‘Are all Elene thieves artists?’ Sarabian asked. ‘Talen paints, Stragen composes music, and Caalador’s a gifted actor.’

‘We do seem to attract talent, don’t we,’ Ehlana smiled.

‘Should I explain why there are so many of us on the dais?’ Sarabian asked, glancing at Mirtai and Engessa.

She shook her head. ‘Never explain. It’s a sign of weakness. I’ll enter on your arm, and they’ll all grovel.’

‘It’s called genuflectory prostration, Ehlana.’

‘Whatever.’ She shrugged. ‘When they get up again, we’ll be sitting there with our guards around us. That’s when you take over the meeting. Don’t even let Subat get started. We’ve got our own agenda today, and we don’t have time to listen to him babble about the prospects for the wheat harvest on the plains of Edom. How are you feeling?’

‘Nervous. I’ve never overthrown a government before.’

‘Neither have I, actually – unless you count what I did in the Basilica when I appointed Dolmant to the Archprelacy.’

‘She didn’t actually do that, did she, Sparhawk?’

‘Oh yes, your Majesty – all by herself. She was superb.’

‘Just keep talking, Sarabian,’ Ehlana told him. ‘If anyone tries to interrupt, shout him down. Don’t even pretend to be polite. This is our party. Don’t be conciliatory or reasonable. Be coldly furious instead. Are you any good at oratory?’

‘Probably not. They don’t let me speak in public very often – except at the graduation ceremonies at the university.’

‘Speak slowly. You tend to talk too fast. Half of any good oration lies in its cadence. Use pauses. Vary your volume from a shout down to a whisper. Be dramatic. Give them a good show.’

He laughed. ‘You’re a charlatan, Ehlana.’

‘Naturally. That’s what politics is all about – fraud, deceit, charlatanism.’

‘That’s dreadful!’

‘Of course. That’s why it’s so much fun.’

The brazen fanfares echoed back from the vaulted ceiling as each minister entered the throne-room, and they had the desired effect. The ministers in their silken mantles all seemed slightly awed by their own sublime importance, something many of them had overlooked or forgotten. They moved to their places with slow, stately pace, their expressions grave, even exalted. Pondia Subat, the Prime Minister, seemed particularly impressed with himself. He sat splendidly alone in a crimson-upholstered chair to one side of the dais upon which the thrones stood, looking imperially out at the other officials assembling in the chairs lining both sides of the broad central aisle.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Gashon sat with Teovin, the Director of the Secret Police, and several other ministers. There seemed to be a great deal of whispering going on in the little group.

‘That would probably be the opposition,’ Ehlana observed. ‘Teovin’s certainly involved, and the others are also most likely a part of it – to a greater or lesser degree.’ She turned to Talen, who stood directly behind her, wearing his page’s knee-britches. ‘Pay very close attention to that group,’ she instructed. ‘I want a report on their reactions. We should be able to determine their degree of guilt by the looks on their faces.’

‘Yes, my Queen.’

Then Itagne appeared briefly at the massive double doors to the throne-room and flicked his hand at Ulath, signaling that all of the relevant officials had arrived.

Ulath, who stood to one side of the dais, nodded and raised his Ogre-horn trumpet to his lips.

The room seemed to shudder into a shocked silence as the barbaric sound of the Ogre-horn, deep-toned and rasping, reverberated from the nacreous walls. The huge doors boomed shut, and two armored knights, one a Cyrinic all in white, and the other a Pandion all in black, placed themselves in front of the entryway.

The Prime Minister rose to his feet.

Ulath banged the butt of his axe on the floor three times to call for silence.

The Emperor winced.

‘What’s wrong, Sarabian?’ Mirtai asked him.

‘Sir Ulath just broke several of the floor-tiles.’

‘We can replace them with bone.’ She shrugged. ‘There should be quite a few bones lying around before the day’s over.’

‘Will the council please come to order?’ Pondia Subat intoned.

Ulath banged the floor again.

Sparhawk looked around the throne-room. Everyone was in place. Sephrenia, dressed in her white Styric robe, sat with Princess Danae and Caalador on the far side of the room. Xanetia, also in white, sat on the near side with Kalten and Berit. Melidere sat in a small gallery with the nine imperial wives. The clever baroness had carefully cultivated a friendship with Sarabian’s first wife, Cieronna, a member of one of the noblest houses of Tamul proper, and the mother of the crown prince. The friendship had by now grown so close that Melidere was customarily invited to attend state functions in the company of the empresses. Her presence among them this time had a serious purpose, however. Sarabian had a wife from each of the nine kingdoms, and it was entirely possible that some of them had been subverted. Sparhawk was fairly certain that the bare-breasted Valesian, Elysoun, was free of any political contamination. She was simply too busy for politics. The Tegan wife, Gahennas, a puritanical lady obsessed with her personal virtue and her staunch republicanism, would probably not even have been approached by conspirators. Torellia of Arjuna, and Chacole of Cynesga, however, were highly suspect. They had both established what might best be called personal courts, liberally sprinkled with nobles from their homelands. Melidere had been instructed to keep a close eye on those two in particular for signs of unusual reactions to the revelation of Zalasta’s true affiliation.

Sparhawk sighed. It was all so complicated. Friends and enemies all looked the same. In the long run, it might turn out that Xanetia’s unusual gift would prove more valuable than a sudden offer of aid from an entire army.

Vanion, who had unobtrusively stationed himself with the knights lining the walls, reached up and first lowered, then raised, his visor. It was the signal that all their forces were in place. Stragen, who was with his trumpeters behind the dais, nodded briefly in acknowledgement.

Then Sparhawk looked rather closely at Zalasta, the unknowing guest of honor at this affair. The Styric, his eyes apprehensive, sat among the ministers, his white robe looking oddly out of place among all the bright-colored silk mantles. He quite obviously knew that something was afoot, and just as obviously had no idea what it might be. That was something, anyway. At least no one in the inner circle had been subverted. Sparhawk irritably shook that thought off. Under the circumstances, a certain amount of wary suspicion was only natural, but left unchecked it could become a disease. He made a sour face. About one more day of this and he’d begin to suspect himself.

‘The council will now come to order!’ Pondia Subat repeated.

Ulath broke some more tiles.

‘By command of his Imperial Majesty, Emperor Sarabian, this council is called to order!’

‘Good God, Subat,’ Sarabian groaned, half to himself, ‘will you destroy the floor entirely?’

‘Gentlemen, his Imperial Majesty, Sarabian of Tamuli!’

A single trumpet voiced a clear, ringing theme of majestically descending notes. Then another joined the first to repeat the theme a third of an octave higher – then another trumpet another third higher. Then, in a great crescendo and still higher, the musicians all joined in to fill the throne-room with shimmering echoes.

‘Impressive,’ Sarabian noted. ‘Do we go in now?’

‘Not yet,’ Ehlana told him. ‘The music changes. That’s when we start. Pay attention to my hand on your arm. Let me set the pace. Don’t jump when we get to the thrones. Stragen’s got a whole brass band hidden in various parts of the room. The cl**ax will be thunderous. Draw yourself up, throw your shoulders back, and look regal. Try your very best to look like a God.’

‘Are you having fun, Ehlana?’

She grinned impishly at him and winked. ‘There,’ she said, ‘the flutes at the back of the hall have picked up the theme. That’s our signal. Good luck, my friend.’ She kissed him lightly on the cheek and then laid her hand on his arm. ‘One,’ she said, listening intently to the music. ‘Two.’ She drew in a deep breath. ‘Now.’ And the Emperor of Tamuli and the Queen of Elenia stepped through the archway and crossed with regal pace toward their golden thrones as the flutes at the rear of the hall softly sang the plaintive accompaniment of Stragen’s main theme, set now in a minor key. Immediately behind them came Sparhawk, Mirtai, Engessa and Bevier. Talen, Alean and Itagne, who was still puffing slightly from running through the halls, followed.

As the royal party reached the thrones, Stragen, who was using his rapier as a conductor’s baton, led his hidden musicians into a fortissimo recapitulation of his main theme. The sound was overwhelming. It was not entirely certain whether the members of the imperial council fell to their faces out of habit or were knocked down by that enormous blast of sound. Stragen cut his rapier sharply to one side, and the musicians broke off, slashed as it were into silence, leaving the echoes shimmering in the air like ghosts.

Pondia Subat rose to his feet. ‘Will your Majesty address some few remarks to this assemblage before we commence?’ he asked in an almost insultingly superior tone. The question was sheer formality, almost ritualistic. The Emperor traditionally did not speak at these sessions.

‘Why, yes, as a matter of fact, I believe I will, Pondia Subat,’ Sarabian replied, rising again to his feet. ‘So good of you to ask, old boy.’

Subat gaped at him, his expression incredulous. ‘But…’

‘Was there something, Subat?’

‘This is most irregular, your Majesty.’

‘I know. Refreshing, isn’t it? We’ve got a lot to cover today, Subat, so let’s get cracking.’

‘Your Majesty has not consulted with me. We cannot proceed if I don’t know what issues are…’

‘Sit, Subat!’ Sarabian snapped. ‘Stay!’ His tone was one of command. ‘You will remain silent until I give you leave to speak.’

‘You can’t…’

‘I said sit down!’

Subat quailed and sank into his chair.

‘Your head’s none too tightly attached just now, my Lord Prime Minister,’ Sarabian said ominously, ‘and if you waggle it at me in the wrong way, it might just fall off. You’ve been tiptoeing right on the brink of treason, Pondia Subat, and I’m more than a little put out with you.’

The Prime Minister’s face went deathly pale.

Sarabian began to pace up and down on the dais, his face like a thundercloud.

‘Please, God, make him stand still,’ Ehlana said under her breath. ‘He can’t make a decent speech if he’s loping around the dais like a gazelle in flight.’

Then the Emperor stopped to stand at the very front of the slightly elevated platform. ‘I’m not going to waste time with banalities, gentlemen,’ he told his government bluntly. ‘We had a crisis, and I depended on you to deal with it. You failed me – probably because you were too busy playing your usual games of politics. The Empire required giants, and all I had to serve me were dwarves. That made it necessary for me to deal with the crisis personally. And that’s what I’ve been doing, gentlemen – for the past several months. You are no longer relevant, my Lords. I am the government.’

There were cries of outrage from the ministers and their subordinates.

‘He’s going too fast!’ Ehlana exclaimed. ‘He should have built up to that!’

‘Don’t be such a critic,’ Sparhawk told her. ‘It’s his speech. Let him make it his own way.’

‘I will have silence!’ Sarabian declared.

The council paid no attention. They continued their excited babbling.

The Emperor opened his mantle to reveal his Elene clothing, and then he drew his rapier. ‘I said SILENCE!’ he roared.

All sound ceased.

‘I’ll pin the next man who interrupts me to the wall like a butterfly,’ Sarabian told them. Then he cut his rapier sharply through the air. The whistling sound of the blade’s passage was as chill as death itself. He looked around at his cowed officials. ‘That’s a little better,’ he said. ‘Now stay that way.’ He set the point of the rapier on the floor and lightly crossed his hands on the pommel. ‘My family has depended on the ministries to handle the day-to-day business of government for centuries,’ he said. ‘Our trust has obviously been misplaced. You were adequate – barely – in times of tranquility, but when a crisis arose, you began to scurry around like ants, more interested in protecting your fortunes, your personal privileges, and perpetuating your petty interdepartmental rivalries than in the good of my Empire – and that’s the one thing you all seem to forget, gentlemen. It’s my Empire. My family hasn’t made a great issue of the fact, but I think it’s time you were reminded of it. You serve me, and you serve only at my pleasure, not at your convenience.’

The officials were all gaping at the man they had thought to be no more than a harmless eccentric. Sparhawk saw a movement near the middle of the throne-room. His eyes flicked back to the front, and he saw that Teovin’s chair was conspicuously empty. The Director of the Secret Police was more clever and much quicker than his colleagues, and, throwing dignity to the winds, he was busily crawling on his hands and knees toward the nearest exit. Chancellor of the Exchequer Gashon, thin, bloodless and wispy-haired, sat beside Teovin’s vacant chair, staring at Sarabian in open terror.

Sparhawk looked quickly at Vanion, and the Preceptor nodded. Vanion had seen the crawling policeman too.

‘When I perceived that I had chosen little men with little minds to administer my Empire,’ Sarabian was saying, ‘I appealed to Zalasta of Styricum for advice. Who better to deal with the supernatural than the Styrics? It was Zalasta who recommended that I submit a request directly to Archprelate Dolmant of the Church of Chyrellos for assistance, and the very core of that assistance was to be Prince Sparhawk of Elenia. We Tamuls pride ourselves on our subtlety and our sophistication, but I assure you that we are but children when compared to the Elenes. The state visit of my dear sister Ehlana was little more than a subterfuge designed to conceal the fact that our main purpose was to bring her husband, Sir Sparhawk, to Matherion. Queen Ehlana and I amused ourselves by deceiving you – and you were not hard to deceive, my Lords – while Prince Sparhawk and his companions sought the roots of the turmoil here in Tamuli. As we had anticipated, our enemies reacted.’