It happened so fast the Emperor was only just beginning to understand when Kordas and Merrin moved. Merrin drew his Spitter, jammed it into the Emperor’s throat, and fired, sending the bolt into his larynx. Anything the Emperor might have been about to say died in a gurgling, gagging sound.

Then Kordas drew his Spitter, twisted the handle, reversed it, and smashed the pommel into the Emperor’s forehead.

The mercy-piston, meant to pierce a horse’s or cow’s thick skull, had no problem with a mere human skull. The bolt drove soundlessly into the Emperor’s brain, enveloped in frost clouds from the six jet-vents of the piston, and rebounded back in Kordas’s grip.

The Emperor was dead before his knees gave and his body hit the lush golden carpet.

The wolf statues silenced, and stared, their eyes still bright.

Merrin grabbed the Wolf Crown and jammed it onto Kordas’s head, as Kordas clasped the Carcanet around his own throat, then bent down and yanked the ring off the Emperor’s forefinger and jammed it onto his own.

Then the wolf statues closed their eyes and froze in place once more.

Oh . . . hells. That was too close.

Kordas turned to the Dolls, who had also frozen in place. Clearly they had not expected him to do that.

“Who do you serve?” Kordas demanded, barely hearing his own voice over the effects of the howling earlier.

There was a short pause. “He who wears the Crown, the Carcanet, and the Ring,” they said.

Kordas leaned hard against the desk, panting. Everything spun a little, and his head pounded. He’d worked out earlier that the set of items were powerful, but the sensation of actually wearing them was enough to do his head in. As soon as Merrin and the Dolls pulled the Emperor’s body away, Kordas fell into the chair, mopping at his forehead with the left sleeve of his thunderstorm-dyed shirt. He closed his eyes.

There was only one way to be certain the Emperor wouldn’t pursue us. We had to kill the Emperor.

Kordas fumbled with a pen and the papers in the folders, then gave up to spend another few moments with his eyes closed. Finally he said, awkwardly, “Can you please find me some blank paper? And take that body on the floor and put it in the Emperor’s bed.”

One of the Dolls extracted paper from somewhere behind him and placed it on the desk in front of him. Others dragged the body away. There was, surprisingly, very little blood. And very little else. The Emperor must have used the jakes before he’d sat down to meet with them.

Poised with pen above the paper, Kordas’s hand shook. “Beltran. Come—come help me here. Star—you too.” He felt queasy, but it had to be because of the enormity of what they’d just done. He took up the pen again and scrawled out: