But despite the blood and the misery, the captain sounded relieved, and so, ten minutes later, was Ser Gerald Random now in full possession of the palace. He looked down at the archbishop’s rapidly cooling corpse.

“Sic transit gloria mundi,” he said. “Take the others, and keep them under guard.”

Less than fifty paces away, Jules Kronmir was climbing out of the moat in broad daylight, the least elegant part of his plan. But he made it over the low retaining wall into a cart where Lucca, his best blade, waited with dry clothes in a tinker’s donkey cart.

“What now, boss?” Lucca asked.

Kronmir had on a dry shirt and hose. He leaned back against the wall. “I think we’d like a ship,” he said. “To Venike. I am only guessing. But employers like it when you plan ahead.”

Lucca looked around as if a horde of boglins had just appeared. “Venike? Is it that bad? Are they on to us?”

Kronmir laughed. “There is no longer a ‘they’ to be ‘on to us,’” he said. “Our side is in possession. And all the dirty work is done.” He took the flask of wine that Lucca offered him, drank some and smiled his approval.

“Possibly my best work,” he added.

Chapter Fourteen

Sixty leagues south of South Ford, moving the so-called royal army had become an exercise in metaphysical logistics. They’d had two days of solid rain and everyone was soaked to the skin, ill-tempered and bug-bitten.

The sky was always full of an enemy and, according to the messages received, that enemy carried a pestilence deadly to every horse in the army. The captain, as the most powerful magister present, found himself awake all day and all night, and had three skirmishes with them before the cunning predators retired to higher altitudes.

But the captain’s need for sleep—his own weakness—and a need to rid himself of the omnipresent enemy made for the delay. He ordered the column to halt in an easily defended wagon camp just west of the gorge while he waited for the Queen’s party, a day behind, to catch up.