“I couldn’t say, Princess. But I do have a feeling we’re close to the moment of decision. There’s a new tension in the blanklands there.”

Mist stared at the unmarked portion of the map, closing out all else. And, yes, Lord Ch’ien was right. She could feel a great something flexing its muscles there, tensing, like a serpent coiling to strike. So. It wouldn’t be much longer.

“Princess?”

“Lord?”

“The moment approaches. And still we haven’t decided what to do with these people once they’ve served their purpose.”

This was a discussion she had hoped to avoid, and yet had known to be inevitable. “I don’t follow you.”

“You know who they are and what they’ve done, Princess. This petty King. This sorcerer Varthlokkur. These carrion-eaters who orbit them.” He indicated several of the King’s men. “We have to decide what to do if we’re successful.”

Mist sighed. “They’ve dealt honorably with us, Lord Ch’ien.” She couldn’t tell him that they were her friends. A princess of the Dread Empire did not have friends. Not foreign friends.

“For their own ends. They hope to weaken the empire, to delay the inevitable day of reckoning. The King… He would destroy us if he could.”

She could not deny that. She didn’t try.

“Who knows what treacheries they have afoot, planned for the moment of our success.”

Serpents wrestled in her bowels. She’d been too long in the west. She’d become infected with its softnesses. Damn that villain Valther! If he hadn’t insinuated himself through the walls surrounding her emotions….

“You’re in charge, Lord Ch’ien. Do whatever seems appropriate.” She fixed her gaze on the map and tried not to think about what she had done. Moral abdication was as great a sin as any. After a time she left her seat and went downstairs, hoping a meal would ease her tension and soften her self-disgust.

One of the King’s men dragged Mist out of her kitchen. He gobbled incoherently and pointed. Baffled, she allowed herself to be pulled to a window.

The east was afire again. Lord Kuo had begun moving. And she had been so tired, so dispirited, so self-involved that she hadn’t felt it start. “Thank you.” She hurried upstairs.

The air had changed. The old stink of fear and tension was gone. Now a different tenseness filled the place, the tension that develops just before the battle. The eager, wary tension of soldiers about to strike. Everyone was moving faster now, more crisply, with a bounce in their steps. They had forgotten their weariness. They paused when she entered the room. She waved them back to work.

“Reports are beginning to come in already,” Lord Ch’ien said. “The indications are favorable.”

“Good.” She turned to one of Bragi’s men. “Will you get the King?” She turned back. “What do we know?”

Some time later she glanced up from her ongoing conference and discovered that Varthlokkur had arrived. The wizard was surveying the room from a high seat against the north wall. He looked rested and alert. He would miss nothing.