Hakkon allowed himself a thin-lipped, but genuine, smile. “It always feels good when your charge makes the jump,” he replied. “Let’s have a cup and find out what the Empire requires.”

“Let’s go deal with the worst,” he reluctantly replied.

“The worst would have been if the messenger had insisted on seeing you, personally, right away,” Hakkon reminded him. “Or if there had been Imperial soldiers with him to enforce that request. So this isn’t the worst, not yet.”

When they entered the manor, Kordas’s herald, a fellow about Ivar’s age named Beltran, was waiting for them with the sealed message in his hands. Kordas relaxed a little, though only a little. Beltran was literally the lowest-ranked servant that could be entrusted with an Imperial message. If it had been more important, the steward would have had it. More important than that, Hakkon would have been holding it when he came out of the grotto. So . . . hopefully this was nothing he wasn’t already expecting.

He took the message from Beltran’s hands, and broke the seal on it. His Mage-sight detected a little shower of magical energy as he did so. That would be the spell that would tell whoever had set the seal that the message had been opened, and whether or not it was by the person to whom it was addressed. If someone else had opened this first, well . . . at the very least someone in the Emperor’s service, if not the Emperor himself, would want to know why, and the only permissible answer would be that he was too sick or injured to do so himself.

He opened the carefully folded paper. Very thick stock. Linen, cotton and softwood. Its deckled edges were jarred by the heavy-lined stamped block border surrounding the calligraphy.

There was the usual salutation, to him by his shortest possible title, from the Emperor by his longest possible title, which took up half the page, then the important part.

He looked up at Hakkon, feeling his mouth pursing as if he was tasting something sour. Which he was. The excitement, the energy drain, the celebratory mood and then the thoughts of his father and the Plan legacy had resulted in enough of a twisted gut that he tasted bile.

“I’m ordered to turn up with the horses in person,” he said abruptly. “As quickly as possible.”

Hakkon’s face took on an equally sour expression. “Well, that’s . . . inconvenient.”

“Yes,” he replied, not wanting to say anything more, in case there was some subtle enchantment on the paper that would allow what they were saying to be overheard. “But orders are orders. How long will it take to get the tribute herd together?”