That night around the fire outside Thero’s tent Micum fried up the fish he and Mika had caught and everyone did their best to eat for the boy’s sake. Thero mostly just dissected his with his fork, Seregil noticed, as if it were a mildly interesting specimen in his workshop.

No one had said anything to Mika about Klia’s predicament; as far as the boy knew Alec was still trying to get her out, but Seregil caught him stealing worried glances at Alec and Thero. It was hard to keep secrets from a child as smart and intuitive as Mika had turned out to be. Perhaps because of that the boy didn’t protest when Thero sent him to bed earlier than usual.

“Can we speak in your tent?” Thero asked.

The four of them went there and Thero once again cast a protective silence and stood in the middle of the tent, facing them. “I think it’s time to talk of very serious things.”

“Alec and I have been doing some thinking of our own,” said Seregil. “Sit down and hear us out.”

Surprised, Thero settled stiffly on the edge of Alec’s narrow cot.

“We talked in the cave after you left,” Alec began. “Sealing Klia in there is a death sentence, but there’s another way that gives her a chance at least. What if we let Rhazat out?”

Thero stared at them in disbelief. “Are you insane?”

“Think about it,” said Seregil. “Things as they are now are untenable, since she can reach out by way of her dra’gorgos. Sealing Klia in solves the problem for a while, until something happens to one of the seals again. If Rhazat gets her hands on someone else to break the seal, then she’s loosed on an unsuspecting world and Klia’s death will have been in vain.”

“But we can defeat her,” said Alec. “We killed Irtuk Beshar, and we can kill this one.”

Thero shook his head. “Can you imagine how powerful she must be for Nhandi and her lover to have gone to such extreme measures to contain her?”

“But when we were in Zikara you said yourself that she will have gotten weaker after so many centuries with no living people to feed on,” Alec reminded him.

“I said it was a possibility. And she’s been feeding again.”

“All the more reason to strike now, before she gets any stronger,” urged Seregil. “She’s only had a few months of a soldier here and a peasant there. That can’t have made up for centuries of starvation yet.”

“And how do you propose we release her without wreaking havoc on the world?” asked Thero.

“We’d have to catch her by surprise,” said Micum, stroking his moustache thoughtfully. “Which means we’ll have to figure out where she’ll be when Klia breaks the seal.”