“So it’s true, then. Is there time to stop it? Where is King Olin now?”

Ludis looked up, actually surprised. “By Hiliometes’ beard, why should we stop it? What can a milk-skinned northerner like that mean to you?”

“He is a king! Not to mention that he is an honorable man. Pity I cannot say the same of Hierosol’s ruler.”

Ludis stared at him malevolently. Count Perivos was suddenly aware of the fact that he was surrounded by troops who owed him no personal loyalty, but who received their pay in the lord protector’s name each month. “You climb far out on a thin branch,” Ludis said at last.

“But what do you gain by this? Why give an innocent man over to the cruelties of that…that monster, Sulepis?”

Ludis laughed harshly but turned away, as though still not entirely comfortable meeting the count’s eyes. “Who wears the crown here, Akuanis? Your reputation as a siege engineer gives you no right to question me. I protect what I must protect…”

He broke off at the sound of shouting. A soldier wearing the crest of the Esterian Home Guard shoved his way through Drakava’s Golden Enomote and threw himself down on the mosaic in front of the throne. “Lord Protector,” he cried, “the Xixies have come over the wall below Fountain Gate! We’re holding them in the temple yard at the foot of Citadel Hill, but we have only a small troop and won’t be able to hold them long. Lord Kelofas begs you to send help.”

Akuanis strode forward, all thoughts of Olin Eddon blasted from his mind. The temple yard was only a couple of miles from the townhouse where his wife and children waited in what they thought was safety—they and thousands more innocents would be overrun in a matter of hours if the Fountain Gate defenses collapsed. “Give me some of these men,” he demanded. “Let me go and hit Sulepis in the teeth now—this moment! You have a thousand around this building, but they will be like straws in a gale if we don’t keep the autarch out.”

For a moment Drakava hesitated, but then an odd look stole across his face. “Yes, take them,” he said. “Leave me two pentecounts to defend the treasury and the throne.”

After all the harsh words, Count Perivos was astonished that the lord protector would give up his troops so easily, but he had no time to wonder. He dropped to his knee and touched his head to the floor—bowing not to Ludis, he told himself, but to all the Hierosoline kings and queens, emperors and empresses, who had sat on the great green throne before him—then rose and hurried off to the taksiarch of the men encamped around the treasury. He could only pray that the engineers and workers he had left behind in the Empress Gardens had almost finished the wall, or holding the wall at Fountain Gate would mean nothing.

“Make us proud, Count Perivos,” shouted Ludis as Akuanis and the taksiarch got the men into fast-march formation. The lord protector almost sounded as though he were enjoying some theatrical spectacle. “All of Hierosol will be watching you!”