‘We live in the real world, Your Grace,’ Abriel replied. ‘Annias was the one who chose the rules of this game, so I think we’re sort of obliged to play his way – unless you happen to have another set of dice.’

‘Besides,’ Talen added, ‘it would give us at least one more vote.’

‘Oh?’ Dolmant said.

‘Patriarch Bergsten’s with Wargun’s army. We could probably persuade him to vote right, couldn’t we?’

‘Why don’t we put our heads together and compose a letter to the King of Thalesia, Dolmant?’ Emban grinned.

‘I was just about to suggest the same thing myself, Emban. And perhaps we should forget to tell anyone else about it. Conflicting orders from some other Patriarch would just confuse Wargun, and he’s confused enough as it is.’

Chapter 8

Sparhawk was tired, but he slept poorly. His mind seemed filled with numbers. Sixty-nine changed into seventy-one, then eighty, then back, and the nine and seventeen – no fifteen – hovered ominously in the background. He started to lose track of what the numbers meant, and they became just numbers that arrayed themselves threateningly before him, armoured and with weapons in their hands, and, as it almost always did when he slept now, the shadowy thing haunted his dreams. It did not do anything, but merely watched – and waited.

Sparhawk did not really have the temperament for politics. Too many things reduced themselves in his mind to battlefield imagery, and superior strength and training and individual bravery counted for much on a battlefield. In politics, however, the feeblest were equal to the strongest. A palsied hand shakingly raised to vote had a power equal to that of a mailed fist. His instincts told him that the solution to the problem rested in his scabbard, but the killing of the Primate of Cimmura would tear the west apart at a time when Otha stood armed and poised on the eastern marches.

He finally gave up and slipped quietly from his bed to avoid waking the sleeping Kalten. He put on his soft monk’s robe and padded through the night-dark halls of the house to Dolmant’s study.

Sephrenia was there, as he had about half-expected her to be. She sat before a small fire that crackled on the hearth, her teacup in her hands and her eyes a mystery. ‘You’re troubled, aren’t you, dear one?’ she said to him quietly.

‘Aren’t you?’ He sighed and sank into a chair, extending his long legs out in front of him. ‘We’re not suited for this, little mother,’ he said moodily, ‘neither one of us. I’m not arranged in such a way that I can palpitate with delight over the change of a number, and I’m not positive that you even understand what numbers mean. Since Styrics don’t read, can any of you actually understand any number larger than the sum of your fingers and toes?’