She locked eyes with him and delivered her next words with regal weight, “But you are not hobbled by such things, Lord Mantil, young freedom fighter that you are. So you have the ability to close those loose ends that my respectable colleagues and I cannot.”

“Your majesty, what, exactly, is it that you believe I should be doing while I am here in your country?” he put a little emphasis on the word ‘your’ but she did not allow his subtle insolence to phase her.

“Oh, nothing very important, Lord Mantil.” She smiled pleasantly. “On the list of targets your leaders gave you were two ambitious options thrown in, no doubt in the hope that your improbable success in Islamabad might be something close to divine intervention, a thought that is more accurate than they realize.

“I merely point out that one of the people who we suspected of discovering our arrival here spends a lot of time at the White House and the Pentagon. So why don’t you use your time here to plan an attack on, say, the Pentagon, and while doing so, kill one of the men that may have some level of suspicion that we are here? It is merely a case of two birds with one stone.”

It seemed almost reasonable. But she had always been able to couch her schemes and ambitions in logic. It was a skill she had applied with a broad brush to get her personality elected to this mission in the first place. But Lord Mantil knew that this was, in truth, just the whining of a spoilt child, still frustrated that her attempts to have this man killed in India had been voted down.

Lord Mantil knew that her spite was limitless. He had seen too many good people, in her own government and his, fall to her whims and petty acts of vengeance. But that said, this knowledge that her proposal was actually motivated by her seemingly bottomless well of spite wouldn’t necessarily stop him from playing along.

After all, this man she wanted killed was going to die at the Armada’s hands even if Lord Mantil spared him. Why incite the fury of the Princess of Balachai? And so, Lord Mantil bowed, his ‘noble’ roots remembered, and said, “Your majesty, I can see no reason why a lord of Hamprect cannot do this thing for such an honored ally.”

She beamed, stood, and walked over to him, placing her hand flat against his chest, a gesture of blessing from a member of the royal family such as she.