The night churned slowly onward. The red stain of Matayangan invasion seeped across the table. Confused messengers arrived from the far east, their reports only further obscuring the situation there.
"Lord Ch'ien."
"Princess?"
She tapped the map with the pointer. "Do we dare move while this is happening?"
Lord Ch'ien eyed the east briefly. "I think we can discount it. For the moment. Our people there will keep those forces uninvolved." The weariness edging his voice made it more husky and hollow than normal. Mist shuddered.
Lord Ch'ien volunteered, "Western Army will be the real worry. I've heard that Lord Hsung has an agent in the palace here. By now everybody in this squalid village knows something is happening. The stupidest spy would have sent a message mentioning it."
"Time. The invincible enemy. Are we going to manage it, old friend? Or will time do us in?"
"I couldn't say, Princess. But I do have a feeling we're close to the moment of decision. There's a new tension in the blanklands there."
Mist stared at the unmarked portion of the map, closing out all else. And, yes, Lord Ch'ien was right. She could feel a great something flexing its muscles there, tensing, like a serpent coiling to strike. So. It wouldn't be much longer.
"Princess?"
"Lord?"
"The moment approaches. And still we haven't decided what to do with these people once they've served their purpose."
This was a discussion she had hoped to avoid, and yet had known to be inevitable. "I don't follow you."
"You know who they are and what they've done, Princess. This petty King. This sorcerer Varthlokkur. These carrion-eaters who orbit them." He indicated several of the King's men. "We have to decide what to do if we're successful."
Mist sighed. "They've dealt honorably with us, Lord Ch'ien." She couldn't tell him that they were her friends. A princess of the Dread Empire did not have friends. Not foreign friends.
"For their own ends. They hope to weaken the empire, to delay the inevitable day of reckoning. The King... He would destroy us if he could."
She could not deny that. She didn't try.
"Who knows what treacheries they have afoot, planned for the moment of our success."
Serpents wrestled in her bowels. She'd been too long in the west. She'd become infected with its softnesses. Damn that villain Valther! If he hadn't insinuated himself through the walls surrounding her emotions...
"You're in charge, Lord Ch'ien. Do whatever seems appropriate." She fixed her gaze on the map and tried not to think about what she had done. Moral abdication was as great a sin as any. After a time she left her seat and went downstairs, hoping a meal would ease her tension and soften her self-disgust.
One of the King's men dragged Mist out of her kitchen. He gobbled incoherently and pointed. Baffled, she allowed herself to be pulled to a window.
The east was afire again. Lord Kuo had begun moving. And she had been so tired, so dispirited, so self-involved that she hadn't felt it start. "Thank you." She hurried upstairs.
The air had changed. The old stink of fear and tension was gone. Now a different tenseness filled the place, the tension that develops just before the battle. The eager, wary tension of soldiers about to strike. Everyone was moving faster now, more crisply, with a bounce in their steps. They had forgotten their weariness. They paused when she entered the room. She waved them back to work.
"Reports are beginning to come in already," Lord Ch'ien said. "The indications are favorable."
"Good." She turned to one of Bragi's men. "Will you get the King?" She turned back. "What do we know?"
Some time later she glanced up from her ongoing conference and discovered that Varthlokkur had arrived. The wizard was surveying the room from a high seat against the north wall. He looked rested and alert. He would miss nothing.
The King arrived moments later. He spoke with several of his men. She watched him listen and nod, question, listen, and nod. He paused longest with the wizard. Then he came to her, and led her to the eastern end of the table. "Mist, do you know anything more about this business here?"
She felt almost relieved. About this she could speak the whole truth, could speak without having to worry about choosing each word. "We don't know. We've had one garbled message this morning. It said Northern and Eastern Armies still support us, but that they're too busy with the Deliverer to become directly involved."
"The Deliverer?"
She glanced up, startled. Varthlokkur had come over, as sudden as a surprise thunderstorm.
"The enemy chieftain out there. They call him the Deliverer. Some kind of prodigy, apparently. He's decimated Eastern Army. Northern Army and Eastern Army have decided to make a stand on the Tusghus."
"Uhm." Bragi studied the map, then glanced at Varthlokkur. "How come you're so interested?"
"Ethrian. He's out there somewhere."
"He's alive, then?"
Sweat sequined the wizard's forehead. He rubbed it away. Mist watched him closely. There was something here she hadn't been aware of before, some strain between the two men. Varthlokkur said, "I'm not sure. Intuition says yes."
"Maybe we can bring him home. Great for Nepanthe. A new daughter, then her lost son restored."
"I don't think so. This isn't the son she lost. If it is Ethrian, she won't want him back."
"You don't know her very well, then."
Mist became very attentive. Ethrian? Not dead?
What?... She examined the wizard. Never had she seen him so bleak.
"What is it?" the King demanded.
"I'll never tell her about this—if it's what I suspect. Forget I mentioned his name. She's had enough hurt from life."
Mist frowned. The man wasn't making sense.
"But... " the King said.
Varthlokkur interrupted. "She doesn't need the pain. All right? I don't want her to see her child grown into a monster. I warn you. Tell her and you've lost my help forever."
"Take it easy, man. I don't even know what you're talking about. Do you, Mist? What are you trying to do, Varthlokkur?"
Mist drifted over to Lord Ch'ien and related what she had heard. "I think you'd better send someone to see what's happening out there," she said. "This could be important."
Lord Ch'ien nodded, beckoned a reliable man from the messenger pool.
Mist turned back to the wizard and King just as Michael Trebilcock came into the room.
She'd never learned the details of Trebilcock's disappearance and sudden return. Evidently he had gone into the desert kingdom of Hammad al Nakir and found evidence linking the attack on General Liakopulos with the regime there.
The King waved to her. She went over. Bragi said, "Michael says there was an uprising in Throyes. Hsung put it down."
"I know."
"He says Hsung is going to deploy the Argonese army in his flanking counterattack against the Matayangans."
She was surprised. "Is that reliable news, Michael?"
"No. A rumor out of the Throyen command. But it's certainly his style."
"It is that. I'll accept it as fact." She stepped away. That wasn't good news. If Lord Hsung deployed the Argonese, then he would have troops of his own still free to resist her stroke. "Lord Ch'ien?" She explained. He looked grim.
She backed away to one of the chairs, sat watching the map. The long red arm thrusting into the empire's underbelly had begun to develop a waist near its root. Lord Kuo was going to amputate it, going to isolate a huge army in enemy territory. The Matayangans could not endure being cut off long.