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the ones I’d navigated on the way in. The same could be said for the stairwell he manoeuvred me into and the descending levels he steered me down.
    Without its prince and the bustle that had gone with his residency, the palace was sunk in a silence that worked wonderfully to channel any sound. By the second flight I could clearly make out voices, drifting from some distant other wing. One of them I felt sure belonged to Alvantes, and I could make out enough of his interlocutor’s replies to realise their voice was familiar as well, unlikely as that seemed.
    On the ground floor, the landscape changed: here was the region intended for eyes other than the palace’s regular inhabitants, and the decor became suitably more grand and gaudy. My guard led me along wide passages and on through the sculpted gardens that dominated the interior yard, thoughtfully choosing a path where rich-scented flowers climbed around great edifices of cane.
    By the time we drew near the far side, the conversation ahead was growing discernible. The first sentence I heard a part of distinctly was Alvantes’s, “...an amicable solution. Without shedding of blood.”
    “I think that point is past,” replied the second voice.
    “And food? Fresh water? Supplies of medicine?”
    “Oh, yes. We have all of those. Enough for a very long time.”
    Alvantes’s next comment was muted, and I missed it. The reply, however, was perfectly clear. “So you see? You have nothing at all to bargain with.”
    It was the note of contempt that did it, with its particular undercurrent of arrogance. Of course I knew that voice. Hadn’t I spent days in its owner’s company? Commander Ludovoco, of the Crown Guard: the man who’d escorted Alvantes and I to Pasaeda, only to arrest us on its doorstep; the man I’d last seen delivering the King’s declaration of war and plunging Altapasaeda into disarray. I’d seen enough of Ludovoco to know that he was a conniving bastard, a political thug with his own distorted agenda and scant regard for the wellbeing of others.
    I’d given no thought, though, to where he’d disappeared to after dropping his wasp’s nest into our laps. It should have been obvious. Where else than here, where he could work best to be a thorn in the side of the Altapasaedan defence? Alvantes had come here to reason with the Palace Guard, to try to persuade them to stand down now that Mounteban was no longer a threat – and perhaps it might have worked, had they not known that relief was mere days away.
    All of which meant that Alvantes had just placed his life in his enemy’s hands. Under the circumstances, I doubted he was going to be pleased to see me.
    There was a curtained aperture ahead and my guard shoved me hard into it, without quite releasing my arm, so that for a moment I was afraid I’d get tangled in its thick folds. Then I was through, and gawping at a large room that opened far above to the sky. It was a sort of patio, with a sunken area in the middle meant for players or musicians perhaps, and around the outside, seats, tables and decorated alcoves.
    On the outer tier stood Ludovoco, along with twenty or so men from the Palace Guard. Half a dozen of them bore crossbows, which they held levelled at the occupants of the lower level – those being Alvantes and five of his city guardsmen. Beside Ludovoco was a man I distantly recognised from my time living in Altapasaeda, someone I knew only through reputation and the occasional public glimpse: Commander Ondeges, head of the Palace Guard. He was older than Ludovoco, his black hair flecked thickly with grey. Other than that, I could tell little about him; he had one of those chiselled, purposefully expressionless faces that I was starting to consider a prerequisite for dangerous positions of authority.
    “Commander.” My guard addressed not Ondeges but Ludovoco, which I found surprising. He sounded not only more alert than he had upstairs but conspicuously nervous. “I found this