“Then why do you doubt the story?”

“I doubt an exalted prince would take such a chance.”

“Do you not? I think it might even change such a prince’s life, their view, and cause them to decide to mount a coup and murder their uncle and place themselves on the throne. Prince Gevulin would do it in a heartbeat if he thought it would gain him the throne.”

Ipis hissed. “Xilsi! That’s treason to speak so.”

Xilsi snorted. “I can tell you’ve never set foot in the inner palace, or even talked to anyone who has. Besides me, I mean. Never cross a prince or a prince’s mother. Or at least, not if they have any power. If they don’t have any power within the palace, then you can do as you please to them, and the sooner the better, in case they decide to support someone else’s bid for power.”

“Prince Gevulin wants power?” Elen asked.

Xilsi gave Elen a cold look. “Haven’t you figured him out yet? He pays an unusual amount of attention to you. Since you’re not his bed type, there’s something else going on.”

This was not the direction Elen wanted the conversation to go, so she affected a puzzled air. “Xilsi, I don’t know anything about the palace. Except what I see in the plays and read in wineshop poems.”

Xilsi chuckled. “That’s fair enough. Let me explain about Gevulin. Although if I hear any of you repeating this to someone else, I’ll write a wineshop poem about you, and you’ll be bitterly sorry. As for the prince, there’s always been something else going on with him. In all the palace school competitions, he hated it if he didn’t come in first, but he hated it even worse if he thought people were letting him win. Lots of people in the palace thought the Magnolia Emperor—may she live long and in peace—was trying to get rid of him when she sent him on a fact-finding tour of the borders of the empire, figuring he would get killed.”

Kem nodded wisely. “Joef says—”

“Hey!” Xilsi cut him off. “I’m talking, not your friend Joef, who has never set foot in the palace either. Anyway, who knows? That was about four years ago. After Gevulin returned, the Magnolia Emperor appointed him as all-seeing eye. Which happened at the same time she appointed Prince Astaylin as General of the Imperial Order of Engineers. And raised them both to become Princes of the Third Estate.”