“So the Khalidoran army is at least four days away. What are you planning to do about the festival tonight?”

“I’m not going to celebrate Midsummer’s on the day after my son’s death.”

The lord general had a sinking feeling. “My king, I think perhaps you should.”

“I will not host a party for my boy’s murderers.” The king’s eyes flashed, and he looked less like a petulant child and more like a king than Agon had ever seen. “I have to do something!” the king said. “Everyone will think . . .” He went on, but Agon ignored him.

Everyone will think. That was the key. What will everyone think?

The prince was dead, killed in a shameful way either by the king’s mistress or by a wetboy. The beloved Gyres were dead or imprisoned. Agon suspected now that an assassin had probably made his way into Screaming Winds and killed Regnus as well. It wouldn’t make sense to leave him alive. Not when someone was going to such pains to set plans in motion.

Everyone will think that the king ordered his own son killed in a jealous rage, and that to get back at his unfaithful mistress he framed her.

With the right rumors, everyone’s bewilderment over why the Gyres had been murdered could be turned, too. People would connect all the murders, but how?

The Gyres were next in line for the throne after the Gunders, though the family had never challenged the king. The king, weak and jealous, could be portrayed as paranoid all too easily. And the Gyres were far more respected than the Gunders. Lord Gyre’s faithful service would be seen as being rewarded with treachery and murder.

Logan—the new Lord Gyre—had been seized by the king, and the king’s natural inclination would be to keep him in prison. But Logan was known to be absolutely moral, without ambitions. For the gods’ sakes, he was betrothed to a lowly Drake!

So if the king were to die, who would succeed him?

The vastly popular Logan Gyre would be in prison, where he could easily be killed. The king’s son was dead. His eldest daughter was fifteen, the others even younger, too young to hold the throne in a nation at war. His wife Nalia might try to take the throne, but the king had feared her and marginalized her as much as he could, and she seemed content to stay out of politics. The Jadwins were finished after their part in the scandal. That left the kingdom’s two other duchies. Either Duke Graesin or Duke Wesseros, the queen’s father, could make a grab for power. But the queen’s brother, Havrin, was out of the country, so he seemed an unlikely usurper. Duke Graesin was feeble. Any of a dozen lesser families might try for the throne.