“Yes, yes, Golden One. But you were merciful, may heaven bless you.”

“I was merciful, it’s true. Instead, what I did was induce each of them to swallow a certain…creature. A tiny beast, at least in its infant form, which had long been thought lost to our modern knowledge. But I found it!” He smirked. “And you did swallow it, didn’t you, Febis?”

“So I was told, Golden One.” The autarch’s cousin was sweating heavily, droplets dangling like glass beads from his chin and nose before splashing to the floor. “It was too small for me to see.”

“Ah, yes, yes.” The autarch laughed again, this time with all the pleasure of a young child. “You see, the creature is so small at first that the naked eye cannot see it. It can be swallowed in a glass of wine without the recipient even knowing.” He turned to Daikonas Vo. “As you received it when you first drank.”

Vo put down his goblet. “Ah,” he said.

“As to what it does, it grows. Not hugely, mind you, but enough that when it lodges at last in the body of its host, it cannot be dislodged no matter what. But that does not matter, because the host will never be aware of it. Unless I wish it to be so.” The autarch nodded. “Yes, let us say for the sake of argument that its host fails to carry out a task I have given him in the specified time, or in some other way incurs my anger…” He turned to burly, sweating Febis. “As, for instance, telling his wife that his master the autarch is mad and will not live long…”

“Did she say that?” shrieked Febis. “The whore! She lies!”

“Whatever the crime,” the autarch went on evenly, “and no matter how far away its perpetrator, when I know of it, things will begin to happen.” He gestured. “Panhyssir, call for the the xol-priest.”

Febis shrieked again, a bleat of despair so shrill it made Pinimmon Vash’s toes curl. “No! You must know I would never say such a thing, Golden One—never, please, no-o-o-o!” Weeping and burbling, Febis lurched toward the stone bed. Two burly Leopard guards stepped forward and restrained him, using no little force. His cries lost their words, became a sobbing moan.

The xol-priest came in a few moments later, a thin, dark, knife-nosed man with the look of the southern deserts about him. He bowed to the autarch and then sat cross-legged on the floor, opening a flat wooden box as though preparing to play a game of shanat. He spread a piece of fabric like a tiny blanket, then took several grayish shapes which might have been lumps of lead out of the box and arranged them with exacting care. When he had finished he looked up at the autarch, who nodded.

The man’s spidery fingers picked up and moved two of the gray shapes and Febis, who had been twitching and sobbing obliviously in the grip of the guards, suddenly went rigid. When they let him go he tumbled to the floor like a stone. Another movement of the shapes on the little carpet and Febis began to writhe and gasp for breath, his arms and legs thrashing like a man about to sink beneath the water and drown. One more and he suddenly vomited up a terrible quantity of blood, then lay still in the spreading red puddle, unseeing eyes wide with horror. The xol-priest boxed up his gray shapes, bowed, and went out.