‘And it’s signed “Krager”,’ Vanion concluded.

Kalten smashed his fist into the wall, his face rigid with fury.

‘That’s enough of that!’ Vanion snapped.

‘What are we going to do?’ Kalten demanded. ‘We have to do something!’

‘We’re not going to jump eight feet into the air and come down running, for a start,’ Vanion told him.

‘Where’s Mirtai?’ Kring’s voice had a note of sudden alarm.

‘She’s perfectly all right, Domi,’ Sarabian assured him. ‘She was a little upset when she found out what happened.’

‘A little?’ Oscagne murmured. ‘It took twelve men to subdue her. She’s in her room, Domi Kring – chained to the bed, actually. There are some guards there as well to keep her from doing herself any injury.’

Kring abruptly turned and left Melidere’s bedroom.

‘We’re tiring you, aren’t we, Baroness?’ Sarabian said then.

‘Not in the least, your Majesty,’ she replied in a cool voice. She looked around at them. ‘It’s a bit cramped in here. Why don’t we adjourn to the sitting-room? I’d imagine we’ll be most of the night at this, so we might as well be comfortable.’ She threw back her blankets and started to get out of bed.

Stragen gently restrained her. Then he picked her up.

‘I can walk, Stragen,’ she protested.

‘Not while I’m around, you can’t.’ Stragen’s customary expression of civilized urbanity was gone as he looked around at the others, and it had been replaced with one of cold, tightly suppressed rage. ‘One thing, gentlemen,’ he told them. ‘When we catch up with these people, Elron’s mine. I’ll be very put out with anybody who accidentally kills him.’

Baroness Melidere’s eyes were quite content, and there was a faint smile on her face as she laid her head on Stragen’s shoulder.

Caalador was waiting for them in the sitting-room. His knees and elbows were muddy, and there were cobwebs in his hair. ‘I found it, your Majesty,’ he reported to the Emperor. ‘It comes out in the basement of that barracks the Church Knights have been using.’ He looked appraisingly at Sparhawk. ‘I’d heard you were back,’ he said. ‘We’ve managed to pick up a little information for you.’

‘I appreciate that, Caalador,’ Sparhawk replied quietly. The big Pandion’s almost inhuman calm had them all more than a little on edge.

‘Stragen was a bit distracted after what happened to the Baroness here,’ Caalador reported, ‘so I was left more or less to my own devices. I took some fairly direct steps. The ideas were all mine, so don’t blame him for them.’

‘You don’t have to do that, Caalador,’ Stragen said, carefully tucking a blanket round Melidere’s shoulders. ‘You didn’t do anything I didn’t approve of.’

‘I take it that there were a few atrocities,’ Ulath surmised.

‘Let me start at the beginning,’ Caalador said, brushing his hands through his hair, trying to dislodge the cobwebs. ‘One of the men we’d been planning to kill during the Harvest Festival managed to evade my cut-throats, and he sent me a message offering to exchange information for his life. I agreed to that, and he told me something I didn’t know about. We knew that there were tunnels under the lawns here in the imperial compound, but what we didn’t know is that the ground under the whole city’s honeycombed with more tunnels. That’s how Krager and his friends got into the imperial grounds, and that’s how they took the Queen and her maid out.’

‘Prithee, good Master Caalador, stay a moment,’ Xanetia said. I have seen into the memories of the Minister of the Interior, and he had no knowledge of such tunnels.’

‘That wouldn’t be hard to explain, Anarae,’ Patriarch Emban told her. ‘Ambitious underlings quite often conceal things from their superiors. Teovin, Director of the Secret Police, probably had his eye on Kolata’s position.’

‘That’s most likely it, your Grace,’ Caalador agreed. ‘Anyway, my informant knew the location of some of the tunnels, and I put men down there to look around for more while I questioned various members of the Secret Police who were in custody. My methods were fairly direct, and the ones who survived the questioning were more than happy to co-operate.

‘The tunnels were very busy on the night the Queen was abducted. The diplomats who were forted up in the Cynesgan Embassy knew about the scheme, and they realized that we’d kick down their walls as soon as we found out that the Queen was gone. They tried to escape through the tunnels, but I already had men down in those rat-holes. There were a number of noisy encounters, and we either rounded up or killed just about the entire embassy staff. The Ambassador himself survived, and I let him watch while I interrogated several under-secretaries. I’m very fond of Queen Ehlana, so I was quite firm with them.’ He looked at Sephrenia. I don’t think I need to go into too much detail,’ he added.

‘Thank you,’ Sephrenia murmured.

‘The Ambassador didn’t really know all that much,’ Caalador continued apologetically, ‘but he did tell me that Scarpa and his friends were going south from here – which may or may not have been a ruse. His Majesty ordered the ports of Micae and Saranth sealed, and he put Atan patrols on the road from Tosa to the coast, just to be on the safe side. Nothing’s turned up yet, so Scarpa either got away ahead of us, or he’s gone down a hole someplace nearby.’

The door opened, and Kring rejoined them, his face gloomy.

‘Did you unchain her?’ Tynian asked him.

‘That wouldn’t be a good idea right now, friend Tynian. She feels personally responsible for the Queen’s abduction. She wants to kill herself. I took everything with any kind of sharp edge out of the room, but I don’t think it’s really safe to unshackle her just yet.’

‘Did you get that spoon of hers away from her?’ Talen asked.

Kring’s eyes went wide. ‘Oh, God!’ he exclaimed, bolting for the door.

‘If he’d only yell at us or bang his fist against the wall or something,’ Berit murmured to Khalad the next morning when they gathered once again in the blue-draped sitting-room. ‘All he does is sit there.’

‘Sparhawk keeps his feelings to himself,’ Khalad replied.

‘It’s his wife we’re talking about, Khalad! He sits there like a lump. Doesn’t he have any feelings at all?’




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