Maerlyn Bleth shivered. So that was a phaerimm.

His mind whirled the image of the key they must seize from the Mage Royal in front of him and took it away again.

A flying city of shadow wizards come back from ancient Netheril. All the Realms endangered, Cormyr the closest prize… it was using them, that thing down in the pit, using them like the brainless cattle it so obviously and scornfully believed them to be. When the time was right, its spells would lash out or it would stab at their very minds.

But plots are easily spoken and harder in the doing. Mistakes inevitable-oh, hadn't the gods taught far too many Cormyrean nobles that. Mighty magic is always a weapon worth having-and if Cormyr was doomed, after all these centuries, at least the House of Obarskyr could be driven down in richly-deserved slaughter first, every last screaming woman of it, those sneers wiped off their faces as they saw the nobles they and their forebears had so wronged working revenge upon them at last.

He was grinning like a wolf, Maerlyn knew. Teeth flashed in the dim light around him as they hastened out of the cavern together. Every last one of his fellow conspirators was grinning savagely too.

Ah, but it would be good to see the Obarskyrs get theirs at last.

The Steel Regent struck again, grunting with the effort, and Caladnei reeled. Every blow of Alusair's onslaught was like a hammer in her head, and the Mage Royal was fast acquiring a blinding headache.

Both women were drenched and staggering as they circled each other, cotton tunics plastered to their curves and errant hairs escaping sodden headscarves. Gods, but the princess was as fast as a striking snake!

Her wooden practice blade swept around again, and this time Caladnei dodged away to avoid parrying, stumbling in her weariness.

Her own sword was an edgeless bar of force, maintained by her will alone, and Alusair thrust past her guard, their blades binding, and Caladnei shouted in pain.

"No," the Steel Regent snarled, as the Mage Royal gasped and held up a hand in a gesture of surrender, "don't give up on me now! A murderous noble won't stay his steel because you wave to him that you're winded."

They were circling each other again, both caked with the sand of the practice-floor where they'd clinched, kicked, and tumbled earlier in their bout. Shamra the Healer stood watching them carefully, ready to step in if either woman lost her temper and went too far, or took a wound through a slip at the wrong instant.

"I did not… seek this office," the Mage Royal snarled between gasps. "I didn't want this title… these duties…"

The Steel Regent's grin was as wry as it was fierce.

"I've heard those very same words before, echoing back at me from my own bedchamber mirror."

Her blade skirled and thrust. Caladnei shouted again at the pain in her head-and a wooden blade slid home to touch her just under her breasts, thudding painfully up and in, at her heart. She put a hand on Alusair's weapon and bent over to catch her breath, reflecting ruefully that she wasn't half the swordmaster the princess was.

"Did you die gloriously?"

The calm question made both of the panting, sweating women look up. The voice belonged to Laspeera, and she never disturbed them at practice unless matters were urgent or of the utmost importance.

Caladnei waved away the question with a smile as she struggled for breath.

Alusair handed her sword to the healer, strode up out of the sand, and asked, "What news, Lasp?"

The senior war wizard reported the news from Arabel and her encounters with various murmuring critics of the Mage Royal on the way to them, as the two women did off their tunics and headscarves, washed with mint-water, toweled down, and put on fresh tunics.

Shamra was holding out a hair-ribbon to Caladnei as Laspeera recounted the words of the elder Lord Helm-stone, her mimicry of his tone as exact as her recall of his utterances.

The Mage Royal frowned, stiffened, and snapped, "Later, ladies!"

The place where Caladnei had been standing was suddenly empty. Shamra was holding out a ribbon to emptiness. She blinked once, and calmly turned and put the ribbon back on the side table from which she'd taken it. Alusair and Laspeera were exchanging raised-eyebrow looks.

"One of her telltales went off," the war wizard murmured. "I wonder what disaster's unfolding now?"

The princess sighed as she made for the door, binding back her hair as she went.

"I miss Vangerdahast," she said. "He never told you anything either, but he had this sneering, testy way of doing it that somehow reassured you that he had everything under control. I miss that feeling."

Laspeera's smile, as they went out of the practice hall together, was thin. "You're not the only one. Nor am I. The nobles were never so restless under Vangy's eye."

Behind them, the healer smiled. Out of habit she turned to make sure nothing vital had been forgotten, and struck Alusair's wooden sword against the door post. It was still slick with sweat, and slipped from her fingers-but it never clattered to the floor.

Just for an instant, Shamra's hand blurred into something dark and very like a tentacle, that plucked the blade from the air and reshaped itself once more into the healer's fine-fingered hand.

She was alone, Laspeera's back just disappearing through an archway.

Hefting the wooden sword in her hand, the healer let her smile broaden. Not so wide as to show fangs or seem strange-but as eager and deadly as the sudden glitter in the eyes above it.

Soon it would be time to move at last… very soon. With magic enough, she could hold the throne if she took it. And taking it would be so easy. Wring the neck of a babe, and catch Alusair alone and treat her to the same fate before word spread of little Azoun's doom… and slay Filfaeril, take her shape, and play the sorrowful queen waiting to be wooed by the right noble.

It would not be such a bad thing, to rule a kingdom as fair as this one, if she could keep all these idiots from shattering it around her.

"What can I say, good my Lord, to convince you to join us?"

The elder Lord Helmstone was angry-gods above, couldn't the man see this was the right thing to do? He wasn't a dullard, after all.

"Nothing that comes to my mind," Lord Everran Summertree replied, in a voice that was sharp with disapproval. "Cormyr can ill afford-Helmstone, we can ill afford-another war right now, with so many dead and their crops implanted, and Sembians eager to snap up land in return for just enough coin to see starving crofters warm and fed through the coming winter. Our realm needs peace to rebuild, not another petty squabble over whose shoulders carry this or that title, or even whose backside warms the Dragon Throne!"

Lord Helmstone sighed-the angry gust of a man exasperated by obstinate idiocy. He drew a slow, simmering breath, threw his chin forward like a weapon, and growled, The time will come, Summertree, when you see sense. I only hope 'twill not be too late. In the end you'll find you simply must turn against these witches and foolish women who now misrule us, and so sully the bright memory of Azoun and Cormyr's greatness-before it ebbs entire!"

Out on the balcony-or rather, just beneath it, where he was clinging by his fingertips-Glarasteer Rhauligan rolled his eyes. Did all of these nobles learn their bombast at the same school? Or did the Lord of Traitors answer their prayers by filling their minds with the same grand speeches of self-righteous "for the good of the realm I do this" blurf?

"If you truly cared for the good of Cormyr," Lord Summertree replied coldly, "You'd court Alusair and set your son to wooing the Mage Royal-and win or lose their charms, you'd gain yourself ample opportunity to fill their ears with the policies and stances you think the realm should adopt."