“No.” I shook my head. “But we needed enough of a head start to catch Jakoven before he became aware of you. We had to take him by surprise before he could use the Bane.” I tipped my head to the staff and swayed a little with the motion.

“Did you?” asked Kellen softly. “Or did you see the chance for power and take it?”

“Kellen’s worried that Jakoven’s downfall might be a good time for old traditions to reassert themselves,” said Haverness, his voice carefully neutral. “The Hurogs are the last of the royal line of Shavig.”

I was too exhausted to deal with stupid suspicions, especially, as usual when I was tired, when talking was difficult. I tried to gather my thoughts and had to grip the staff harder to stay on my feet.

“Ward?” Tisala’s voice drew my gaze, and I saw her more clearly. Part of me noted uneasily that the light of the gem had followed my gaze without my bidding, but the rest of me was focused on Tisala. I straightened abruptly, anger stiffening my spine. The battering, I realized, had probably come from Jakoven’s men, but her hands were bound and she was obviously a prisoner.

I looked back at Kellen, who said quietly, “Is that the Bane, Ward?” His eyes were trying to convey a message to me, but I was too tired and angry to work it out.

“It’s not Kellen who doubts you,” said my uncle, and I saw that he was here, too. “But when we realized where you were going, a number of the Oranstonian lords who knew your father expressed their doubts. In your place, he would have taken the Bane and used it to gain the throne—and they don’t know you.”

His words bounced off the rising tide of my wrath, which grew apace when I noticed that he was bound as well.

I waved my hand, drawing on the power of the staff (“What power?”asked a small, rational part of me, buried beneath the roil of anger) and the ropes fell from Tisala’s wrists. “Tosten, Axiel, Garranon,” I said in a voice I hardly recognized.

“Here, Ward,” said Garranon behind me. “I’m fine.”

“And I,” said Axiel.

Tosten said, “Nothing wrong with me that won’t mend. Have a care, Ward. Keep your head.”

I didn’t even have to look at them to release their bonds as well as Duraugh’s. The magic of the staff filled me up and powered myfinding sense until I could have identified every man in the camp, though I’d never seen most of them before.

“Why are my people bound?” I asked gently. “They’ve done nothing wrong. With this”—I shook the staff—“ Jakoven could have leveled a battlefield. Stealth was the only way. So these people risked their lives for you and you make prisoners of them?”