“You’ll find out soon enough—everyone will. No good can come from revealing this secret in advance.” He gestured toward the door, his hand wearing the diamond ring that Farilane now imagined weighed more than the old emperor’s whole arm. “Please, leave us.”

“Your Grand Imperial Serene Eminence, I—”

“Congratulations,” the emperor said. “That might be the first time.”

“The first time for what?”

“The first time I have ever heard anyone address me with that absurd mouthful of blandishments and genuinely mean it.”

She would have laughed if she weren’t so disturbed that Estermon the Second was making a joke, which was as disturbing as biting into an apple and hearing it scream. “A powerful elven sorcerer—a Miralyith named Mawyndulë—will be coming after the key you have, and he will kill you to get it. But he must be stopped because he already has the lock it opens. He has the Horn of Gylindora.”

“I know,” the emperor told her. His ringless sparrow of a hand patted her shoulder in a most unsettling, grandfatherly manner. “Now please leave us.”

The princess looked at her father and brother, but both refused to meet her eyes.

Chapter 17: The First Minister

Chapter Seventeen
The First Minister

“Well, that was surreal,” Farilane told Arturus and Maddock after the door to the throne room closed. She started to leave, then stopped and spun back. “The two of you need to be wary of—” She stopped. Her eyes narrowed as she studied them. Arturus and Maddock had earned the honor of guarding the emperor each morning by virtue of seniority and conduct so exemplary that it stood out even in an order of meritorious men. In addition, both were big, taller even than Cedric, and they had squared shoulders like the crossbeams on a ship’s mast. They made a fine pair as they looked enough alike to be brothers.

They weren’t. Maddock hailed from the northern backwater port city of Rionillion, while Arturus was a homegrown country boy from southern Rhenydd. Although both were now revered elders in their late fifties, Farilane remembered when they first joined the Teshlors as boys. She was there when they passed their final disciplines and earned their emblems. Young, handsome, and dashing Arturus and Maddock had been companions at her side on many daring adventures, just as Kolby and Ethan were today.

Farilane stepped close to Arturus and whispered in his ear, “What are my favorite colors?”

“Green and red,” he replied matter of factly.

“Why?”

“Because they are the opposites on the color wheel from the gold and blue of the imperial crest.”

Farilane nodded and then shifted to Maddock. “What was the name of my cat, the one that you fetched out of a tree for me when I was a child?”