C HAPTER

Help yourself. It's good whiskey, isn't it?" Delivegu asked. He leaned back in his chair and lifted his booted feet onto his desk.

"It is that," his guest, a man named Yanzen, said. He did help himself, filling his silver mug for the third or fourth time. "You're not charging this to my debt, are you?"

"No, sir. We're not gaming anymore. This is leisure between friends. Leisure and pleasure. Leisure and pleasure." He pointed at a pipe and the weed pouch on the table. "Have a smoke as well."

Without preamble or apparent provocation, Yanzen said, "You're a bastard."

Delivegu laughed. He did not dispute it or take offense. He was a bastard, after all, the child of a young woman who had been raped by a Senivalian knight one drunken evening. He could not really say the epithet troubled him, especially as he had received from his parents qualities that he was rather thankful for: his father's physical stature and his mother's rejection of anything like a moral compass. Both these things had served him well. Considering his recent interactions with the queen, the traits looked set to help him rise considerably.

They were in the room that Delivegu kept as an office space during the day. With the small cot in the corner it was also a place to sleep after particularly overdoing it in the tavern below. Despite the wear of thirty-nine years of life, his body still enjoyed debauchery with a youthful frequency. Even now, he took notice of the sounds of the evening's revelries that reached them through the floor and walls.

Yanzen picked up the pipe, held it close to his neatly trimmed whiskers, and sniffed. "It's not mist tainted, is it?"

"Such distrust!"

"Who's to say it's distrust? I wouldn't mind a good mist haze every once in a while."

Yanzen opened the weed pouch, pinched out a wad, and jammed it in the pipe. The motions had a coarse quality that was at odds with his neat garments and manicured fingernails and the aquiline grace of his mature features. Yanzen, like many whom Delivegu associated with, had more than one face. He had been in the service of the Saden household since he was a boy of five, first as an errand boy, later tending the family's horses. For a time he trained as second to Sigh Saden's youngest son, before the lad succumbed to a fever. In recent years he had risen to be head of the household servants. It was this position-with the great many intimacies it provided him access to-that made him a person of interest to Delivegu. Something his masters surely did not know was that Yanzen had an affinity for gambling and a considerable appetite for prostitutes. Sharing such vices, Delivegu and Yanzen had been on good terms for some time. The fact that Yanzen owed Delivegu an ever-growing sum of money had not dampened their friendship. Indeed, it seemed to warm both men to each other.

"So," said Yanzen, blowing a cloud of smoke between them, "have you parted the queen's thighs yet? Is she as sweet as she looks, or is it all ice inside her? Opinions differ, you know. Saden boasted the other night that she likes to suck toes. Is that true?"

Nothing in Delivegu's expression betrayed how close he came to reaching across the desk with a fist. He could not have said why he found the comment so infuriating, but the notion that any part of Sigh Saden's body would get near the queen's mouth flushed him with angry heat. It was a lie, of course. Being a man who never had to lie about his conquests, Delivegu despised those who did. That's how he explained it to himself, at least.

He said, "I doubt Saden has anything else that she could suck on. Either that or his toes dwarf his manhood. Just as likely. No, I'm not out to bed her." He paused to let the lie sit a moment, and then continued with something more reasonable sounding. "That way lies madness. I have higher aspirations. I intend to be indispensable to her."

"Do you, now? And what does she think about that?"

"She already calls on me about delicate matters. She has no chancellor, you know, nor does she want one from among her class."

"You fancy yourself in line for the chancellorship, then?"

"In a manner of speaking," Delivegu said. He loosened a few buttons on his shirt. No matter the tailoring he requested, his shirts always cramped his shoulders. "Yes, I know there are matters of birth to be considered, but you let me worry about that. Of course, I'll look kindly on those who aid my endeavors, which are, in truth, the queen's endeavors."

As he finished off his whiskey, Yanzen watched him over his mug. Wiping the foam from the sides of his mouth, he asked, "What can I do for you, then? You want somebody dead in the Saden household? Most anything could be arranged, so long as we price it first."

"No, I hold the entertaining assignments for myself. It's just information I'm after. Your breadth of knowledge interests me. Who, in your mind, is the queen's greatest enemy among the nobles?"

Yanzen shrugged. "Who's to say? Flip any of them over and you'll see a snake's tail coming out his ass. It's the truth. Senator or landowner, estate lord or-male and female both, mind you-they all speak treason when they speak of the queen."

"Do they plot?"

"Plot? Naw, they don't plot. That requires more cunning than most of them have. I can't say that any of them are a danger. Maybe Sigh himself, but he'd as soon marry Corinn as anything else. Drop his old wife in a second, he would. But so many of the Agnates are new blood. They don't know how to be nobles yet. Before Hanish-back then, the court and the Senate were rife not just with snakes but with pit vipers. These new nobles-few of them have any venom in their bites. The hostages, for example. Back before Hanish, sending off noble sons and daughters never meant much. They expected it. Part of their burden. They'd love their heir right enough, but they wouldn't lose sleep when Thaddeus Clegg plucked a child away to stay at court. These new Agnates, though, they worry, wonder what's going on over at that academy, visit whenever they can. They're just not used to their offspring being moved about like game pieces. The bitch played that right." He leaned back, enjoying the smoke and looking ever more at ease. "Anyway, they mostly chew their gums. For the majority, life is better now than it was before Corinn ascended. They don't want to upset that."

Delivegu had flinched slightly at the word bitch. It's just a word, he thought, a coarse word that shouldn't be used in relation to Corinn, but nothing to comment on. As for the rest of his friend's counsel, he would have to measure it later, for he was skeptical that the Agnates were as harmless as Yanzen thought. He had been too long in their company, perhaps. Although that was also why he might be right about them.

"And what about the common people?" Delivegu asked.

"Those they all worry about!"

"Does your master ever talk about Barad? Some call him Barad the Lesser, an agitator from Kidnaban."

"Heard the name. Sigh disregards him. A man like him can't see any commoner as a threat."

"Most of them aren't."

Yanzen must have heard some gravity in Delivegu's voice, for he pulled the pipe from his mouth and studied him. "You think Barad might be a threat?"

Delivegu tipped the dregs of the flagon into his mug. "His name has reached my ears. He worries me. He shouldn't be important, and yet I feel he is."

"Methinks you're besotted," Yanzen said. "What was it you said-'indispensable to the queen' or some such? She is a swan that breaks your neck just as you're about to compliment her on the beauty of her wings. Mind me on that. I don't think she's likely to bed you, either. Not even in the comfort of her own compound. From what I hear, she hates it that her brother took up with a commoner. She's going to hate it even more soon. What do you think about the prince's bastard to be?"