So now he was moping around, talking to no one, brooding. He displeased Star by disarranging his appearance so that he looked a bit unkempt. He pushed his food around his plate at public meals, and refused far, far more dishes than he accepted. This was actually all to the good, in his opinion; he had been afraid that even with moderate eating he was beginning to get soft around the waist. People snickered openly at him, but avoided him with alarm, because he would get maudlin and immediately turn the subject of conversation to Isla, pleading with them to give him advice, then interrupting that advice to grow teary-eyed and dissolve into a wet mess.

But the desperation and depression were both very real. He didn’t have to feign those. He didn’t have to feign pacing the gardens night and day, head down, as he went over every ploy he had thought of and discarded.

Put everyone remaining in Valdemar under a sleep spell, until they are awakened by those storming the place to investigate.

And what if that took days? Worse, weeks? Those storming the place would find the dead, not the living. Three days without water would kill a grown man, and it would be a day or less to doom an infant.

Have everyone remaining locked up by the last to leave.

That was the one he was still toying with, but it was still perilous, even if he left the ones imprisoned with adequate food and water. And would they be believed? And what if they were questioned magically?

Have everyone left behind claim that a disease made everyone else run mad.

That wouldn’t be believed for an instant.

There were variations on all those things, but none of them would hold past the Emperor’s inquisitors coming in and applying real questioning.

Well, he thought unhappily, as he left the Court early and paced the gardens in the thin, smoky afternoon sunlight. At least I’m losing the weight I put on.

—

Delia would never have believed so much could be accomplished in so little time.