“Of course, my lord. I am certain that you will find it is so. Let us go.” The chancellor turned and signaled the bearers to approach the throne with the palanquin. The Duke studied their careful pace; they were allowing time for his order to precede him so that when he arrived in the Sheltered Garden, chilled wine and a freshly blanketed and cushioned divan would await him. There were days when the pain and the shortness of breath made him so foul tempered that he would deliberately order the men to move more quickly. Then he would lash out at them for jostling him, and when he arrived at the garden before it had been prepared for his every whim, he could berate the chancellor and send all the servants off for punishment. Yes. There were times when the pain prompted him to such pettiness.

But not today.

They transferred him gently from his throne to the palanquin. He gritted his teeth against a moan. So little flesh remained to cushion his bones. His joints ground against one another when he moved his limbs. Sores afflicted his body from his long periods of stillness, growing deep over the jut of bone. In his pole chair, he sat curled and hunched, a humped caterpillar of a man. When the curtains closed around him, he was glad to be able to grimace privately and try to shift away from the worst of his bedsores.

Trouble was brewing. He smelled it and tasted it. He was no fool. He saw how the eyes of the men shifted, how they conferred silently with one another before obeying his commands. Chalced was slipping from his grip. Once he had been a powerful warrior, a man mighty of body as well as lineage. Once he had been like a crouching tiger, ready to leap from his throne and slash to ribbons any who doubted his authority. Those days were gone. He could no longer cow men with his physical presence.

But he was not a fool. And never had been one. He had never thought that his physical strength alone would let him hold his power. If he had been a fool, he would not have survived for so many years among the shifting dunes of political power in Chalced. As a young man, he had been ruthless in acquiring power and keeping it. His dearth of living sons demonstrated that. He had no illusions about the men who surrounded him or the greedy heirs anxious to supplant him. Others would be just as ruthless as he had been in securing their share of the spoils once he died. And some would not wait for it to happen naturally.