“I cannot imagine how this could have surprised anyone,” Nofret said aloud, her head up, as she surveyed the murmuring crowd. Her dark eyes shone with some of the anger and hatred she must have been holding back all this time after Kaleth’s twin brother, Prince Toreth, was murdered. “Especially not in the court. The Great Kings set their seal upon their own death sentence the moment they allowed those men to be adopted into the Royal Houses and declared twins. Surely none of you actually believed they would wait for little Che-at-al and Weset-re to grow up and wed them to take the Twin Thrones and become the Kings? It was an excuse. And anyone who does not believe that the death of the Kings was anything other than murder is a fool!”

“I do not think you will find anyone in Alta to naysay you, Gracious Lady,” the messenger rasped. “The Magi now rule in Alta virtually unchallenged and alone; the Great Ladies are seldom seen, and never on the Twin Thrones. When they are seen, they are silent, and move like those who walk when sleeping. That is the sum of what I came to tell you.” He paused a moment, then added in a very subdued voice, “May I remain? I do not wish to return to a place so altered and so near to madness.”

It was Ari who got to his feet and said, in a voice pitched to carry beyond the room, “Never will we turn anyone away from Sanctuary, be he Altan or Tian, or half-crazed Akkadian—” the latter with a glance at Heklatis, who kept his indignation down to a poisonous glance.

Aket-ten nudged Kiron in the ribs. “That’s important!” she whispered.

“That it was Ari who said that to an Altan?” He nodded. He was starting to see how this business of being in charge of people worked. Well, more people than just a single wing of young Jousters. There were things you had to do, ways you had to deal with people. Ari might say he was unprepared for all of this, but really, he was much better at it than he thought, and he was improving with every day.

The messenger was taken off, and Ari and the rest of the council settled in to discuss what they’d learned. It was fundamentally obvious, though, that there wasn’t much that Kiron could contribute, so he excused himself, and Aket-ten followed him out.

“Are you as depressed as I am?” she asked him, in a voice full of resignation.

“Probably.” He sighed, then felt his spirits lift, just a little, when she slipped her hand into his. “I suppose I’ve been expecting it, but still. . . . I keep hoping someone back in Alta will manage to poison all those scorpions, or that they’ll turn on each other and stab each other to death—”