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Sarmon's knuckles whitened on the arms of his chair, but he did not argue.

"A wise choice, but we must do something," said Alaphondar. "With matters as bad as they are, the people are losing confidence. They need to see you act."

Tanalasta glanced over the balustrade and cringed at the sight of all the people she was failing.

"What those people need, Alaphondar," the princess said, "is food."

The old sage frowned. "Of course they do, Highness, but what does that have to do with the matter at hand?"

"Nothing," Tanalasta admitted. She continued to stare into the Royal Garden and suddenly knew what she had to do. "Nothing and everything. Clearly, I can do nothing to stop the ghazneths, and it may even be that I can do nothing to stop Goldsword, but there is one thing I can do."

Alaphondar looked thoughtful. "And that would be?"

Tanalasta turned away from the balustrade. "I can feed my people." She motioned Korvarr forward. "Lionar, send a man to fetch the cooks, and have the bailey set with tables. I'll be down in a hour, and I expect a ladle to be ready for me."

* * * * *

They met in a place in Suzail where such meetings took place, in the dimly lit store room of a shady tavern in a seedy quarter where no decent lord would be caught dead. That was why the six nobles had donned elaborately conceived costumes and disguised their faces with false beards, why they had dyed their hair and taken such care to be certain no one had followed them. The chamber stank of stale mead, mildewed wood, and unbathed sailors. It was surrounded on all sides by rooms kept vacant at the steep price of five gold crowns each, a price which had drawn even more attention to the group than the perfumed handkerchiefs they held over their noses as they approached their hidden refuge.

Frayault Illance was speaking, his dandy's face ridiculously disguised by a purple eye patch and a trio of wax scars. "It's the princess. Natig Longflail told me himself that he had it from Patik Corr that the princess's own dressmaker told his wife that she had sewn no wedding dress for Tanalasta, and he said he would support no bastard on the Dragon Throne, be it the child of Rowen Cormaeril or Alaphondar Emmarask or Malik el Sami yn Nasser-then he was dead! Her spies found him out, I tell you, and it was her assassins who killed him."

"And you are not blaming the princess just because she would have none of your soft talk, Frayault?" asked Tarr Burnig. A broad and burly man who normally wore a bushy red beard, he had cut off all his whiskers and disguised himself as the guard of a merchant caravel not long from the sea wars, and he was one of the few men there who looked the part he had assumed. "Natig told me that as long as the princess was married when she made the child, he'd stand with her, and to the Nine Hells with Emlar Goldsword and his Sembians."

"And why couldn't the Sembians be the ones behind these murders?" asked Lord Jurr Greenmantle. "It wouldn't matter to them which way we were leaning at all. They could just keep killing us until there aren't enough of us left to stand with Tanalasta, even if we wanted to. She'd have no choice but to ask for their help."

The room erupted into a spirited debate, until a tall, dark-haired figure with a long beard rose and began banging his dagger on the table. "Enough! Enough!" The voice belonged to Elbert Redbow, who was neither tall nor dark, but wealthy enough to make himself appear that way for one night. "We could argue this all night, with every one of us coming to a different conclusion. I have even heard it said it could be the ghazneths-though I don't know why they'd bother. Against them, the princess has proven ineffective enough as it is."

"Hear, hear!" It was the first thing all six had agreed about all night.

"So have you a plan, Lord Redbow?"

"I do." His voice grew even deeper, and he braced his knuckles on the table. "We must stop reacting and start acting."

Again, there was agreement. "Hear, hear!"