The comment was made lightly, but for a moment afterward nobody spoke. Sinper looked sourly at his son, but then seemed to accept that a topic of some import had been reached, even if awkwardly so. He cleared his throat. “We are not here for idle chatter. You know that. Nor will we lower ourselves with base jokes about the queen.” He slanted his eyes at Ioma, who looked away, contrite as a boy, for a few seconds at least. “No, I will not trivialize her with such things. In truth she is not trivial, is she? In truth she is a woman of power.”

Kelis nodded. That fact hardly needed his confirmation.

“Sangae has told me that you have no fondness for her policies. You see her as clearly as we do, and you know—as we do—that she has betrayed Talay. She has betrayed all the people who followed Aliver and defeated Hanish Mein. You agree with all this, don’t you?”

This time Kelis did not nod, but neither did he disagree. The old man took this as affirmation. “Why, then, do you serve her?”

“I am at peace with my heart. I don’t determine what the queen does. I can only act—or not—as Kelis. That is what—”

“So you claim that you will only ever do noble work for her?” Sinper asked, the slow cadence of his voice becoming faster, sharper. “What of when she asks something else of you? How do you refuse? How do you say no, when you have so long been saying yes, yes, yes?”

“What would you have me do?” Kelis snapped, suddenly angry at the old man. Who was he to lecture, and why did Sangae allow it? “This is a world ruled by lions. To the greatest lion goes the spoils, goes everything that it demands. Right now, Corinn Akaran is that lion.”

“Lioness,” Sinper corrected.

“Do you never doubt her?” Ioma asked.

“I live with doubt every day.”

“I as well,” Sangae said softly, drawing Kelis’s eyes up to his. “Do not think me a traitor to Aliver because I doubt his sister. The prince was a son to me. You know that. I raised him at his father’s request and I loved him as if his blood were mine.”

Sinper cut in. “But we do not speak of Aliver. Not yet. Corinn is the one who concerns me. She has broken our noble families and tries to poison the minds of our children against their parents. She didn’t stop the league from taking more of our children away. Her crimes or oversights are too numerous to name. She gave us water, yes, but that is not enough, and it was late in coming. My worries about her have become as a tumor lodged in my breast. Any day it might grow to kill me. I would cut it out, but I don’t have a knife sharp enough. At least, I did not have such a knife …” He dropped his voice at the end of the sentence, leaving it frayed and incomplete.