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not, your honor. I am a free man by order of the Crown Prince. Find a scribe and have this read. You’ll learn the consequences of interfering with me.”
    The guard squinted at the paper in the sun glare. “The Crown Prince ...” He shrugged his bare shoulders as he yanked his spear from my grasp and used it to poke at the writing. “... I Suppose he is still that. And for the moment his seal will get you off, but by tomorrow sundown, I’d advise you not rely on it. The Twenty will have something to say in the matter.” He spat onto the dusty paving stones and wheeled his mount.
    In a single heartbeat the insistent frenzy of the mobbed travelers took on a more ominous cast: furtive conversations, racing troops, shouts. From inside the walls came a constant wailing that grated on the spirit like steel on glass. On the stone towers where the red banners of the Derzhi lion hung limp and heavy in the hot air, something was missing—the gold banners with the silver falcon that always hung in place beside the red, the banners of the Denischkar heged, Aleksander’s family. In their place were banners of solid red. Everywhere solid red banners ... mourning banners ... Sweet Verdonne!
    I bulled through a knot of beggars to follow the mounted Derzhi. “Please tell me the news, your honor. I’ve been deep in the desert and not heard.”
    He looked over his scarred shoulder and sniggered. “You must be the only man in the Empire, then. The Emperor is dead by an assassin’s blade. The Twenty are gathering to see to the succession.” The man stabbed his spear into my freedom paper, which had fluttered to the paving stones, and offered it back to me. “I’ve heard it was Prince Aleksander himself who did it.”

CHAPTER 4
    Aleksander was not dead. The tale of the streets, that the Emperor’s murderer—what was left of him—hung in the marketplace, had frozen my heart. But it was a Frythian slave who had been found kneeling on the Emperor’s vast bed, bathed in royal blood, and who now provided a vultures’ feast in the heart of Zhagad.
    Frythia was likely already in flames. Soon there would be nothing left of the dignified little mountain kingdom, no structure, no artifact, no animal, and certainly no human with any identifiable drop of Frythian blood. But all that was no matter to the people of Zhagad. Every man and woman of them was convinced that the slave but did Prince Aleksander’s bidding. Certainly those who stood gaping at the grisly remnants of treachery had no doubts about whom to blame.... couldn’t wait for the gods to crown him ... I heard they argued ... threats were made ... Not enough his father let him rule ... the Emperor was ready to revoke his anointing ... I was beginning to think he’d come to manhood ... No rumor of a kanavar, no supposition drifting through the streets that perhaps Aleksander was the target and not the arrow. The finest imperial torturers had succeeded in eliciting only one word from the assassin, so observers said. “Aleksander.” After seven hours they’d had to stop, else there would have been too little of the prisoner left to do sufficient screaming when they disemboweled and dismembered him in the marketplace.
    I needed to fly into the imperial palace of Zhagad. To enter the walled inner ring of the royal city, much less the palace, one needed a Derzhi sponsor, and I doubted Aleksander was available. Despite my dislike of alien cravings and the feelings of vulnerability as the senses I had honed for thirty-eight years were altered, bird form had its distinct uses. So I crammed myself into a deserted alcove—a stifling, nasty place at the end of a beggars’ alley—and considered shifting. Settle yourself, fool, I thought. Find him, warn him, and get away before you kill him.
    As always, I constructed the shape of my desire inside my head, summoned melydda from the deep center of my being, and tried to release my physical boundaries. The change should have happened