Sparhawk had discovered early in life that a scowl was his best defence in such situations, and he customarily intimidated whole rooms-full of people who might otherwise inflict conversational inanities upon him.

‘Are you in some kind of distress, Prince Sparhawk?’ It was Ambassador Fontan. ‘Your face has a decidedly dyspeptic cast to it.’

‘It’s entirely tactical, your Excellency,’ Sparhawk replied. ‘When a military man doesn’t want to be pestered, he digs a ditch and lines the bottom and sides with sharpened stakes. A scowl serves the same purpose in social situations.’

‘You look bristly enough, my boy. Let’s take a turn around the battlements and enjoy the view, the fresh air and the privacy. There are things you should know, and this may be my only chance to get you alone. King Alberen’s court is full of inconsequential people who would all die for the chance to be able to manoeuvre conversations around to the point where they can assert that they know you personally. You have quite a reputation, you know.’

‘Largely exaggerated, your Excellency.’

‘You’re too modest, my boy. Shall we go?’

They left the throne-room unobtrusively and climbed several flights of stairs until they came out on the windswept battlements.

Fontan looked down at the city spread below. ‘Quaint, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Elene cities are always quaint, your Excellency,’ Sparhawk replied. ‘Elene architects haven’t had a new idea in the last five millennia.’

‘Matherion will open your eyes, Sparhawk. All right, then, Astel’s right on the verge of flying apart. So’s the rest of the world, but Astel’s carrying it to extremes. I’m doing what I can to hold things together, but Alberen’s so pliable that almost anyone can influence him. He’ll literally sign anything anybody puts in front of him. You’ve heard about Ayachin, of course? And his running dog, Sabre?’

Sparhawk nodded.

‘I’ve got every imperial agent in Astel out trying to identify Sabre, but we haven’t had much luck so far. He’s out there blithely dismantling a system the empire spent centuries creating. We don’t really know very much about him.’

‘He’s an adolescent, your Excellency,’ Sparhawk said. ‘No matter what his age, he’s profoundly juvenile.’ He briefly described the incident in the forest.

‘That’s helpful,’ Fontan said. ‘None of my people have ever been able to infiltrate one of those famous meetings, so we had no idea of what sort of fellow we were dealing with. He’s got the nobility completely in his grasp. I stopped Alberen just in time a few weeks ago when he was on the verge of signing a proclamation which would have criminalised a serf if he ran away. That would have brought the kingdom down around our ears, I’m afraid. That’s always been the serf’s final answer to an intolerable situation. If he can run away and stay away for a year and a day, he’s free. If you take that away from the serfs, they’ll revolt, and a serf rebellion is too hideous a notion to even contemplate.’

‘It’s quite deliberate, your Excellency,’ Sparhawk advised him. ‘Sabre’s agitating the serfs as well. He wants a serf rebellion here in Astel. He’s been using his influence over the nobility to persuade them to commit the exact blunders that will outrage the serfs all the more.’

‘What’s the man thinking of?’ Fontan burst out. ‘He’ll drown Astel in blood.’

Sparhawk made an intuitive leap at the point. ‘I don’t think he really cares about Astel, your Excellency. Sabre’s no more than a tool for someone who has his eye on a much bigger goal.’

‘Oh? What’s that?’

‘I’m guessing, your Excellency, but I think there’s somebody out there who wants the whole world, and he’d sacrifice Astel and every living person in it to get what he wants.’

CHAPTER 12

‘It’s hard to put your finger on it, Prince Sparhawk,’ Baroness Melidere said that evening after the extended royal family had retired to their oversized apartment for the night. At the queen’s insistence, Melidere, Mirtai and Alean, her maid, had been provided with rooms in the apartment. Ehlana needed women around her for a number of reasons, some practical, some political and some very obscure. The ladies had removed their formal gowns, and, except for Mirtai, they wore soft pastel dressing gowns. Melidere was brushing Mirtai’s wealth of blue-black hair, and the doe-eyed Alean was performing the same service for Ehlana.

‘I’m not sure exactly how to describe it,’ the honey-blonde baroness continued. ‘It’s a sort of generalised sadness. They all sigh a great deal.’

‘I noticed that myself, Sparhawk,’ Ehlana told her husband. ‘Alberen hardly smiles at all, and I can make anybody smile.’

‘Your presence alone is enough to make us all smile, my Queen,’ Talen told her. Talen was the queen’s page, and he was also a member of the extended family. The young thief was elegant tonight, dressed in a plumcoloured velvet doublet and knee-britches in the same shade and fabric. Knee-britches were just coming into fashion, and Ehlana had tried her very best to get Sparhawk into a pair of them. He had categorically refused, and his wife had been obliged to settle for coercing her page into the ridiculous-looking garments.

‘The plan is to make you a knight, Talen,’ Melidere told the boy pointedly, ‘not a courtier.’

‘Stragen says it’s always a good idea to have something to fall back on, Baroness,’ he shrugged, his voice cracking and warbling somewhere between soprano and baritone.

‘He would,’ the baroness sniffed. Melidere affected a strong disapproval of Stragen, but Sparhawk was not so sure about that.

Talen and Princess Danae sat on the floor rolling a ball back and forth between them. Mmrr was participating in the game enthusiastically.

‘They all seem to secretly believe that the world’s going to come to an end week after next,’ the baroness went on, slowly drawing her brush through Mirtai’s hair. ‘They’re all bright and brittle on the surface, but once you get beneath that, there’s the blackest melancholy, and they all drink like fish. I couldn’t prove this, but I really think they all believe they’re going to die very soon.’ She lifted Mirtai’s hair speculatively. ‘I think I’ll braid a gold chain into it, dear,’ she told the giantess.

‘No, Melidere,’ Mirtai said firmly. ‘I’m not entitled to wear gold yet.’