“Traitor!” Tevis snarled at Gabril, his slender blade bare.

“You are startled,” Gabril said, laying his palms slowly on his knives, “and so I will allow you one chance to unsay what you have said.”

Tevis’s eyes darted from Gabril to Kaden then back.

“What is he doing here? Where did he come from? Explain this!”

“I would have to imagine, Tevis,” a new voice drawled, “that the boy came here to do just that. Unfortunately, you waving your skinny little wand in his face seems to be . . . what is the word you educated folk use? Impeding the explanation? Is that it?”

Kaden tilted his head to consider a very fat woman reclining in the shadows. Unlike many of the others, she seemed to have made little effort to disguise her identity. She wore a sumptuous green dress, sparkling rings on every finger, golden bangles around her wrists, and a pendant necklace draped across her enormous bosom. Kaden guessed her to be somewhere in her mid-fifties, but she had the rich, smooth skin and hair of a much younger woman.

From Gabril’s description, she could only be Kegellen, the sole person in the room not descended from nobility. According to the First Speaker, she was the Annurian akaza, the lord of the criminal underworld, absolute master of everything from smuggled goods to imperial bribery to assassination. She hardly looked the part, but then, Kiel hardly looked like an immortal Csestriim historian. The important thing was that she had power—more power, if Kiel and Gabril were right, than any of the assembled nobles, at least inside the city of Annur. She could be a crucial ally, if they could convince her.

Tevis rounded on the woman, rapier still drawn. “And the fact that you’re here, defending him, is an indication of just how low this council has sunk.” He spat onto the dry dirt. “I swear to Intarra, Kegellen, if you lived in Nish, I would have seen you hung a dozen years ago.”

The fat woman just yawned, holding a puffy hand to her mouth. “A good thing, then,” she said as she lowered it, “that I don’t live in Nish.” She turned her attention back to Kaden. “Now, Gabril, my beautiful boy, why don’t you explain to this august assembly where you found our most noble Emperor? I promise Tevis will sit down and listen politely . . .”

“I will do no such—” the man began, but the woman talked right over him.

“. . . or I will have my ministers cut off his shriveled testicles and feed them to him in a broth of brandy and ginger.”