He felt his patience ebb as he waited in vain for her to continue. “Am I expected to guess at what it is, or will you save me the trouble and simply tell me?”

She looked away from him, out over the shipyard to where the Dechtera sat dark and menacing in the moonlight, to where the shipyard workers continued to repair her. She was looking in that direction, but he had the feeling that she was looking at something else altogether, something hidden from him. He was struck again by the distant feel of her, the sense that she was not entirely where she appeared to be.

“You are not averse to killing, are you, Prime Minister?” she asked suddenly.

It was the way she asked the question that made him think she intended to trap him with his own words. He had developed a sixth sense about the use of such tactics over his years, and it had saved him from disaster more than once.

“Are you afraid to answer me?” she pressed.

“You know I am not afraid of killing.”

“I know you believe that the ends justify the means. I know you believe that accomplishing your goals entitles you to take whatever steps are required. I know that you are the architect of the deaths of your predecessor and those who would have succeeded him. I know that you have participated in blood games of all sorts.”

“Then speak your mind and quit playing games with me. My patience with you grows thin.”

Her bloodless face lifted out of the hood’s concealing shadows so that her dark eyes locked on his. “Listen closely, then. You waste needless time killing soldiers on the Prekkendorran. Killing soldiers means nothing to those who send them forth. If you want to break the spirit of the Elves, if you want to put an end to their resistance, you have to kill those whom the soldiers protect. You have to kill their women and children. You have to kill their old people and their infirm. You have to take the war from the battlefield into their homes.”

Her voice was a hiss. “You have the weapon to do so, Prime Minister. Fly the Dechtera to Arborlon and use it. Burn their precious city and its people to ashes. Make them afraid to think of doing anything other than begging for your mercy.”

She said it dispassionately, but her words transfixed him. He went hot and cold in turn, cowed at first by the prospect of such savagery, then excited by it. He was already perceived to be a monster, so there was little reason to pretend he wasn’t. He did not care in the slightest about preserving the lives of those who opposed him, and the Elves had been a thorn in his side for twenty years. Why not cull their numbers sufficiently that they would not threaten again in his lifetime?