When Crawl and Wheal were out of hearing, King Bifalt gestured his bodyguards closer. “Be wary of that Magister.” His memories made his voice more hoarse than usual. “Have him watched when you cannot do so yourselves. You know what I fear. His eagerness troubles me.” When Bifalt spoke to his Magisters in person, his commands were usually received with sighs or rolled eyes; suppressed impatience. “If he is true to his word, he may be the saving of many lives. If he is not—”

“Then refuse him, Majesty,” suggested Jeck. More than his comrades, he occasionally presumed to advise his King. “You do not need him. You know his proposal. Some other Magister can take his place.”

Without hesitation, Spliner promised gruffly, “If he is false, Majesty, he will be stopped.”

“Do so,” ordered King Bifalt. “But be sure of him first. If he is true, his excitement may prod other Magisters to match him.”

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.