“He tells me what he thinks after I admit that I can’t figure out where they are.”

“The people you trusted?”

“Kavelin has collapsed. People have scattered. Some are dead. The kingdom was stable when I left. But Bragi did what he did and everything came apart.”

Lord Ssu-ma held his tongue. He waited.

“The children disappeared early.”

Shih-ka’i wondered how near the wind of fact she was sailing. Certainly she was not being one hundred percent forthright—though she herself might head up the file of those she was deceiving.

“Actually, I do have an idea where they are, but I don’t know. I’m not even sure that they’re still alive. If they’re where I fear, there’ll be no way to reach them.”

Shih-ka’i needed no more clues. “You’re afraid the Empire Destroyer has them.”

“Yes.” She said no more. He knew that Varthlokkur’s wife was the sister of the man she had been unable to deny.

“Would he try to use them to make you to do something against the interests of the Empire?”

“The fear lurks behind my concern for their welfare. He slipped into a bizarre mental state just before Kavelin began to fall apart.”

Frankly puzzled, Shih-ka’i again asked, “And I fit how?”

“You are a marvelous sounding board.”

“Really?” Startled.

“Absolutely. Thanks to you, I now know exactly what I’ll do.”

Shih-ka’i was too lost to say anything, good, bad, indifferent, or wisecrack. “Pleased to be of service. There was something else?”

She frowned, then admitted, “Yes. About the prisoner, Ragnarson. We need to get some use out of him.”

That or kill him, in Shih-ka’i’s estimation. But he did face the problem of owing Ragnarson a life.

“Be aware that my peasant background marked me with a tendency to rigid views of right, wrong, and the nature of one’s honorable obligations.”

The Empress looked him directly in the eye. “I know he saved your life at Lioantung. You repaid him after you defeated him.”

“I’m not comfortably sure of that. There are no definitive rules of obligation. Was mine discharged when I salvaged him and had the healers put him back together? He saved me by brushing a ballista shaft aside—the consequences of which stretch out into time unknown. So must I be his protector forever? How deep is my obligation to others who have done me kindnesses?”

The Empress did not respond right away. Her upbringing had encouraged more flexible attitudes. Then she had spent years amongst westerners whose ideals about honor far surpassed what even Shih-ka’i considered rational.

“Are you suffering some crisis of conscience? It seems you’re thinking about more than our guest in the Karkha Tower.”

“I cannot hide from your matchless eye, Empress. A crisis of conscience indeed, not concerning the erstwhile king of Kavelin. If you insist that I have discharged my obligation to Ragnarson I’ll defer to your judgment. My present moral conundrum is more perilous. For me.”

Silent seconds stretched. The Empress stared but showed no abiding interest in his prattle.