“Come with me,” she said to the others. She stalked into the guardhouse with Amon and the rest trailing her.

She passed through the duty room and into the sergeants’ office. Mawker shoved back his chair and staggered to his feet, coming to attention, his fist over his heart.

“Your Majesty! I never…This is a…Nobody said—”

“Give us a few minutes, please, Sergeant Mawker,” Raisa said, tipping her head toward the door. He hurried out, leaving her alone with Amon, Averill, and Speaker Jemson.

“That’s it,” Raisa said, sitting on the edge of Mawker’s desk. “Klemath is out as soon as we can find a replacement.” She snapped her fingers and scowled at them. “I don’t trust him, not at all, and I will not be patronized.”

“If you replace him, daughter, you will need to proceed very carefully and very quietly,” Averill said. “He wields considerable power in the army.”

“Have you looked through the duty sheets on the candidates I sent you?” Amon asked.

“Some. Not all,” Raisa admitted. There was so much to do. “I’d like to have a Wien House graduate with some actual army experience. Most you’ve sent me are from the Guard.”

Amon shrugged. “Aye. Those are the people I know best,” he said. “The ones I trust.”

“I know,” Raisa said. “But it’s going to be hard for someone like that to be accepted to command the army.”

“What about Char Dunedain?” Amon said. “What did you think of her?”

Raisa frowned. “I don’t really remember. Tell me about her.”

“She’s from Chalk Cliffs originally,” Amon said. “She spent a couple of years at Wien House, then captained a salvo of nativeborns who went as mercenaries to Arden. She fought down there for five years, and the fact that she survived that long is impressive. She came back up here and went into the Highlander Army under Fletcher as a colonel. But after Klemath took over, there was friction between them. She finally went to my da and asked about transferring into the Guard. It meant a major demotion, but she did it anyway.”

“Sounds like the right experience,” Raisa said. “How long has she been in the Guard?”

“Six years,” Amon said. “My da was really impressed with her, and he’s not—wasn’t—easy to impress. In fact, she was the one he sent to the West Wall to replace Gillen. He trusted her to clean things up and she’s done a good job.”

Raisa recalled what Dimitri Fenwaeter had said on her coronation day. The new commander at the West Wall is a woman, but she is surprisingly fair and easy to deal with.

“Can you arrange for me to meet her?” Raisa asked. “How long would it take for her to come here from the West Wall? And could we do it without arousing any suspicions?”