All around them, householders and servants were already hanging black swags over front doors in acknowledgment of the royal mourning. Public mourning lasted a week, but for the royal family and court it would go on for much longer.

“No more parties with Elani,” Seregil murmured. “I doubt we’ll see much of her for a while.”

“And Klia led the army to victory!”

“As the last royal left on the field, it was her right to take command.”

“Beka always said the army loved Phoria. If they thought Klia had any hand in it, they wouldn’t have followed her. So that’s the end of the cabals?”

Seregil shrugged.

Some people they passed were now quietly celebrating the victory or mourning the fallen queen. Others were grumbling that the death and the mourning period put off the time for the public victory feast the queen would give for the city, and had shut down theaters, brothels, taverns, and the like.

The house in Gannet Lane was still shuttered when they arrived there to collect their horses, which fortunately were still where they’d left them.

“Do you think Korathan arrested all of them?” Alec wondered.

“I imagine so,” Seregil replied with a twinge of regret. Merina and Brader had seemed like a devoted couple, and there had been no mistaking how much the man loved his children, even to his dying breath.

“I hope he was telling the truth about the others not being involved,” said Alec, as if reading his thoughts.

“So do I,” said Micum. “I don’t regret the killing of either of them, but the thought of those fatherless children …” He kept the rest of his thoughts to himself.

They parted ways at the Temple Precinct, Micum and Alec going back to the inn with Illia’s phial and good news, and Seregil heading for the Dalnan temple to ascertain Thero’s condition.

“What have you done to yourself now?” Valerius asked when he saw Seregil’s sad condition.

“Never mind that. Is Thero all right?”

“See for yourself,” the drysian told him, leading him to a guest room off the library.

To Seregil’s considerable surprise and great relief, he found the wizard sitting up in bed. He was pale as bleached linen, except for the angry red weal on his neck where the needle had struck him, but his eyes were clear and alert as he rasped out, “Illia? Did you get the phial?”

“Yes. Micum has it at the inn. By the Light!” Seregil pulled up another chair and clasped hands with him. “I didn’t know what to expect here.”

Thero gave a rusty chuckle. “Wizards are hard to kill. How else do you think we live to be so old? I’d managed to expel most of the poison from my body by the time Micum brought me here.”

“That nasty-looking black stuff you were coughing up?”