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throne.
    “But we have gone astray. Continue explaining this web that you thought I was going to cut through.”
    “My apologies. You’re right. I stand in implacable opposition to your emperor and am unwilling to hold my tongue as to what I think of his rule. Therefore, by his laws and lights, I am a traitor and should be executed.
    “However, those who govern Kallio have had the sense to realize a murdered scholar also can provide an excellent martyr and rallying point. That is why I’ve been permitted to live and never even brought to trial.
    “I thought, when I was summoned and saw these two, you’d decided on a soldierly solution of dealing with today’s problems today and tomorrow’s when they arrive.”
    “I think, Seer,” I said, “you’re being very naive about soldiers, at least those who command.”
    “Maybe,” he said, and I could hear disinterest in his tones. “I’ve spent little time with them.”
    He drained his glass, rose, and, without asking, refilled it. I made no objection. If I could get him drunk, he might speak freely. I knew exactly what the emperor had meant when he told me to use any means necessary to get his question answered: There were torture chambers in the caverns below, and men, both Kallian and Nician, skilled at using the rusty-red implements in them.
    “So I was in error,” Hami said. “I’ll admit, by the way, that I’m not terribly discontented with my lot. I’m well fed, I don’t have to worry about a landlord or tax collector, I have access to almost all books I need, save those that deal with sorcery, and my theories had already passed well beyond what’s in the grimoires. I’m well beyond finding my pleasures in a tavern or a wench’s arms, so that doesn’t matter. What, then, do you wish of me? I assume it has something to do with the fact we Kallians aren’t knuckling under to your emperor as we should.
    “You know,” he continued without prompting, and I realized the wine was hitting him, “I was a friend of Mikael Yanthlus, Chardin Sher’s wizard, at least as much as he allowed a friend. Mikael was a man who was only interested in power and sorcery, and anyone or anything who didn’t add to his knowledge of either was a waste of time.
    “I thought him the greatest sorcerer of all time. But I was wrong. The Seer Tenedos was his master. Although I wonder what price was paid.”
    “Price?”
    “I’ve read accounts of what happened in that final siege, and even talked to survivors of that awful night when the demon rose out of the mountain to destroy Chardin Sher and Mikael. Where do you think he came from?”
    “I don’t think, I know,” I said. “He was summoned by the Seer Tenedos.”
    “And at what cost?” Hami said, peering owlishly at me.
    Tenedos had answered that before I volunteered to creep into Chardin Sher’s castle with a certain potion. I decided to tell Hami what the seer had told me that storm-ridden night.
    “The emperor said that the force, the demon, required him to show some degree of sincerity, that someone he loved had to perform a service,” I said. “He said I was that someone, and so I did what was wished.”
    “He told you no more?” Hami asked skeptically.
    Tenedos had also said there’d be a greater price, but one that didn’t have to be paid for time to come. Perhaps I shouldn’t have told Hami this, but I did.
    “What do you think that will be?” he said, a debater’s smile on his face as he followed up on his opening.
    “I don’t know,” I said. “I know as little of demons as you do of soldiers.”
    “Fairly put,” Hami said. “I don’t, by the by, suggest you remind the man who styles himself emperor about what we’ve been talking about, for horrors such as he summoned strike heavy bargains, and the magicians who strike such bargains generally don’t wish to be reminded of them.
    “And I’m running on, and this has little to do with what you called me for.”
    I asked him the