Just as the Secret Path’s Traveler king, Tier, would die at the end of his reign.

He thought of one of the bindings Telleridge had put on him. The young men, the Passerines, didn’t know he would die—otherwise there would be no reason to forbid him to speak of it with them.

No doubt then his death would serve a purpose greater than mimicking an old song. Would it appease the gods like the beggar king’s sacrifice in the story? But then why hide it from the young men? What would a wizard want with his death?

Magic and death, he remembered Seraph telling him once. Magic and death are a very powerful combination. The better the mage knows the victim, the stronger the magic he can work. The mage’s pet cat works better than a stray. A friend better than an enemy… a friend for a year and a day.

He had to get word to Seraph. He had to warn her to protect the children.

His fingers picked out the chords to an old war song. Myrceria, he thought, I will work on Myrceria.

Phoran held the bundle of parchment triumphantly as he marched alone through the halls of the palace toward his study. They’d look for him in his rooms first, he thought. No one but the old librarian knew about the study. They’d find him eventually, but not until he was ready for them.

It had been impulse, really. When the old fool, Douver, set down the papers the Council of Septs had for him to sign, Phoran had just picked them up, tucked them under his arm, and announced to the almost empty room that he would take them under advisement.

He’d turned on his heel and walked out, slipping through a complex system of secret passages—some of which were so well known they might be corridors and others he rather thought he might be the only one who knew. He’d given no one a chance to follow him.

For most of his life, he’d signed what they told him to. At least his uncle had done him the courtesy of explaining what he’d signed—though he remembered not caring much about most of it.

But the empty room had been an insult. When the Emperor signed the proposals into law twice a year, there should be people present, and would have been, if anyone thought that the Emperor would do anything but sign what he was told.

He entered the library through a secondary door, passed unnoticed among the bins of parchment and shelves of books in the back corner of the room, and unlocked the door of his study. It was a small room, but it locked from the inside as well as the outside, which was all that he required.

He settled himself into his chair and thought. It was all very well to decide to be emperor in fact as well as name, but he didn’t really have the support he needed. The Sept of Gorrish fancied himself defacto ruler, and the Septs who followed him, Telleridge, and the like, would do their best to fight any sign of independence.

Really, he’d best sign the damn things and get it over with.

Instead he uncorked his inkwell, trimmed his pens, and began to read. The first three parchments he signed—complex trade agreements between various Septs, and nothing the Emperor should interfere with. But, almost involuntarily, he made mental notes of the names involved and the alliances the new laws revealed.

The fourth parchment was another of the increasingly punitive laws aimed at the Travelers. He signed that one, too. Most Travelers were thieves, his uncle had said, though not without a certain amount of sympathy. Having no land they could settle on, because no Sept would have allowed such a thing, they were forced to earn their bread as best they could.

Hours passed. Occasionally, Phoran would sneak out to the library to retrieve maps or books. But he signed the parchments one by one—setting only a few aside for further review.

Two he found that might serve his point. They were regional matters that most of the council would not care unduly about; each was signed by only a few more than half the council with no protests.

The first act would give the Sept of Holla exclusive fishing rights in Lake Azalan. Phoran had checked his maps and found Lake Azalan to be a small body of water in the Sept of Holla’s lands. The law was so odd—the Septs usually had effective exclusive rights to any fully enclosed body of water—that Phoran knew there was a story behind the ruling. The second concerned a small section of land awarded to the Sept of Jenne for his “services to the Empire.”

He pored over the simple words to mine them for clues and regretted the indifference that had kept him from the council the past few years, because he no longer knew all of the different alliances. Geography helped—all of Holla’s signatures were from Septs in the Northeast, Holla’s neighbors. All except one of his neighbors. The one, thought Phoran with sudden comprehension, who had been sending fishermen into his neighbor’s lake.

That one would work—Holla had little influence in the council. But he’d rather come down on the side of justice.

The second one was frustrating because the land in question was so small that he couldn’t find out much about it.

He looked up from a map and the Memory was there.

He hadn’t realized how long he’d been in his study. He’d trimmed the lamps absently as he’d needed, and there was no window to tell him that the sun had set.

Slowly Phoran set his pen down and shed the heavy state robes so he could bare his arm. The hope that had cloaked him for most of the day evaporated at the touch of cold, cold lips on his skin.

It hurt, and he looked away as it fed.

“By the taking of your blood, I owe you one answer. Choose your question.”

Tired beyond reason and still trembling with the remnants of pain, Phoran laughed harshly and said, “Do you know someone who could help me understand what’s so special about a small slice of the Sept of Gerant’s lands that the council would gift it to the Sept of Jenne?”

The Memory turned and drifted toward the door.

“I thought you owed me an answer,” said Phoran without heat. That would have taken too much passion, and he’d already, really, given up on his plans. He would not hurt an innocent man just because his petition was convenient for his purposes, and he was beginning to believe that the library did not contain the information he needed to refuse to sign Jenne’s petition.

He’d already begun to go back to comparing two well-drawn maps to a third, less clear, but more detailed when the Memory said, “Come.”

Phoran looked up and saw it waiting for him. It took him a moment to remember exactly what he’d asked.

“You know someone who could help?”

It didn’t answer.

Phoran stared at it and tried to think. If anyone saw him… He glanced at the parchments and maps scattered around and gathered the ones that might prove helpful.

CHAPTER 9

They came for him shortly after Myrceria left.

Tier set the lute down, and stood up when the door opened to admit five men in black robes like the one Telleridge had worn. Their hoods were pulled down over their faces and they walked in as if they each had a predetermined place to stand. Tier had the oddest feeling that they did not see him at all.

They took up positions around him. One after the other they began chanting, a low, droning, off-pitch sound that he could not decipher because the words they used belonged to no language he’d ever heard. Magic, he knew, but he was helpless to stop them because of Telleridge’s command.

As one, they raised their hands above their heads and clapped…

He awoke lying on the floor, naked and sweating. The memory of pain lent nausea to the cacophony of tingling body parts. He sat up, frantically trying to remember what had happened after the wizards had clapped their hands, but the thought of the sound made his ears ring.