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manservant, who would have the unenviable job of waking up the emperor of Isavalta.
    All of which would take some time. Bridget now allowed Richikha to strip off her sodden coat and drape a dry one over her shoulders. She had to admit it felt better.
    “Thank you,” she remembered to say as she strode across the cobbled courtyard. A few lights looked down on her passage. One of those lights would be Sakra. He had not told Bridget he would be waiting up for her. There was no need. They both knew it would be so. If her news was not so dire, that knowledge would have made Bridget smile.
    As they reached the main doors, the guards were ready to pull open the great portals and servants waited inside with lamps to light the way up the grand staircase to the imperial floor.
    Richikha deftly relieved Bridget of her new coat. “With your permission, mistress …?” she began. Bridget nodded and the serving woman scurried away toward Bridget’s room to deal with both the wet and dry outer garments.
    Bridget entered the imperial antechamber. The doors to the apartments themselves were still closed, but the guards and pages on duty looked quite alert. Evidently, Prathad had already completed part of her errand, because Sakra waited here as well.
    Sakra was a dark man with eyes the color of amber. His long hair was parted into dozens of small braids. They spilled down his back, drawn into a tidy bundle with red ribbon. This was the mark of a sorcerer from his far southern homeland of Hastinapura. Each braid was part of some spell that would be released if he unbound it. Despite his foreign origins, he wore the clothes of a noble of Isavalta — a wine-colored kaftan and a sable sash and pantaloons tucked into leather boots.
    “What’s happened, Bridget?”
    Bridget glanced toward the guards and held up her hand. Sakra understood and asked no more. He just touched her hand briefly in acknowledgment of the pallor he surely saw on her face.
    Just then the lord sorcerer, Daren Dobrilosyn Abukanvin, rounded the corner with Prathad two steps behind. Unlike Sakra, Lord Daren had obviously been roused from his sleep. His clothes, hair, and beard were all disordered and he was attempting to smooth them down as he strode forward.
    “What is it?” he demanded. “Is it the Vixen?”
    There was no time for Bridget to answer. A liveried footman opened the doors and stood aside, thumping his staff once on the floor.
    “Their Imperial Majesties will hear you now.”
    The footman stood aside. Lord Daren made one more attempt at smoothing down his wild hair and brushing his sleeves into some semblance of neatness as he entered the room. Bridget and Sakra followed close behind him.
    The reception chamber of the imperial apartments was grand in the old Isavaltan style. That, to Bridget’s mind, meant chiefly that it was cold and stony. The lush tapestries on the walls did little to screen out the drafts seeping across the floor. The buttresses and arches with their frescoes and divine imagery were artistically interesting but they offered no warmth or comfort. The firepit, for all it was a solid bed of coals, did little to help.
    Mikkel, the young emperor of Isavalta, stood beside his wife, the Empress Ananda. Mikkel was a handsome youth — tall, fair, with broad shoulders and the beginnings of a curling beard. Ananda was from Hastinapura, as was her sorcerer, Sakra. She was dark of skin and hair. Her amber eyes slanted above her high cheekbones.
    As usual, a small army of servants swarmed around the imperial couple, lighting candles and lamps, setting chairs near the firepit, decanting strong wine and mixing it with water, just in case this meeting went on long enough that refreshment was required.
    Bridget and those who entered with her began to kneel, as was required by Isavaltan etiquette, but Mikkel stopped them with a raised hand.
    “What has happened, mistress?” he asked Bridget. “What did you learn?”
    Bridget straightened up,