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well-being of all Vallia.”
    ‘That is sooth. Tell me, from whom do you come?”
    “We represent the Racters.”
    “That I know. But who sent you? Who is still alive who commands your allegiance among the black and whites?”
    “Those whom you met in Natyzha Famphreon’s garden, and others. We are a strong and virile party, and—”
    “Spare me the boasting. Layco Jhansi will no doubt say the same of his powers.”
    “That cramph!” burst out Strom Luthien. His narrow face betrayed all the bile in him. “He should be strung up by the heels and left to rot.”
    ‘Tell me, Strom Luthien. What does Natyzha Famphreon say to the new emperor? Or did she not give you a private message?”
    Luthien allowed his thin dark moustache to lift at one corner. “Aye, she did. I give it to you under the code of heraldry.”
    I nodded. “Speak.”
    “When a leem leads a ponsho flock, the chavonths gather. But it is the Werstings who take the flesh.”
    I did not laugh. The brazen old hussy! At least, she recognized that I was in sober truth comparable to a leem, a powerful and elemental force of destruction imprisoned in human guise and apostrophized as a leem, an eight-legged hunting beast of superabundant energy and incredible ferocity. She knew I was not the fake, the pseudo Hyr-Jikai, the publicity-created Prince of Power without a shred of Jikai about him that so many people in Vallia and other parts still believed me to be.
    And, as you will readily perceive, that did not verge on megalomania, on overweening pride, or on puffed-up vanity. No, by Krun! It was all those horrendous things rolled into one and spread out, like a mirror of truth, for me to stare at my own dark reflection and recoil from — if I still had the morality.
    But, I sensed dimly that I must distinguish between the sins of evil self-importance and a too-crazed ego-mania, and a sober understanding that to do the things I had set my hand to would demand, must demand, a man prepared to accept the darker destinies of humanity as well as the lighter.
    These thoughts were not pleasant, and Strom Luthien moved back a pace, his hand falling to the empty scabbard. He no doubt thought my displeasure had been occasioned by the words of Natyzha he had relayed. Well, he was wrong. But I did not disillusion him.
    “Those are the words of San Blarnoi, I believe,” I said in that old nutmeg-grating voice. “Very well. Whatever I may decide about this offer of an alliance, there remains this. You may carry back to your masters this word: ‘A man pleads with his wife to do something and she refuses on the ground he is giving her orders.’” I glared hotly at the Racters. “You may tell all the Racters that the new emperor in Vondium is the emperor. There is no other. All their puppets have tangled strings. And there are regiments of fighting men with shears to untangle them — finally.”
    Strom Luthien knew me of old. I do not think he had heard me talk like this before. He had not witnessed the gradual emergence of Jak the Drang.
    And, I admit, and with perhaps not enough shame, that I welcomed the chance to let the Racters know the true position.
    Luthien swallowed down and got out a few words.
    “We will carry your message — majister.”
    There was no sarcasm in that last word.
    I nodded and left them. Before I could face the embassy from Layco Jhansi — and he deserved to swing high, as my men said — I went along to our private rooms. Delia was not there, for which I was thankful. I bathed my face and then found a cup of water and drank that, and spat, and so, pulling my tunic straight, marched off for the anteroom to the Samphron Hall.
    This Layco Jhansi... His province was Vennar, immediately to the east of the Black Mountains, a land that gave him an ample income, being lush and fertile in areas which afforded good husbandry and barren in others, where mining brought silver and alkwoin and other valuable minerals to swell his coffers. His colors