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disdainfully.
    “I heard you were a woman of action.” Iolanthe favored Kit with a pretty smile. “Do you know a knight named Derek Crownguard?”
    “I know of him. I’ve never met him. He is a Lord of the Rose from a wealthy family, who is vying with Gunthar uth Wistan for the leadership of the knighthood.”
    Politics might give Kitiara a headache, but she took care to keep herself informed as to what was happening in the nation she was about to conquer. “Crownguard is ambitious. A glory-seeker. He is a strict follower of the Oath and the Measure. He will not take a crap but that he first consults the Measure to make sure he’s doing it right.”
    “Crudely put, but accurate,” said Iolanthe.
    “This Crownguard is the key to the destruction of the knighthood,” said Ariakas.
    “You want me to have him killed?” Kitiara asked.
    She was speaking to Ariakas, but it was Iolanthe who responded with a shake of her head. She wore her long black hair shoulder-length with straight-cut bangs adorned by a slender gold band. Her thick hair swung when she moved her head, giving forth a hint of fragrant perfume. Her robes were made of black silk trimmed in gold, sewn together in layers so that the diaphanous, filmy fabric clung to her here and floated away from her there, providing a fleeting and tantalizing glimpse of brown flesh beneath. She wore golden bracelets on her arms and golden rings on her hands and around her ankles. Her feet were bare.
    Kitiara, by contrast, was clad in dragon armor with tall boots, and she smelled of sweat and of leather.
    “Assassination would make Derek Crownguard a hero,” said Iolanthe. “The knights need a hero right now and only a fool would provide them with one.”
    “Just tell her the plan, Iolanthe,” said Ariakas, who was growing impatient, “or rather I will do it myself. You have heard of dragon orbs?” he asked Kitiara.
    “The magical artifact that holds the elf king Lorac in thrall?”
    “Another orb like it has been discovered in Icereach. The Dragon Highlord of the White Wing, Feal-Thas, apparently just came across it while cleaning out his closet,” Ariakas said dryly.
    “You want me to go take it from him,” said Kit.
    Ariakas tapped his fingertips together. “No. Derek Crownguard should be the one to recover this orb.”
    Kitiara raised her eyebrows. Whatever she had expected, it wasn’t this. “Why is that, my lord?”
    “Because the orb will seize Crownguard, as it has seized the elf king, and bring him under our control. He will go back to Solamnia—the poison in the Solamnic well. Under our direction, he will lead the knights straight to ruin. This plan has the additional advantage of removing Derek from Solamnia during a critical time. You are familiar with Solamnics. What do you think?”
    What Kitiara thought was that a bold attack now on the High Clerist’s Tower could win the war, but Ariakas didn’t want to hear that, and Kitiara suddenly understood why. He hated his foes, the Solamnic knights, but as much as he hated them, so too did he believe in them. He believed their mythology. He believed the legend of the knight Huma and how he had driven the Dark Queen and her dragons back into the Abyss. He believed in the myth of the knights’ prowess and strength and he believed in their former glory. He had concocted this elaborate plan because, deep inside, he believed he could not defeat them militarily.
    Kitiara was under no such illusions. She was not a believer. She’d seen the knights in the person of her profligate father and she knew their shining silver armor was rusty and dented and that it creaked when they walked.
    This was all so clear to her, yet there was nothing she could do. What was equally clear was that if this scheme of Ariakas’s failed, if the dragonarmies lost the battle for Solamnia, she—as commander of the Blue Wing—would be blamed. Never mind that she had given Ariakas the winning strategy and he had turned it down.