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while the kraggin was real, and so was the suffering it inflicted. To want that to go on, for any reason, was unconscionable. And it wasn’t as if there had been no opportunity for others to act. Gillard had done nothing for all these six months, after all, still waiting, he said, for the development of an experimental harpoon with an exploding tip. “No need to risk men and ships until we know we can kill it,” he maintained. Meanwhile, the height of the trading season slipped away as more and more lives were ruined.
    Absently he reached for a wilted rose blossom fallen from the flower arrangement at the sideboard’s end, catching himself just in time. With a muttered oath, he impaled the bloom with his dagger, uncaring that the blade point drove into the sideboard’s polished wood. It was by now one of many such point marks.
    Immediately the staffid uncurled from its disguised position, reverting to its normal tricolor of blue, gray, and black. Suppressing a shudder of revulsion, he drew the point free of the wood, the staffid’s legs rippling wildly, its multisegmented carapace arching back and forth as it tried to free itself. The cursed things had invaded around the time the kraggin had taken up residence in the bay and were everywhere, disguising themselves as fallen flowers, wadded papers, balls of lint or string, rocks, jewelry, even morsels of food. They were disgusting and annoying, their bites producing itchy red welts that lasted weeks. People had taken to hanging swags of onions near their doors and windows to ward them, but the plague would take him before Simon stooped to that!
    “Blasted vermin!” he muttered, casting the creature into the fire. It writhed frantically as the flames consumed it, flaring a harsh, bright blue amidst the gold and amber, and he watched it die with perverse satisfaction. Would that all his troubles could be so easily dispatched!
    Snatching up his drink, he collapsed in the overstuffed chair before the hearth as the birdcage clock on the mantel struck the hour in tinny, chiming beats. Midnight already. No rockets. No word. The ships were dead.
    So why did he feel this sense of growing doom? And how could Gillard be so oblivious to it? Even after the Mataians’ almost-success today, the young king had waved off Simon’s concern with that annoying, limp-wristed gesture of disdain he’d recently acquired. Sipping his brandy with an amused smile, he’d even suggested the Mataio was right, that it was all the Terstans’ fault and a purge wouldn’t be so bad. His three little lordlings, without whom he never went anywhere, had laughed, but Simon was long past being intimidated by ignorant young louts. He told Gillard sternly that if he did not get serious about the responsibilities of his station, he could very well lose it. To which Gillard had only huffed. “And who’s going to take it from me? You, Uncle?”
    Which his louts thought even funnier than his earlier remark. They’d gone off to the gaming tables after that, singing and laughing as if twenty good men had not died today, as if a monster didn’t still prowl the bay outside their windows and there were no religious fanatics drooling to seize control of the realm.
    The brandy’s warm fire chased down Simon’s gullet, driving away the chill he’d gained from being outside but doing little to alleviate the chill that gripped his heart. He stared gloomily at the life-sized portrait of his grandfather, Ravelin Kalladorne, glowering down at him from above the mantel. Tall and lean and blond with the dark Kalladorne brows and hawkish nose, Ravelin was a man’s man, the last real warrior-king in Kiriath. He’d worn his blond hair short, with a close-trimmed beard edging mouth and jaw. No courtly frippery for him—he’d been painted in his hunting leathers astride his favorite stallion, a huge, ill-tempered bay that had terrified Simon as a boy. Those were the days of the Chesedhan wars, and Ravelin was a strong,