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the strongest … and Quillia had now been neutralized. What if Shrike had found ways to neutralize the others as well?
    It was a game of chess played with invisible pieces, on a board of unknown dimensions, with unfathomed rules and objectives. The puzzle pieces chased themselves around and around in his head, whirling as if caught in a cyclone.
    The princess had been kidnapped to retard response. He could assume that she had been taken by Shrike, but where exactly was she? An invasion would accomplish nothing and might kill the princess. What action could the queen take that would return her daughter?
    Perhaps none. But, then, what could she do to protect her kingdom and her authority?
    She could offer reward for the return of her daughter, and she had. That would free individual action, and that might work. Where a large-scale assault would almost certainly end in Tahlia’s being murdered, it was just possible that smaller actions might suffice. And the queen had unleashed the fortune-seeking princes of seven countries to save her child.
    Shrike had opened a door, and the queen had responded in kind. And whatever marched forth from that door might change their world with their struggles.
    But with all of the storm and fury, all the war elephants clashing and rending the earth, all that might come …
    It was possible, just possible, that a mouse could slip out of one door and through another.
    Why had the queen brought him into the throne room and yet concealed him from sight? She wanted him to know. She was asking for him to take action.
    Sleep, even Wizard’s Sleep, eluded him. For the next two days, he exhaustively studied the kingdom of Shrike: its history, wealth, and powers. Its families and industries.
    But it was in studying Shrike’s military that he found the very first glimmer of hope.
    He turned the idea around and around in his mind, trying to disprove it. And, instead, a second piece fell into place, so large and perfectly shaped it was almost as if it had all been predestined.
    In fact, when he snapped out of his reverie and looked at the entirety of it, he almost forgot to breathe. Neoloth was overwhelmed with the perfection. The synchronicity.
    All he needed now was to be certain that a certain barbarian had not yet been executed.

 
    EIGHT
    The Bargain
    Chains, trials, testimony.
    The last weeks had been filled with scowling faces and accusatory speeches. Aros had long experienced the ire with which people hold thieves, but the anger and hatred directed at a taxman were a totally different standard. The strangling of C’Vall seemed a mere incident. It was amazing how many people came forward to accuse a chained man of perfidy. And, likewise, the number of people who seemed happy that he had been stripped of the trappings of authority, as they seemed to take unnatural pleasure from hauling him half-naked and chained before an unsympathetic judge.
    His men had testified, mostly in his favor. The crowd had jeered.
    It was humiliating. And if he had wondered who had betrayed him, he now knew that that had been the wrong question. The right question was, Why had he ever been foolish enough to think these bastards would accept him as an equal? Let alone fail to resent his power as tax collector? That they would not take their first opportunity to cast him down?
    But Aros had never paid taxes.
    Aros was languishing in his chains when the white-bearded jailer brought him his daily bowl of gruel. The ancient was a trustee, serving a life sentence for some crime he could no longer remember. Sometimes murder, sometimes theft, and once merely the seduction of a noble daughter. The story shifted with the phases of the moon.
    â€œPirates got the princess,” he whispered as Aros sopped gruel in coarse bread and chewed.
    That caught his attention, although he had never met or even seen her. “When?”
    â€œI hear she was on her way back from her cousin’s