«A whole Brigade of my army in Indhios' pay?» The King looked appalled. «This is beyond reason!»

«Perhaps beyond reason, Your Majesty,» said the countess, «but not beyond Indhios' deviousness and treason.»

«Yes, yes, I understand, I think. Now, my Lady, let me retire to my chambers and peruse these documents you have offered me. After that I will send for Indhios and ask him to explain his doings of late.»

One does not, with impunity, lose one's temper and berate a King like an erring schoolboy, but Blade felt himself on the edge of doing so. From Larina's expression he judged that she did not feel differently. But they could only bite their tongues and shrug their shoulders as the King disappeared up the stairs and shut the door firmly behind him.

Tralthos looked at Blade. «Gods above deliver us from our King's lust for justice above everything else,» he groaned. «While he sits like a clerk in his chambers, Indhios may even now-«

«Of course,» said Blade. «But we need not join the King in sitting idly. Captain, could you take a few of these men and go to Indhios' apartments? He will not be there, but there may be some of his henchmen to be found who can be made to talk.»

Blade saw from the expressions on the Guardsmen's faces that he had struck the proper note and responded to a widespread desire for action. None of the Guardsmen shared Pelthros' scruples about going straight into action against whoever was responsible for the heaped corpses lying about this very chamber. Tralthos picked out a dozen of the toughest-looking soldiers and led them off at a noisy trot, while Blade mapped out his strategy and snapped out his orders. Actually they were only urgings rather than orders, for he had no more legal authority to command the Guard than he had possessed an hour before. But he had the far more effective authority of a man who sees what-needs to be done and has already risked his life doing some of it. His words were obeyed as readily as if they came from the King or the Commander of the Guard, and squads and sections marched away in all directions.

Some went as messengers to alert the rest of the Guard-all twenty-two companies-plus the three Brigades of the army barracked in and around High Royth, the city constabulary, and the Wardens of the Port who helped patrol the dockyards. (Blade hoped Brora had properly dealt with any trouble there but could not be sure.) Some went to patrol the corridors of the palace and keep the innocent from roaming about and the guilty from escaping by shooing everybody impartially back into their chambers. (Blade hoped the soldiers would not be too quick with their swords.) Some went to reinforce the guards on the walls to make absolutely sure that Indhios could send no one into the palace for a second attempt at storming the royal apartments. And some remained with Blade, clearing away the bodies and wreckage as much as possible, with eyes flickering constantly down the corridor in case it spewed out more surprises.

Except for Blade's orders, affairs hung in their royally decreed state of suspended animation until well after dawn. It was then that Pelthros came down from his chambers, even more red-eyed than before, with the crumpled papers under his arm, and took the countess by the hand. «My Lady, you have done the Realm and Our House a great service.» He had recovered his wits enough to have reverted to the royal «we,» and Blade felt it appropriate to bow.

«And you too, Champion Blahyd. Never in the four centuries there have been Champions for the Kings of Royth has a Champion so well earned his name.» He swept his arm around the chamber in a gesture as theatrical as anything the countess had ever used. He was obviously about to launch into another fulsome sentence when an officer of the Guard appeared, leading a party of a dozen men dressed like sailors and carrying two large brass-bound sea chests.

«From the dockyard, Your Majesty. They say-«

«Ay-y-y, Blahyd!» shouted a familiar voice from among the sailors, and Brora dashed forward and grabbed Blade by the shoulders. «I see ye've had a rare good night, aye?»

«Yes, we have.»

«As was w' us,» said Brora with a grin. «Your Majesty, there were some traitors among your officers i' the dockyard. Here they be.» He motioned the men behind him to set the chests on the floor, then strode over to them and flung open both lids.

The King gasped, the countess gave a little scream and reeled against him; even Blade found his stomach churning. Each chest held a dozen human heads, neatly or not so neatly severed, lying on blood-drenched sailcloth. It was quite a long time before anybody recovered his voice enough to thank Brora, who stood beaming at them over his handiwork. Remembering Festival and Cayla's hobbies, Blade could not find it in him to become too indignant over Brora's methods.

«Well, Brora Lanthal's son,» said Pelthros finally, then paused again. «You are a-a-thorough man, indeed.» He was apparently trying to find some way of phrasing a compliment, when the countess as usual stepped in (although Blade noticed she kept her eyes averted from the heads).

«A good spectacle indeed, Your Majesty,» she said. «And perhaps some day soon we shall see all your enemies both here and abroad in a similar state. That would be an even better spectacle.»

One of these days, thought Blade, Larina was going to overreach herself in seeking for dramatic comments to make at key moments, offend the King, and see all her hopes go up in smoke. Meanwhile, however, she provided a certain amount of entertainment in a situation that promised little besides a long, grim struggle.

With the King resolved to move against Indhios, it became possible to send orders instead of merely advice to all the people Blade had previously alerted. Pelthros, to his credit, did not resent Blade's having jumped the gun. In fact, when he heard what Blade had done, he delivered several fulsome sentences declaring Blade's wits to be as sound as his arm and appointed him a High Constable of Royth.

This made Blade the equivalent of a general and made it possible for him to go right on giving orders, which he did. Fortunately, most of the people to whom he gave them did not resent his sudden promotion. They respected him, even though they might have second thoughts about King Pelthros.

Putting three Brigades plus the Royal Guard on the alert meant twenty thousand regular soldiers available for whatever was needed. This, Pelthros decided, included cordoning off the whole city and conducting a house-by-house search for weapons. Inevitably, this meant confiscating an immense quantity of swords, cutlasses, daggers, pikes, and rusty armor from thousands of peaceable citizens. This in turn led to incidents, some of them fatal to one or both sides. And of course, riots then broke out, and by nightfall a good part of the soldiers were patrolling the streets, keeping High Royth calm, rather than marching out of the city toward the camp of the Ninth Brigade.

Blade was not entirely surprised that the King's zeal for action outstripped his judgment about what action should be taken, but he was entirely unhappy about it. As the sunset turned the range of hills beyond the city purple, and the smoke spiraling up from burning houses in the waterfront district obscured the seascape, Blade sat with Larina on a high balcony of the palace and toyed with his gold cup and silver tableware. An ample meal-roast chicken stuffed with chestnuts and raisins, venison pastries, fresh bread, fruit, and bottles of wine-covered a black marble table between them. Blade had not eaten anything substantial since the night before and should have been demolishing the meal at a great rate. But the uncertainty that still dominated the situation was knotting his stomach and making it impossible for him to eat and barely possible for him to sit still.