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would rise, Khovala would march and we would send troops across the Great River to join in the attack from the imperial province of Thermin, whose governor just happened to be the father of Nath of Kochwold. It all fit perfectly.
    And now passions could not wait, and the couple had eloped.
    Enevon coughed. “If the Lady Fransha is married off to Fridil Goss, a puppet of Natyzha Famphreon’s, Mavindeul will not dare declare for us, for they will get no support from Khovala.”
    “I suppose,” I said in a vague way, “Khovala will not support, anyway, seeing their vad’s son has the girl he wants?”
    “It will not rest with them. Mavindeul holds the key.”
    A vad is the rank of nobility below a kov, which roughly equates with a duke, and a vad is very high on the tree of rank and power and prestige. Old Antar Voinderam wasn’t going to stick his neck out for nothing, and nothing would be all he would get if he tried to march against Natyzha Famphreon without the support of Mavindeul. Rather — he would get something — a great many dead soldiers in his forces.
    The situation was perfectly simple. It was not at all complicated. After all, this was just the kind of problem your real emperor would tackle and solve twice a day before breakfast.
    But — I wasn’t a real emperor — at least, not in my own eyes. I was just plain Dray Prescot, tackling a colossal task with all the wits and cunning I may be blessed with. The sooner I could wrap up this business of liberating the Empire of Vallia and hand the lot over to my son Drak in working order, the better.
    By Zair, yes!
    And together with that, there was no denying the fascination of handling these problems. How did you perform the balancing act necessary to gain your ends? How did you please everybody? Well, that can’t be done, of course. There is a pull, a dark tide in men, that urges them to meddle with the lives and destinies of other people. We felt that we were acting for the right reasons in attempting to free Vallia from the hordes of mercenaries and slavers who had descended on the islands in the Time of Troubles. We believed that these people gathered together under the new flag of Vallia. The moment I suspected the tiniest suggestion of corrupting power — I’d be off, by Vox, off and away and out of it.
    It is not necessarily true that absolute power corrupts; it does do so, lamentably, but it is not a rule that it must.
    Anyway — how many men-in history have possessed real, true, genuine absolute power? Perhaps it is having only the illusion of absolute power that corrupts. I did know that the passions of young lovers were, if not more important than, at least certainly as important as, the devious political maneuvers we were forced to in our struggle to clean up the mess in Vallia.
    Rather heavily, I said, “Send everyone suitable to try to trace Ortyg and Fransha. We can hope they have left a trail. I’ll go and see Antar Voinderam if he is still at his villa here. And I shall try to catch Fransha’s father, Larghos, before he departs.”
    I closed the next file on the desk. It concerned the Opaz-forsaken zorca horn rot, a frightful business.
    “I don’t like the idea of Larghos sending to Drak’s City to hire assassins.”

Chapter four
    Concerning the Power of Phu-Si-Yantong
    “See to it, Vanki,” I said to the empire’s chief spymaster.
    “Yes, majister.”
    His flat and chilling voice was just the same after all this time. His face, pale, composed, held that containment of himself, that inscrutable knowingness, that perhaps he did not realize revealed so much. This was a man who lived in the shadows and was of the darkness. And in contact with people in the everyday run of rubbing elbows they would regard him and know that this man lived within himself. He had proved a master of his trade. Also, and for this I forgave him much, including his part in dumping me under a thorn ivy bush in the Hostile Territories, he was devoted to