“Treason?” That was Juris Marrakai, quick-eared and quick-witted as always. “Whose? Not Phelan’s, surely?”

“No.” Mikeli caught his imagination by the scruff of the neck, mastered his tongue, and tried to think how to say it. If he could say it at all to these, the friends he’d asked in for a quiet supper. The guilty party was also on his Regency Council.

“Not Phelan’s,” he said, this time more calmly. “Someone else, against us and against him. He was ambushed, but survived. The paladin reached him in time.” To the messenger: “Sir, your name, if you please?”

“Piter, my lord,” the messenger said. “Yeoman-marshal of Blackhedge.”

“Were you a witness to this?” Mikeli tapped the scroll.

“No, my lord. To make haste, it was passed hand to hand, like. But the Marshal, he had it from the other Marshal, who was there, and he told me some. It’s Gird’s grace—”

Mikeli held up his hand and the man fell silent. “Gentlemen,” he said to his friends, “this is grave news, and I must meet with those senior in the realm, your fathers among them. I must go at once—”

Juris Marrakai pushed back from the table. “Sir—Your Highness—if it is treason, you must not go unguarded—”

Mikeli tried for an easy laugh; it came out more as a cough. “I am hardly unguarded. The palace guard—”

“We are your friends,” Juris said. “You can’t leave us out; you can trust us—”

But could he? If a councilor could turn traitor, anyone might. He looked again at the papers—for now he saw there were two. One from Ammerlin, commander of the Royal Guard unit he had sent with Phelan, and one from Phelan himself. He held up his hand, and his guests stayed where they were, silent.

The second note, in Phelan’s clear, even script, said much the same, more briefly and pointedly.

And I beg you, sire, that you take all precautions. A man who will so disobey your express order at the margin of your realm will have designs on your reign. I have seen this too often in Aarenis to doubt it. Forgive my presumption; I speak now as one king to another: you must not fail to destroy this threat, at once. For the sake of both our realms.

As one king to another: treating him as fully adult, as an equal; that respect steadied his pulse. For the sake of both their realms. Long at peace, but for minor incursions along the northern border, Tsaia had trusted in the stability of its neighbors to east and west. If Lyonya fell, if he himself fell, both kingdoms would be in peril. Verrakai’s troops had used magery, Ammerlin said. Used the power of evil priests of an evil deity, the same who had tormented a paladin day after day beneath the city. Despite himself, the prince shivered. For a moment, he allowed the thought Why me? Why in my reign? but then thrust it aside. This was what kings did—dealt with whatever came. Kieri Phelan, thirty years his senior, believed he could do it: he must.