“Not now. Not here,” he said. “We both need time to think it over. And I’ll want witnesses. Varthlokkur and the Unborn should do.”

She pretended amusement. “You don’t trust anybody, do you?”

“Not now. Not anymore. Why should I? Your scheme is only one of my problems. I mean to walk light and careful till it’s all under control.”

She laughed a genuine laugh. Her confidence began to return. He responded with a smile. She said, “You should have been born an easterner. You would’ve made a great Tervola.”

“Maybe. My mother was a witch.”

She had heard it before, of course, but still she was startled. Was that it? Was he doing a little magical snooping? Perhaps with Varthlokkur showing the way? She started to ask, was interrupted by a servant who said, “My Lady, there’s a gentleman here looking for His Majesty.”

Mist looked at Bragi. He shrugged. “Send him in,” she said.

The King’s adjutant bustled in. “Sire, I’ve been looking all over. We need you back at the palace.” The man looked grim.

“What is it, Dahl?”

“An emergency, sire. Please?” The young officer gave Mist a glance so melodramatic she was tempted to laugh.

“We’ll talk later,” the King told her. His look said as much as all of his conversation.

She would have to walk very carefully for a while. Matters had reached a stage too delicate for risk-taking. All her fault, of course. She had gotten too eager, had begun looking too far ahead, to deal properly with all the little things cropping up now. “Overconfidence, get thee behind me,” she murmured.

The hour was late. The King and Varthlokkur were seated on steps in a dark and otherwise deserted courtyard. Neither man was wholly awake or alert. Ostensibly, they had come out to watch a spectacular meteor shower. “There goes a big one,” the wizard said. “All the way down past the wall.”

“I saw one one time that broke up in about twenty pieces. Really something. There’s another one.” After a few seconds, “I saw Mist. She was too evasive. Made me more suspicious.”

“So?”

“So she’s into some scheme to get her throne back. In a lot deeper than she’ll admit.”

“And?”

“Damnit, you’re not contributing a whole lot here.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Give me a guess. Am I wrong? Is she really involved in something?”

“Hell, you know the answer to that. Why ask? Of course she is. Once you attain a throne, you don’t give it up without a fight. Consider her viewpoint. There isn’t much here for her since Valther was killed. Her children, of course, but she isn’t the maternal sort. She once had something big in Shinsan. Now she wants it back.”

“She’s vulnerable, though. Through the children.”

“Aren’t we all.” The wizard turned bitter. “They’re hostages to fortune.”

“Can she make the comeback?”

“I wouldn’t know. I don’t know what’s happening in Shinsan’s politics. And I don’t want to know. I just want to ignore them, and have them ignore me.”