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him. Surely a good woman would. And he had no doubt of her goodness.
    How surprised he was by her response, then. She drew close to him and tilted her lovely, large-eyed face up toward his. There was no surprise on her features, no remorse, or judgment. She said,
A king is the best and worst of men. Of course. Of course.
She pushed her lips against his, so soft and full of hungry pressure that they took his breath away. That, perhaps, was the moment they were actually married, the moment the agreement between them was sealed. It was hard for him to decipher now which aspect of her love he was most drawn to. Was it the fact that she could forgive him all of it and love him because she understood his ultimate goodness? Or was it that she betrayed that she was just as capable of overlooking the truth and living a lie as he? Either way, having confessed to her and received her blessing, he loved her completely. He would never have been able to fulfill his role as monarch without her approval. This might or might not have been a good thing for the world, but to a man as unsure of rule as he had been, her devotion had been a great gift.
    “Perhaps I do, Thaddeus,” Leodan said, responding belatedly to his statement. “Perhaps I honor you unduly. We all make that mistake at times. But what harm does it do?”
    He did not hear the chancellor’s response, if, indeed, he offered any. He closed his eyes and felt the sensation of being pressed against an invisible wall. This mist had built in him, filled him. Now the moment of letting go of the physical world was finally his. This moment always came to him as pressure, as if his chest lay flat against a stone and a great force behind him gradually ground him into it. Just when he felt he could take the weight no more, he started to slip through the stone, to merge with it and pass through as if it were porous and he in liquid form. On the other side Aleera waited for him, the temporary delusion he craved almost more than true life. He went to her in reverence.

C HAPTER
S EVEN
    R ialus Neptos believed he had found a method whereby he could keep track of everyone who came into and went out of the northern fortress of Cathgergen. He believed such surveillance was essential for a governor, especially one with such a tentative grip on power as he. He had ordered a single sheet of glass cast in the furnaces at the base of the fortress. He knocked out a portion of the granite wall in his office and set the pane to form one enormous window. The glass was taller than a man and as wide as he could stretch his narrow arms out to either side. The workmanship was imperfect. It was uneven in thickness, milky in some places and dotted throughout with air bubbles. But there were a few patches of true clarity; Rialus had located each through long hours of inspection.
    Alone in his chambers he would press his forehead to the pane. More often than not the touch of the glass would bring a chill on and fuel his cough, a torment that had racked his bird-frail chest all his life. For a time he even took to stretching out on the floor. A ribbon of glass along the lower edge of the pane distorted the world in such a way that he could study the entrance to the military headquarters at his leisure and thus keep track of just who came and went in Leeka Alain’s world. The best vantage came when he stood on a footstool and gazed down with a one-eyed squint that provided a view of the full reach of the western wall and the gate at its center. From this spot he had watched General Alain’s troops march out in defiance of his direct orders. From the same spot he observed the arrival of the second of the Mein brothers, Maeander, some weeks later.
    Rialus pulled back from the glass. He was chilled again. The fortress was heated by steaming pools of hot water that bubbled up from the earth. An intricate network of pipes and air ducts channeled the warmth throughout the labyrinthine structure. The Cathgergen