband. ‘It definitely needs some polish.’

‘You don’t have to polish things for Komier, your Majesty. He’s used to strange letters. One of my Genidian brothers sent him a report written on human skin once.’

She stared at him. ‘He did what?’

‘There wasn’t anything else handy to write on. A Genidian Knight just arrived with a message for me from Komier, though. The knight’s going back to Emsat, and he can carry Sparhawk’s letter if it’s ready to go.’

‘It’s close enough,’ Sparhawk said, folding the parchment and dribbling candle wax on it to seal it. ‘What did Komier have to say?’

‘It was good news for a change. All the Trolls have left Thalesia for some reason.’

‘Where did they go?’

‘Who knows? Who cares?’

‘The people who live in the country they’ve gone to might be slightly interested,’ Kalten suggested.

‘That’s their problem,’ Ulath shrugged. ‘It’s funny, though. The Trolls don’t really get along with each other. I couldn’t even begin to guess at a reason why they’d all decide to pack up and leave at the same time. The discussions must have been very interesting. They usually kill each other on sight.’

‘There’s not much help I can give you, Sparhawk,’ Dolmant said gravely when the two of them met privately later that day. ‘The Church is fragmented in Daresia. They don’t accept the authority of Chyrellos, so I can’t order them to assist you.’ Dolmant’s face was careworn, and his white cassock made his complexion look sallow. In a very real sense, Dolmant ruled an empire that stretched from Thalesia to Cammoria, and the burdens of his office bore down on him heavily. The change they had all noticed in their friend in the past several years derived more likely from that than from any kind of inflated notion of his exalted station.