“Then we might find a better place of our own to do it,” Alisa said. She reached out and touched the north side of the rose-stone castle with her index finger. “That’s where Sasha is…”

“Almost certainly,” he said quietly. “The stable boys who were returned to the village hadn’t seen her before they left, but they’d heard she was being kept in one of the harem suites in the main castle.”

“She wouldn’t be there now. She’d want to be close to Chaos. She’d find a way to get to him.” Her hand went to the south wall and traveled down to the stable area. “I’ll bet she’s somewhere here.”

“I’ll be sure to let Gilroy know,” he said caustically. “If he doesn’t already. He probably wouldn’t tell me if he did.”

“Gilroy? Why would you want to do that?”

“It appears he’s going to be our go-between with Sasha until we can get her out of there. He tells me he’s my best choice whether I like it or not.”

Hence the extremely bad mood, she thought. Gilroy always managed to strike home and get what he wanted from Korgan when no one else could. “I can’t see you meekly agreeing to anything.”

“I’m not meek.” He scowled. “The son of a bitch made sense. I could have handled the situation in a different way, but it might not have turned out to be the right way. There were things that had to be done that only I could do.” His lips thinned. “So I delegated again.”

And it was irritating the hell out of him, Alisa realized even as the relief poured through her. He wasn’t going into Jubaldar, which could be a deadly trap for him. “How did Gilroy talk you into it?”

He lifted his eyes from the map to her face. “He gave me his usual bullshit collection of reasons, but he was right on a couple of points. He’s good at what he does, and I can trust him. You trust him to do what’s best for Sasha, and that may keep you safer.” His lips twisted. “So I guess I’ll have to forgive him for telling me how lousy I’d be if I tried to handle it myself. Maybe he’s right about me lacking the pizzazz and dazzle to pull it off.”

“He went that far?” She sat there looking at him. He didn’t even realize how absurd he was being. But then he couldn’t see the man she saw. The power. The brilliance. The intricacy of the search for knowledge that never stopped. The honor that had made him keep his word to free those students no matter what got in the way. The splendor of the curiosity that made him dig deeper when others gave up. Genius. Artist. Engineer. Scientist. Renaissance man.