The chief warrior opened his mouth; closed it again. After a moment, he managed to say, “I hear, Brother.” He sounded almost meek. “Not trust pads. Make el-Algreb soft. But no shoulder, no warrior. I tell.”

Then he recovered his confident grin. “Tell Sister no fear. El-Algreb do.”

Unslinging one of his rifles, he went to test himself on a target. Along the way, he shouted a long tumble of words as swift as white water over rapids. King Bifalt prayed that Suti al-Suri was giving his people commands—or at least explanations.

But the King did not stay to watch. He had other duties.

With Land-Captain Erepos, Prince Jaspid had agreed to muster a team of men who had spent seasons or years laboring in the Bay of Lights. Now they needed work—and Jaspid ached for something useful to do.

When King Bifalt reached Belleger’s Fist, he found the Prince and perhaps thirty laborers waiting for him. Some of them were too old: a few were too young. But most were hardy men who had been refused service in the army for one reason or another: a blinded eye in one case, in others the loss of fingers or entire hands. They glowered at the King like men with something to prove.

Among them, Jaspid wore an air of downcast dutifulness. He, too, had something to prove, if only to himself. But his mood lifted as King Bifalt led him and the workmen in a tour of the Fist’s deepest level.

That space was large, as wide and deep as the keep itself. Earlier, the servants had hung a number of lanterns there. In the cold and damp, the light revealed a high, vaulted ceiling supported by massive pillars in an irregular scatter from wall to wall. Belleger’s Fist was not a planned structure. Over the generations, Bifalt’s ancestors had added walls, halls, chambers, battlements, and towers as they saw fit. And to carry the keep’s growing bulk, they had raised more and more pillars. Passing through the foundations was like walking in a stand of mighty oaks.

In addition, the foundations held a few barred cells that passed for a dungeon, unsanitary rooms which Bifalt’s predecessors had seldom used. Bifalt himself had only one prisoner: Postern, Queen Estie’s deposed Chancellor. The King intended to release him tomorrow, or the next day. Even a traitor deserved a chance to flee for his life.

Other chambers were larger. King Bifalt had filled some of them with new rifles wrapped in oilcloth and packed in crates. After supplying the el-Algreb, less than fifty guns remained. No doubt, General Klamath would send soldiers to retrieve them soon.

Leading his brother and the workmen among the pillars, King Bifalt took them to the destination he had in mind.

It was a blank wall.