Falk’s preliminary interrogation of Davydd Verdsmitt was unsatisfactory. The playwright didn’t seem to know what kind of trouble he was in, and simply sat there, a slight smile on his face, not responding to any of Falk’s questions. “Your celebrity status in the Commons will not protect you against charges of sedition,” Falk warned him at last.
“I do not expect it to,” Verdsmitt said. “But it does protect me against you doing what you would really like to do, which is torture me into confessing… something. Probably being behind the assassination attempt on Prince Karl.”
“Does it?” Falk growled.
“Not indefinitely,” Verdsmitt said. “I’m not naive enough to suppose that. But even you, Lord Falk, must hesitate before flouting the law so publicly as to torture a political prisoner-a very popular prisoner, if I do say so myself-who was arrested in full view of so many witnesses. I have many fans among the Mageborn-even among your fellow MageLords-as well as among the Commoners.” Verdsmitt shrugged. “If I had been writing the scene, I would have had the seditious playwright arrested in secret after the play had ended, and spirited away somewhere while a fictitious story of his being suddenly taken ill was spread about. No one would have believed it, but it would have provided cover. But you…” He shook his head. “Who writes your material, Lord Falk?”
And the trouble was, Falk thought as he ordered Verdsmitt returned to his cell, that Verdsmitt was absolutely right. He had been so eager to seize the troublesome playwright, to finally find a chink in the too-smooth armor of the Common Cause, that he had thought the public arrest would actually serve his ends… when in fact, as Verdsmitt had just pointed out, quite the opposite was true. The play had been provocative, certainly; yet he knew well enough there were those within the Twelve, and even within the Council, who would argue he had overreacted, seeing an opportunity to perhaps bring him down a notch.
Nor could he very well present his evidence that Verdsmitt had been involved in the assassination attempt against the Prince, when that evidence consisted of the word of Mother Northwind, and had been taken from the brain of a corpse.
Well. Verdsmitt himself would soon give him all the evidence he needed, he was certain. He would bring Mother Northwind to the Palace. He could not openly or legally use her special abilities to interrogate prisoners, but once she had the contents of Verdsmitt’s mind, she could surely point Falk to those who could be… convinced… to provide more conventional evidence against the playwright.
I’ll bring her back here when I bring Brenna, he thought. In the meantime, Verdsmitt can rot in that cell.
He went to his own bed after that, confident that the recent upheavals still posed no threat to the Plan. He had a couple of other matters to deal with that could not wait, but in two days he would return to his manor, collect Brenna, collect Mother Northwind, collect the newly compliant Anton, see this mysterious airship in action… if it worked… and then return to New Cabora, where his Plan would unfold as he had always anticipated it would, with smooth, devastating efficiency.
In six weeks, two months at the outside, he would be King. And once his power over the Kingdom had been secured by his hidden allies and Unbound followers, he would lower the Barrier and the MageLords would emerge from their Hidden Kingdom and take back their world.
All was well; soon, all would be even better.
Lord Falk settled into his bed and fell instantly and dreamlessly asleep, as close to carefree as he had ever been.
But that same night in Lord Falk’s manor house, Anton’s sleep was interrupted, once again, by Brenna at the foot of his bed.
He had been horribly ill for the rest of the day after his meeting with Mother Northwind, and the day after that, his head in agony, nausea gripping him. Shortly after returning to his room he’d thrown up every bit of the wonderful breakfast he’d had with Brenna. Healer Eddigar, summoned by Gannick, examined him, frowning, and declared he had obviously suffered a head injury in the crash that he had somehow missed on his first examination. He put Anton back into a magical sleep and watched him closely through the first night, then insisted he stay in his room resting for all of the next day, allowing him to sit and look out the window but not to go down the stairs. Brenna had visited him, looking pale and worried, which touched him, but Eddigar limited the time she spent with him.
By the end of that day he was feeling much better, and ate something approaching a full meal for supper. Despite having rested all day, he found himself exhausted again shortly afterward and went to bed early, falling asleep at once… only to be awoken by Brenna.
Not that he knew it was Brenna at first. All he knew was that he had been dragged out of deep, dreamless sleep by… something. At first all he could see was a flickering candle flame. It took another moment or two for his fogged brain to recognize the face of the girl holding the candle.
Brenna wore a long white dressing gown, cinched at the waist. “Anton,” she said in little more than a whisper, and he realized it must have been her speaking his name that had wakened him in the first place.
He raised himself on his elbows. “What… what is it?” he said.
“I need to talk to you.”
“In the middle of the night?” No light showed through the window. “What time is it?”
“Three hours past midnight.”
Anton dropped his head back on his pillow. “It couldn’t wait until morning?”
“No. And keep your voice down.” Brenna came and sat on the edge of the bed. He was suddenly acutely aware of her nearness, and of the fact he was nude beneath the blankets. “The guards are still outside.”
“All right, all right.” He stayed lying down, looking up at her as she turned her upper body toward him to look down at his face. “What is it?”
“You’re in terrible danger,” Brenna said. “You have to escape the manor within the next couple of days, before Lord Falk returns.” She held his gaze steady, her eyes wide black pools in the dim light. “And I have to come with you.”
“Danger?” Anton was certain that Lord Falk wouldn’t hesitate to harm him if he thought it would help the MageLord kingdom. But… “But I answered Lord Falk’s questions truthfully. Why would he harm me?”
“He already has,” Brenna said. “Mother Northwind-”
“The Healer?”
“She’s more than a Healer,” Brenna said. “She’s a powerful mage in her own right-soft magic, different than what Lord Falk uses. And she
… raped you.”
Anton blinked. “Um… I think I would have noticed.”
“Not that kind of rape,” Brenna said impatiently. “Mind-rape. She went inside your mind and stole your thoughts, stole them so she could give them to Falk. Things you didn’t think to tell Falk, or things he didn’t think to ask about, things that she had no business knowing, things no one should know about another person… she took them all. That’s why you’ve been sick. It’s the aftereffect.”
“I-” I don’t believe it, he intended to stay, but remembering how he had felt when Mother Northwind had touched him, and the strange way that horrible headache had come on afterward, he let the protest die unspoken. “How do you know?” he said instead.
“I heard them talking about it,” Brenna said. She looked down at her feet, cheeks flushed. “Maybe this will prove it to you. She mentioned a certain maid at an inn, twice your age, she said, who.. .” She left the sentence unfinished, and it was Anton’s turn to blush
… but hard on the heels of embarrassment-bad enough Mother Northwind had learned about that very-brief-but-messy encounter, but for Brenna to know, too!-came an emotion Anton had once known intimately when he lived on the streets of Hexton Down but had had little use for since the Professor took him under his wing: rage. Pure, unadulterated anger.
He sat up, the blankets falling to his waist. Brenna glanced at him, then averted her eyes again at once, but he hardly noticed. “I’ll kill her,” he said, and in that moment, he would have done it gladly, with a knife, with a gun, with his bare hands…
“No,” Brenna said. She still wouldn’t look at him. “You couldn’t. She’s protected.” She took a deep breath. “But that’s not all. Falk wants her to do… something else to you. Something worse.”
“Something worse than stealing my memories?” Anton snarled.
“Yes.” And now Brenna did look at him. “Falk wants her to twist your mind. To make you loyal to him, and him alone. To make you his puppet.”
Anton felt sick. “That can be done?”
“It can,” Brenna said. “It is the worst kind of violation, even worse than what that old witch has already done to you. The punishment is death… or would be, if Lord Falk weren’t the one tasked with enforcing the law forbidding such things!
“The worst of it is that after it is done, you would remember it being done and remember everything you knew and thought before it was done-but none of that would make any difference. You would be, now and forever, Falk’s creature, and would obey him to the death in all things.”
“But why?” Anton cried, forgetting to keep his voice down. Brenna shot a frightened look at the door, and he dropped it to an agonized whisper. “Why would he do that to me? What possible use could I be to him?”
“He wants you to fly that airship for him,” Brenna said. “And he thinks you might be useful later…” She shook her head. “It’s hard for me to believe this part, either, but I think Lord Falk is of the Unbound. They’re a… a cult that wants to destroy the Great Barrier. It’s impossible, of course, but I think he thinks he can do it. He wants the MageLords to rule your world as they do this one, as they did centuries ago.”
Anton would have said that was a fool’s hope, knowing what he did of the modern might of steamships and airships, of repeater guns and explosive shells… but he had seen too much already here in Evrenfels of what these MageLords could do, and knew he must have seen very little of what they were truly capable of. And on this whole continent, there were just a few troops and maybe a couple of cannon in Wavehaven, weeks away. The true military might was on the far side of the world, where the Union Republic squabbled with the Concatenation in a hundred ways, battling by surrogate in small, splintered countries or staring each other down along long, heavily fortified borders. If the Anomaly fell and the MageLords emerged, it could be weeks before word of it even got back to the Union Republic’s government, and quite a bit longer before any major military campaign could be launched. Who knew what deviltry the MageLords would have in place by then?
“But I don’t understand,” Anton said. “The Anomaly has stood for centuries. How can he bring it down?”
“I don’t know,” Brenna snapped. “It’s not like methods of destroying it were part of my education.” She paused. “I’m sorry,” she said more softly. “But time is short. You have to escape the manor.. . and you have to take me with you.”
Anton sat cross-legged on the bed, carefully arranging the blankets to preserve his modesty, though it sounded like he had already been stripped naked by Mother Northwind. “I’ll agree I need to escape,” he said. “But why do you?”
“I’m part of this Plan of Lord Falk’s, too,” Brenna said. “I don’t know how… but I don’t want anything to do with it. I can’t imagine I’m a crucial part, but maybe if I’m not here when he needs me, it will jam a tree branch into his spokes.”
“But this is your home. He’s your guardian.” Yes, he is, an inner voice whispered. How do you know this isn’t all some trick of Falk’s?
He mentally thrust the doubts away. He had to trust someone in this bizarre kingdom where wooden puppets walked and worked and a little old woman could rape your mind with a touch of her hand. Brenna was the only candidate.
“He’s my guardian, and I’m his ward. But he’s not my father, and I’m not his daughter,” Brenna said, her voice rising a little with emotion. “I’m his prisoner, and he’s a monster.” She held up the candle so that he could see her face more clearly as she met his eyes squarely. “So be a good fairy-story hero and rescue me.”
“But how?” Anton said. “How do we-”
There was a noise outside the door; very slight, but enough to tell them both that one of the guards had shifted position. Anton could almost picture it, the guard turning, putting his ear to the door…
“Airship,” Brenna whispered. “Fixed. Only hope.” And then she fled for the servants’ door in the corner, closing it silently behind her just as the door into Anton’s room opened.
By that time, of course, he was fast asleep again, though tossing and turning and even mumbling out loud. After a moment he stopped and lay still. A moment after that he heard the bedroom door close.
He sat up and waited to see if Brenna would come back. When she didn’t, he lay back down again. Putting his hands under his head, he stared up into the darkness.
The airship fixed! All well and good… but could he really fly it without the Professor? Could he even get it off the ground? How would they fill it with hot air? Where could they get rock gas for the burner and engine?
And even if they did get it airborne, as his own painful and tragic arrival here had proved, flying the airship wasn’t the problem: landing it was.
But Brenna was right. It was their only hope.
He just wished it was a brighter one.
Though Karl had been into New Cabora many times, as representative of the Crown, he had never been in this part of it, far away from City Hall and the other grand public buildings that were his usual venues for official appearances. At any other time he would have been fascinated by the narrow streets, the four- or five-story buildings leaning over them, the coal-oil streetlamps casting yellow circles of illumination on snow-covered cobblestones, but otherwise doing little to alleviate the gloom, the darkened shops with half-glimpsed goods, mysterious and alien to Karl, displayed in their windows…
But this was not any other time. Barefoot and lightly dressed, all Karl could think of was pain and cold. His feet had become blocks of ice he could no longer feel, though once when he looked down he saw blood on them and knew he must have cut them on the sharp stones of the streets. His ears felt like knives were slicing at them. Even his lungs hurt. I’ll be dead before we get where we’re going, he thought, but he wasn’t. They didn’t really penetrate very far into the city streets before he was pulled down a narrow passageway between two grim, unlit brick hulks. One of his captors rapped a rapid-fire knock in a complicated sequence on a rusty metal door. The door opened silently. Beyond was pitch-blackness, and Karl hung back for an instant as he was propelled into it…
… but only for an instant, because inside it was warm.
He reveled in that warmth for a moment, though he still couldn’t feel his feet. The door closed behind them, shutting off the pale gray rectangle that proved however dark it might have seemed out there, it was far darker in here.
The space had the feeling of somewhere small. No one spoke, but they moved a short way down what felt like a narrow hall and rounded a corner. Another knock, different from the first, and another door opened. Beyond this one, there was not only warmth, but light.
It seemed blinding, though it was really, Karl realized a moment later, only the glow of a small fire burning inside a tiny hearth, combined with the gleam of a single oil lantern sitting on the mantelpiece. Together, they illuminated a small room furnished with a table, four chairs, and nothing else-unless you counted the burly, grim-faced Commoner facing them with a drawn sword, who had just stepped back from opening the door. His eyes, brown beneath bushy black brows, widened as he saw Karl. “Creator! What the rutting hell are you doing with him?”
“Nice to see you, too, Shiff,” one of Karl’s captors said. Karl took his first good look at him. He was smaller and slimmer than Karl, which made him about half the size of Shiff, but he radiated a sense of suppressed strength and energy, like a coiled spring. “And as for him,” he indicated Karl, “he followed us.”
Karl’s other captor grunted. Nondescript in every way-smaller than Karl, thicker than his companion, graying hair, features that had a kind of blobby, unfinished look to them-he was someone no one would have taken a second look at in any crowd, and couldn’t have remembered five minutes later even if they had. Useful for a revolutionary, Karl thought. Because he was certain that was what he had fallen in with: radical members of the Common Cause, the ones who wanted to overthrow the rule of the MageLords and let Commoners rule themselves.
The ones, and his throat and gut tightened at the thought, who may have tried to kill me once already.
“Followed us through the Barrier,” the nondescript man said, his voice as unremarkable as the rest of him, a kind of generic baritone. “ After it closed.”
There was a fourth man in the room, behind Karl, the one who had opened the outer door. Now he slipped around in front, and from the looks the others gave him, Karl guessed he was the leader here. He was about Karl’s height, but at least twice his age, with a face as angular and chiseled as an unfinished sculpture, and eyes, in this dim light, as black as coal.
“Prince Karl,” the fourth man said thoughtfully. “Most unexpected.”
“I say we kill him,” growled Shiff. “We already tried once. Jenna died-”
Karl felt cold, and this time it had nothing to do with the weather.
The leader shook his head. “No,” he said. “The Patron was quite clear. No more attempts on the Prince’s life. His survival changes things, somehow. I don’t know how. But the Patron wants him alive.” He studied Karl. “Although the Patron, so far as I know, did not expect him to just place himself in our hands like this.”
The feeling had at last begun to return to Karl’s feet, a burning and tingling progressing rapidly toward pain. His ears and cheeks felt on fire. He could feel the cuts on his soles now, too. He tried to shift his weight from one foot to the other, but that only intensified the pain in the one he stepped down on, and he gasped involuntarily.
The leader glanced down. “Barefoot?” he said. “In this weather?” He glanced at Shiff. “Fetch the Healer.”
“I say we let his feet fall off,” Shiff snarled.
“And I said ‘Fetch the Healer,’ ” the leader said softly. Shiff tensed for a moment, then grunted, sheathed his sword, and went out.
“Sit down,” the leader said to Karl, who gratefully complied, collapsing onto one of the rough wooden chairs with a groan. He clenched his fists against the pain in his feet.
The leader remained standing. “Denson, guard the outside door. Jopps, find us something to eat and drink.”
Denson, the wiry one, nodded and slipped out. The nondescript Jopps went through the only other door in the room, on the far side, leaving it open to reveal a slightly larger room with four beds ranged along the walls. Beyond that, through an archway, Karl saw a fire burning. Jopps went through the archway and turned left, disappearing from view.
“How did you get through the Barrier?” the leader said softly.
“What’s your name?” Karl countered.
A moment’s stillness. “Call me Vinthor.”
“Not your real name?”
A small smile. “It is not the name I was born with. Nor were the other names you have heard given my associates by their parents.” The smile vanished. “Now answer the question.”
“I don’t know,” Karl said. “I tried to get through the opening your men made, but I was too late. Yet somehow I went through anyway.” And how did your men make that opening? he wanted to ask. They were Commoners, so they must have used an enchanted device of some kind, but he would have sworn, and he thought Tagaza would have backed him up, that no mage now living could create such a device.
“Can the Heir move through the Lesser Barrier at will?” Vinthor said.
Karl shook his head. “I have never heard of it.” But in the back of his mind came the thought that perhaps, just perhaps, slipping through the Lesser Barrier was all one with his strange ability to cancel out minor spells and make enchanted objects stop working. But he wasn’t about to say anything about that to Vinthor.
“‘For even the wisest, the wide world holds endless mysteries and wonder,’ “ Vinthor said, and it took Karl a second to figure out why that sounded familiar. It was a quotation from The Eagle Falls, one of Verdsmitt’s earliest but still most popular plays.
Was Verdsmitt this mysterious Patron, then? But Falk had arrested him. Surely the Patron would not have allowed himself to be captured by the Minister of Public Safety!
Unless there was some reason he needed to be inside the Palace.. .
“Could your father have died this very evening, making you King without your knowing it?” Vinthor continued. He asked the question softly, but there was some hidden depth to it that Karl couldn’t fathom. “Perhaps the King has the power to pass through the Barrier.”
“I’ve never heard that, either,” said Karl. “And when my father dies, I will know it.”
“Hmmm.” Vinthor glanced at the fire for a moment, thinking. Karl closed his eyes and pounded his fists silently on his legs, willing the agony in his feet to retreat. It didn’t work.
Jopps bustled in with a plate piled with slices of bread, cheese, and meat of some kind, though Karl couldn’t quite decide what it was aside from gray and slightly slimy. Jopps went out again, returning in a moment gripping four mugs by their handles with one hand and an open wine bottle with the other. He slopped wine into the mugs, put the empty bottle aside, and went to the door, opening it to hand one of the mugs to Denson in the darkness beyond; then he closed the door again, picked up his own mug, and plopped down on the chair closest to the fire, between Vinthor and Karl. Placing a piece of cheese and a piece of meat between two slices of the bread, he ate noisily, apparently oblivious to both his leader and the Prince.
Vinthor gave him an irritated look, then nodded to Karl. “Eat, if you’re hungry.”
The expected after-show reception having failed to materialize, Karl was hungry, but the pain in his feet made it impossible to eat. “No, thanks,” he said, voice strained. “But I will take that wine.” He grabbed the goblet and took a large mouthful, prepared for something pretty vile, but pleasantly surprised to find it quite good. Not that he cared-it was the alcohol he wanted, hoping it might dull his increasing agony.
“The Healer will be here shortly,” Vinthor said. “Perhaps then.” He nodded toward the back room. “Perhaps you would be more comfortable lying down while you wait. And as I find I have lost my appetite,” he gave a significant look to the oblivious Jopps, who was chewing with his mouth open, “I will see if I can contact the Patron. And then, Prince Karl, Heir Apparent to the Keys and the Kingdom of Evrenfels, we will see what is to be done with you.”
He got up and disappeared back into the kitchen. Jopps kept eating, but his eyes followed Karl as he got to his feet, drained the rest of his wine in one long draft, and then limped, gasping with each step, into the next room. There he lay down, gaining some slight measure of relief when he lifted his feet from the floor. Throwing his arm over his eyes, he waited for the Healer… and his fate.
Lord Falk’s feeling of contentment did not survive breakfast. He was just spreading butter on a second piece of toast in the private dining area of his suite, enjoying the play of the sunshine on the lake outside, when he heard voices in the outer room and knew someone had come to call on him. He ignored them, and went on buttering his toast. There was always some new demand on his time, but toast only stayed hot for a minute.
He was halfway through the slice when Brich appeared. Falk swallowed, set the remaining portion of toast down on his plate (recently denuded of a healthy helping of ham and eggs), and said, “From your expression, Brich, you have something to tell me you suspect I will not enjoy hearing.”
“You’re quite correct, my lord,” Brich said grimly. “My lord-” and the fact he used the honorific twice in such quick succession was more testimony, if any were needed, to just how grim he felt, “Prince Karl is missing.”
Falk sat very still for a long moment, then said just two words, though each carried enough savagery to make even Brich pale a little. “When? How?”
“Sometime in the night, my lord,” Brich said. “His absence was discovered when his manservant went in this morning with breakfast. His bed had not been slept in. As to the how…” Brich licked his lips. “His window was open, my lord. It appears he simply climbed down the wall of the palace to the ground.”
“And Teran, his bodyguard? The other guards I left posted outside in the hallway?” Falk said softly. “They heard nothing?”
“No, my lord, but the thickness of the…” Brich’s voice trailed off, as though he thought perhaps it wasn’t wise to make excuses, even if they weren’t for himself.
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” Falk said, almost to himself. “He grew up in the Palace. As Brenna has recently reminded me, children have a way of finding secret ways of getting to places they aren’t supposed to be.” He took a deep breath. “Well, no doubt he is hiding somewhere on the grounds, enjoying the frantic search for his Royal Presence. The Heir may look a grown man on the outside, Brich, but he is still enough of a boy to enjoy such childish pranks.” He got to his feet. “Let us indulge him. Turn out the guard. Search everywhere. He must be inside the Lesser Barrier, after all.” He paused. “And send Teran to me,” he added softly.
“He’s already waiting in a cell,” Brich said.
Falk nodded once, and went to find him.
Teran sat on the cell’s bed, hands folded in his lap, head down. He looked up as Falk came in, then jumped to his feet. “Lord Falk, I-”
“Teran,” said Falk coldly. “How is it that the man to whom I have entrusted not only the Prince’s safety but also the task of keeping me informed as to his whereabouts and actions has once again failed at both duties?”
“My lord,” Teran said again. “He ordered me from his room. He was angry that I had not told him about the impending arrest of Verdsmitt.”
“It’s as well you did not,” Falk said. “What did he tell you?”
“Nothing, my lord,” Teran said. “As I said, he was angry. He pointed out that he was both the Prince and my friend. I told him that you were my supreme commander and I had to follow your orders unless he had specifically countermanded them… which he had not.”
“And he said nothing that indicated he intended to sneak out of the palace, Teran?” Falk said.
“No, my lord,” Teran said. “The last I saw of him he was pouring a drink. He seemed ready to settle in for the evening.”
“And you heard nothing?”
“Nothing, my lord.”
Falk gave Teran a hard look. “It seems to me,” he said softly, “that you have now failed your duty twice.”
Teran paled. “My lord-”
“The terms of your service,” Falk said, “have always been that you serve me well, and your mother and sister remain well. If you do not serve me well…” He let his voice fall to a silky whisper. “Would you say you have served me well in these past few days, Teran?”
“My lord, I beg of you-”
“Your begging does not interest me.” Falk stood up. “Fail me again, and your mother and sister will find their lives suddenly very difficult. As will you… though in your case, it will be both difficult and short.” He jerked his head toward the door. “Join the search for the Prince. But I may wish to speak to you again later.”
Teran nodded and fled, and Falk dismissed him from his mind.
The day wore on. The searches turned up nothing. At noon, Falk, to general though muted outrage, ordered the Royal guard to search all personal quarters. By three o’clock, there could be little doubt: Prince Karl was no longer inside the Lesser Barrier.
Two boats had been found on the far side of the lake, one of the Palace pleasure boats and an ordinary rowboat no one could remember seeing before-but that meant little, since there were numerous boats tied up here and there around the lake, and if anybody was missing one, he was unlikely to claim it when it might implicate him in the disappearance of the Prince. Both boats were unmoored, and it could have simply been the breeze that pushed them so close together along that weedy bank… but the breeze had not churned the mud, flattened the weeds, and pushed through the thicker growth above the shore to the very edge of the Lesser Barrier.
It had snowed heavily again during the night, obliterating any tracks there might have been on the other side of the Barrier, but the signs seemed unequivocal. Prince Karl had passed through the Lesser Barrier, perhaps following someone else.
Which was utterly and completely impossible.
Or so Tagaza has always said, Falk thought. His calm response to the original news of Karl’s disappearance had long since vanished in rage burning hot enough to scour the streets of New Cabora with fire, had he unleashed it magically. But he could not turn that rage on the Commoners… not yet, at any rate. When he was King…
… except he might never be King if Karl had stupidly allowed the Common Cause to finish the job of assassination it had botched so spectacularly just days before. If Tagaza were not to be trusted, the magical search for the next Heir that the MageLords would insist upon would point straight to Brenna, and that would raise questions even Falk could not dance around. I’d have to kill her, he thought. Quietly and quickly. The Heirship would pass to someone else. Tagaza’s search would point to someone else. No one would ever know she was Heir, and Karl was not…
… and twenty years of careful planning would collapse into chaos. Who knew if he could come out the other side of that chaos with even his life, much less the Kingship?
And if he did not become King, then the Hidden Kingdom would remain hidden for another two hundred years: forever, from his point of view.
All of which drove him to Tagaza’s office, two carefully selected guards in tow.
Time to answer a few questions, old friend.