If Crawl’s attitude could persuade arrogant sorcerers to risk their lives. If the idea of training did not offend their tender sensibilities. If any of them wanted to increase their mastery. Or if they simply loved Belleger.

Hells! Bifalt did not trust those Magisters. But he needed them. He could not challenge the library’s enemy without them.

As the bustle and busyness on the streets increased, King Bifalt walked on. Around him, his bodyguards kept watch without calling attention to themselves: a skill Elgart had taken pains to teach them. While they filtered through the crowd, they helped their King look for his next meeting.

For a time, he did not see the men he had asked to join him. However, he had not told them where he would be. And he had never expected the men he relied on to attend him instantly. They had other duties. Instead of growing impatient, he resumed studying the details of the Open Hand.

At the same time, he wandered among his memories of Elgart and Estie and treachery. Directly or indirectly, the priests of the Great God Rile had sought to destroy his stores of bullets and gunpowder. His own brother had conspired to break the alliance between Belleger and Amika by killing Amika’s Queen. And his wife, loved and unacknowledged, was gone. Belleger needed its King to be a rock, as sure and unyielding as stone; and he had striven to be that man. But now he could feel his failure crowding close around him. The enemy was coming, and the defenses King Bifalt had prepared would not suffice. Such things burned like acid in his guts.

He had left Women behind, and was wandering the lanes of a quarter packed almost wall to wall with alehouses and inns, when the men he had summoned appeared. Ahead of him, Prince Jaspid stamped out onto the porch of an alehouse, dragging a smaller figure behind him.

Jaspid was using his left arm. The rest of his injuries had healed, but his right elbow had not recovered its full strength yet. He was about King Bifalt’s height, and less obviously muscular than his brother. Nevertheless he could have beaten any six Bifalts in direct combat. He was the best fighter in Belleger, undefeated until the devotee of Spirit Lylin had almost killed him. And he was handsome, widely considered the most handsome man in the city; certainly better looking than his brother the King. Perhaps that was an effect of his gift for uncomplicated enjoyment, even delight. Even in his mock battles against five or ten of General Klamath’s soldiers at once, he radiated something like happiness. Unlike Bifalt, Jaspid felt no bitterness toward Lylin. If anything, the Prince had fallen in love with her—or more deeply in love.

He was not happy now. His unguarded features were tight with indignation and disappointment. The man he was dragging out of the alehouse was his younger brother, the third of King Abbator’s sons: Prince Lome.