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next step, open the doors and fulfill the mission of my god.”
         This is what you are brought here for.
         “Just because it looks like I can do this thing, does that mean I should?” I asked quietly. 
         You are the servant to a god.  You must learn to separate yourself from what you, as His instrument, may or may not do.  You must have faith.
         “Faith, or pain, you mean.” 
         If that is how you must understand it.
         “That doesn’t sound very much like free will.”
         If a god could be frustrated, as I am sure a god could, then I could sense it in War.  He was not used to having His will questioned.
         You are already aware that you cannot trust Tartan Stowe , he told me.
         “Yes,” I said. 
         And that only you can be trusted for that seat and that power .
         He didn’t need me to answer, so I didn’t.  I had already decided on it, but the idea that War had made the effort to tell me…
         Yes , he added.  Finally, you have come to a glimpse of what I have in store for you.  

 
     
     
     
    Chapter Three
     
    Consequences
     
     
     
     
     
         The second day of the month Eveave began cold, dry and bright.  Our beloved monarch marked that morning with another drunken display, and that evening my slave girl and my daughter entered the city.
         Glennen got liquored up and decided that he needed more children, so he went hunting for women through the palace.  He actually had a troupe of them running for their safety and their own lives through the halls and back rooms of the palace before I could be notified.
         I didn’t have to hit him to subdue him, but I came close.  I stood in his way and told him that he would have to go through me to get to them.
         He swung, but he couldn’t focus so he couldn’t hit.  I pushed his hand aside a first, a second and a third time.  He called me a treasonous bastard and said he would have me hung.
         “Who are you going to give the order to?” I asked him.  “Who is carrying out your orders for you now?”
         That made him pause.
        “I’ll tell you, I am,” I said.  “And I do everything for you, including wiping your ass when I have to.  And I have to do it, because you’ve chased everyone else away.”
         He looked right at me, right into my eyes, and had one of those moments of lucidity that drunks sometimes have.
         “They have all abandoned me?” he asked.  “They all left me, like Alekanna did?”
         I stared into his eyes, made him look back at me and said, “She didn’t leave you, our enemies killed her.  And your friends didn’t leave you, you chased them away.”
         He collapsed against me, sweating and stinking and, after a few moments, sobbing.  He knotted his fists in the material of my shirt, at my shoulders, and leaned his weight on me.  He swore that he didn’t like what he had become and would change.
         He went to sleep and, the next morning, started drinking again.  We moved all of the female staff where he couldn’t get at them.
         I had a better time with Shela’s arrival.  She acted happier to see me, and no one got hurt.
         I had her consult with the royal healers, hoping that she could repeat her success with Genna on the king.
         “You don’t understand these things, White Wolf,” she told me, “so you won’t understand why we can’t help him.”
         “Try me,” I said.
         We were in my Spartan room, already in the process of being made less Spartan by her addition of a bassinet, more furniture, some tapestries and a different bed.  We were sitting on a pile of quilts at the foot of our bed because Shela hadn’t decided on chairs for us.
         She sighed, taking Lee to her breast and doing this jiggle with her that she did when she was thinking.  She didn’t rock my daughter as much as