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assumption over evening. The fire was long gray, no one left awake interested in tending it. In the corner Bonsoir and Barley had fallen asleep leaning against each other. The stoat had one arm around his old friend and the other coiled protectively over a jug of liquor. The badger snored loudly enough to awaken anyone not in a drunken stupor. Happily this was exactly how Boudica found herself, passed out behind the counter. Gertrude and Cinnabar were still at the table, drinking quietly. The Captain was nowhere to be seen.
    Reconquista’s bar had seen better days, though the rat himself, collapsed on the back porch, didn’t seem to mind. Most of the windowpanes were unbroken. No permanent structural damage had been done. There weren’t any corpses to dispose of. Still, the bartender would have work to do when he woke, shattered jugs and empty bottles and overturned chairs and overturned tables and green stains on the walls and brown stains on the floors, both emitting odors that, as a rule, were best confined to an outhouse.
    “Funny thing about it,” Cinnabar began softly, “I didn’t like the Elder.”
    “I could never tell one from the other,” Gertrude admitted.

Chapter 19: The Power Behind the Throne
    Mephetic had just left his office when the messenger arrived, and he was in an off mood. He was often in an off mood these days, weighed down by the endless bureaucratic details involved in being High Chancellor—grain harvests, floundering tax revenue, banditry, relations with neighboring kingdoms. When he’d organized the coup that had deposed the Captain and his pet claimant five years earlier, he had imagined his life involving more drunken bacchanals and fewer hours double-checking the sums of petty functionaries. Owning the crown, Mephetic had discovered—or, more accurately, owning the creature who owned it—was not all it was cracked up to be. Needless to say, the toad himself was no help. Most of the time he was barely awake.
    So perhaps it was understandable that Mephetic’s first reaction upon discovering that his old nemesis was not only still alive but actively working toward his downfall was not fear, or anger, or even anxiety—it was outright excitement. He clutched the letter to his breast, and a slow smile stretched across his jaws. He hadn’t expected he’d ever need to make use of the traitor again, but he’d been paying him a bit by way of upkeep, just in case of this eventuality. The Captain’s body had never been found, after all. When he threw the last handful of dirt on the mouse’s coffin, then he’d be certain. Not before.
    On his way to the cellars Mephetic caught himself in a mirror, spent a moment reflecting on his reflection, and decided he was not displeased. It had been years since there was a challenge to his position, and years before that since any wetwork had been required of him; most days he didn’t even bother to carry a gun. But he had kept in shape—the mask of his face was still a vibrant black, and his reek was sharp as old cheese. He nodded to himself. If the mouse was coming, he’d find a fit adversary.
    More than one in fact, Mephetic thought as he headed toward the officer’s mess.
    A long walk (the castle was a large place) found the skunk in one of the many sumptuous quarters of the vast estate: walls with bright watercolor murals, antique furniture, bottles strewn over the floor. Brontë reclined on some couches in one corner. A sleek, handsome fox, her fur bright red with fetching streaks of white, her claws neat and sharp and clean. Above her forehead was pinned a bright purple ribbon. Leaning against the wall behind her was a double-barreled blunderbuss, filigreed and shaped to fit her paw. For a smaller creature it would have been a shotgun, but for Brontë it functioned effectively enough as a pistol. It was a lovely looking thing, and Brontë liked using it whenever appropriate, and in a good number of situations where it strictly speaking