“Wait for what?” He went hot and cold all over, then hot again. “Wait for you to drain my people and my lands dry? Wait for you to abuse them like a cheap mule? I know what I should do! I’m challenging you! You have your Spitter, I have mine. Right here! Right now!”

“Valdemar, man, please—” There was real pleading in Merrin’s face, and, strangely, no fear. He hung in Kordas’s hands, completely unresisting. “Put me down, man. Let me explain.”

“Why should I trust you as far as I can throw you?” Kordas growled.

Merrin jerked his head at Star. “Ask your Doll. It’s a vrondi. It can tell I’m speaking the truth.”

The unexpected words made his jaw drop and his hands loosened involuntarily, and Merrin slid down the wall, catching himself before he fell. “How did you know that?” he demanded, as Merrin self-consciously shook his coat into place, smoothed down his lapels, and brushed the skirt of the garment.

“Because the first time I was here, some idiot decided he was going to lie in a petition in front of the Emperor, against one of the Emperor’s favorites, and the Emperor asked the Doll attending him if what the idiot was saying was the truth.” Merrin shrugged. “The Doll told him, of course. It didn’t end well. The Emperor ordered him to be fed to the Abyssal. Then the Emperor got a good laugh out of it, reminded everyone that the Dolls were vrondi, and ended the Court early. But ask it,” he continued. “Ask it if I’m telling you the truth.”

Star spoke up, unprompted. “Everything he has said is true.”

“Star,” Kordas said carefully, “are we being watched?”

Star held up its hand, the one with the crest pin, which it did not cover.

“All right,” Kordas said, fury still smoldering. “But this had better be good.”

“Not here,” said Merrin, and crooked a finger. He led Kordas and Star to a Gate, held up his bracelet, and said, “Meditation Room.”

They stepped out into a perfectly egg-shaped room that was like a jewel. Every fingerlength was covered in geometric mosaic patterns in blues and greens made of fragments of glass no bigger than an apple seed. There were blue cushions scattered about, and there were no windows, just a single soft white mage-light up at the top of the ceiling.

“What . . . is this place?” Kordas asked.