Marvin stared at this man transformed; then bowed low and exclaimed. 'Milord Inglenook bar na Idrisi-san, first lord of the Admiralty, Familiar to the Prime Minister, Adviser Extraordinary to the King, Bludgeon of the Church Rampant and Invocateur of the Grand Council!'

'I am that person,' Inglenook responded. 'And I play the hunchback for reasons most politic; for were my presence even suspected here by my rival, Lord Blackamoor de Mordevund, all of us would be dead men ere the frogs in the Pond Royal had chance to croak at first ray of Phoebus!'

'This ivy of conspiracy doth grow on high towers,' Marvin commented. 'I surely will serve you and God give me strength, unless some tavern brawler lets light into my belly with a yard of steel.'

'If you refer to the incident of Black Denis,' Sir Gules said, 'I can assure you that the matter was staged for the eyes of whatever spies Sir Blackamoor might have set upon us. In actuality, Black Denis was one of us.'

'Wonder upon wonders!' Marvin declared. 'This octopus, it seems, has many tentacles. But gentlemen, it wonders me why, of all puissant gentlemen in this our kingdom, you sought out one who boasts no special privilege nor high position nor monetary wealth nor nothing save the title of gentleman under God and lord of his own honour and bearer of a thousand-year-old name.'

'You are reckless in your modesty!' Lord Inglenook laughed. 'For it is known among all that your skill in the fenceyard is unsurpassed, except perhaps for the wily swordplay of the detestable Blackamoor.'

'I am but a student of the steely art,' Marvin replied carelessly. 'Yet still, if my poor gift will serve you, sobeit. And now, gentlemen, what would you of me?'

'Our plan,' Inglenook said slowly, 'has the virtue of great daring, and the defect of immense danger. A single cast of the dice wins all, or loses us the wager of our lives. A grave gamble! And yet, methinks you would not like not this hazard.'

Marvin smiled while construing the sentence, then said, 'A quick game is ever a lively one.'

'Excellent!' breathed Gules, rising to his feet. 'We must take ourselves now to Castelgatt in the valley of the Romaine. And during the ride there, we shall acquaint you with the details of our scheme.'

And so it was that, muffled in their greatcloaks, the three departed the high narrow house by the dormer stairwell, walking past the chain locker to the postern gate by the old west wall. Here, posted and waiting, was a coach and four, with two armed guards mounted on the slackrails.

Marvin made to enter the coach and saw a person already within. It was a girl; and peering more closely, he saw-

'Cathy!' he cried.

She looked at him without comprehension, and answered in a cold, imperious voice, 'Sir, I am Catarina d'Augustin, and I know not your face nor like I your style of presumed familiarity.'

There was no recognition in her beautiful grey eyes, and no time to ask questions. For even as Sir Gules made hasty introductions, a shout could be heard behind them.

'You there, in the coach! Halt in the name of the King!'

Glancing back, Marvin could see a captain of dragoons with ten mounted men behind him.

'Treachery!' shouted Inglenook. 'Quick, coachmen, let us away!'

With a clatter of traces and a rattle of bits, the four matched stallions propelled the coach down the narrow alley in the direction of Ninestones and Oceansideways High Road.

'Can they overtake us?' asked Marvin.

'Mayhap,' Inglenook said. 'They seem damnably well mounted, damn their blue blistered backsides! Your pardon, madame …'

For a few moments Inglenook watched the horsemen clatter along not twenty yards behind, their sabres glittering in the dim lamplight. Then he shrugged and turned away.

'Let me inquire,' Inglenook inquired, 'as to whether you are conversant with recent political developments here and elsewhere in the Old Empire; for this knowledge is needful to make intelligible to you the necessity for the particular form and moment of our scheme.'

'I fear that my political knowledge is but indifferent poor,' Marvin said.

'Then permit me to relate to you a few details of the background, which will render the situation and its import more malleable to the intelligence.'

Marvin settled back, hearing the drumming of the dragoon's horses in his ears. Cathy, seated opposite him and slightly to his right, stared coldly at the swinging tassels on Sir Gules' hat. And Lord Inglenook began to speak:

Chapter 27

'The old king died less than a decade ago, at the full flood of the Suessian heresy, leaving no clear successor to the throne of Mulvavia. Thus, the passions of a troubled continent came ominously to the boil.

'Three claimants jostled for the Butterfly Throne. Prince Moroway of Theme held the Patent Obvious, which had been awarded him by a bribed but still official Council of Electionate. And if that were not sufficient, he held as well by the doctrine of Regal Empleatude, since he was the acknowledged, illegitimate second (and only surviving) son of Baron Norway, the old king's sister's half-cousin through the powerful Mortjoys of Danat.

'In less troubled times, this might have been sufficient. But for a continent on the verge of civil and religious war, there were defects in the claim, and even more in the claimant.

'Prince Moroway was merely eight years old and had never been known to utter a word. According to the portrait by Mouvey, he had a monstrously swollen head, a slack jaw, and the unfocused eyes of a hydrocephalic idiot. His only known pleasure was his collection of worms (the finest on the continent).

'His main opposition for the succession was Gottlieb Hosstratter, Duke of Mela and Receiptor-in-Ordinary of the Imperial Marginland, whose dubious bloodlines were backed by the schismatic Suessian Hierarchy, and most particularly by the enfeebled Hierarch of Dodessa.

'A second claimant, Romrugo of Vars, might have been discounted were it not that he backed his petition with a force of fifty thousand battle-hardened troopers from the southern principality of Vask. Young and vigorous, Romrugo had a reputation for eccentricity; his marriage to his favourite mare Orsilla, was condemned by the orthodox Owensian clergy of which he was the absentminded champion. Nor did he win favour among the burghers of Gint-Loseine, whose proud city he ordered buried under twenty feet of earth "as a gift to future archaeologists". Yet withal, his claim to the throne of Mulvavia might have been speedily legitimized had he possessed the wherewithal with which to pay his fighting men.

'Unfortunately for Romrugo, he had no personal fortune. (It had been squandered upon the purchase of the Lethertean scrolls.) Therefore, in order to raise his army's payroll, he proposed an alliance with the wealthy but ineffectual Free City of Tihurrue, which commanded the straits of Sidue.

'This unthinking move brought down upon his head the wrath of the Duchy of Puls, whose western frontier had long guarded the exposed flank of the Old Empire from the depradations of the pagan Monogoths. The stern, singleminded young grandduke of Puls immediately joined forces with the schismatic Hosstratter – surely as strange an alliance as the continent had ever seen – and thus became a direct menace to Prince Moroway, and to the Mortjoys of Danat who supported him. So, quite unexpectedly, finding himself surrounded on three sides by Suessians or their allies, and on the fourth side by the restive Monogoths, Romrugo began casting around desperately for a new alliance.

'He found it in the enigmatic figure of Baron Lord Darkmouth, Prepossessor of the Isle of Turplend. The tall and brooding Baron set to sea at once with a battle fleet of twenty-five galleons, and all Mulvavia held its breath as the ominous line of ships sailed down the Dorter and into the Escher Sea.