On the morning they were to receive their final instructions in preparation for the war, Aliver met Melio and Hephron on the upper terraces. The prince nodded to them both, surprised to find himself welcoming Hephron’s company. There was something comforting in it. Just a few days ago he had disliked Hephron intensely. He had thought him an enemy. But none of this occurred to him now. Hephron had already suffered more than he had. He had lost two sisters at Manil, a cousin, and several servants that he had known since childhood. With the death of several other high-ranking Akarans he had leaped closer to the throne. In the past Aliver might have expected this to give Hephron joy, but such petty considerations no longer held any merit. Hephron’s face showed nothing save the creased fatigue of his losses and a resolve to face whatever was yet to come.

“I just received my assignment,” Hephron said. “They are sending me to Alecia. I asked to be sent to reinforce Aushenia. They are sure to meet the horde that has taken Cathgergen, and I wanted to be where I am needed most.” He hesitated a moment, walking on and mulling over his thoughts for a few strides. A shout echoed up from the terrace below, but they were some distance away from it and they carried on at the same pace. “But…it is not without honor of a sort. I am to second under General Rewlis.”

“You’re a second?” Aliver asked, stopping in his tracks.

“Don’t act so surprised.”

“I am-I am not surprised.”

“Everything has changed,” Hephron said. “Even the league has acknowledged it. They recalled all three of their transport ships and sailed them away without a word. We can still move troops but not as easily as we would like.”

“Are they part of this?” Melio asked. “The league, I mean. Do you know, Aliver?”

“Not for sure,” he said. “I doubt it, though. The league lives and breathes to profit from trade. They do not care with whom they do it. They are just cautious, self-interested.”

Hephron smiled. “They are not the only ones.”

“What does that mean?” Melio asked.

“This is no time to talk about it. Perhaps later.”

“Why later?” Aliver asked. “Because of me? There is something you dare not say in front of me?”

Hephron glanced at Aliver, then looked away. “I always hold my tongue in your company. Everybody does. Nobody wants to offend the future king.”

“You seem intent on trying,” Melio quipped.

“We should not have squabbled before. All this posturing between us is foolish, but I know some things the prince does not and I cannot help but think about them. My father did not wish me to be deceived. He told me the truth about things. Maybe this will be news to you too, Melio. He always said our crimes would one day return to us. All the things that are happening…if you knew the truth, none of it would surprise you. For example, how do you think we maintain our wealth? We are taught nothing of it. We are just supposed to believe that wealth endures. We won it before, so it is ours forever, right? We are a fine people who just deserve dominion over the world. Everyone is content with it. It is for the best, really.” He looked between the two, smirking. “Does that sound right to you? Think about it. Once you have come to recognize that the sums do not add up…seek me out. I will tell you all I know about the rotten heart of Acacia. Then you will wonder why no one attacked us before this.”

Aliver thought that he should smack him. Slap his face and challenge him to draw his sword. No one would expect any less a response to such a condemnation of the nation. Or he should report him. Let the officers interrogate him. Was this not his duty? What if Hephron was preparing to betray them?

“I apologize if I offend,” Hephron said without sounding the least bit apologetic. “It is not you I am angry with. You are a pawn in this as much as I am. But I am the one who is going to have to risk my neck for it. Me and Melio here, and others like us.” He began to move away, walking backward for a few steps before he turned. “Grown men, my father told me, must have the internal breadth to hold complexity within them. Only fools hold absolutes. You are not a fool, Aliver. You are just naпve.”

Aliver, walking again a half stride behind Hephron, repeated those words in his mind several times. He knew he should be angry, should curse him for weakness now that they were being threatened. But instead he walked on as if pulled in the other’s wake. He twinned the young man’s words with the chancellor’s cryptic confession. He was still thinking about the gravity of their implications when they reached the head of the stairs. Hephron, who had gained the vista just before him, froze. For a space of seconds, standing at the head of the stairs looking down, the scene before Aliver made absolutely no sense.

The square below, some hundred steps away, was in a state of utter confusion. People swarmed in all directions, shrieking. The first person he could recognize was General Rewlis. But just as he made out who he was, he watched him being cut from behind through his leg. He recognized the person wielding the blade and tried to name him but could not. Rewlis went down to one knee, head thrown back in a scream of pain, silenced a moment later as the same sword that had cut his leg split his neck in a diagonal blow aimed just below the ear. A second later the blade slipped free. The general crumpled, a fount of blood gushing from his neck, his legs smearing the stones as they churned with the last of his life.

“Hellel?” Melio whispered.

Hephron understood his meaning before Aliver. “You bastard. I could have killed you in your sleep so many times.”

The strangeness of this statement added nothing to Aliver’s understanding of the confusion below them. Hellel? He had been one of Hephron’s entourage, a pale shadow beside him always, the type who nearly finished his sentences for him.

Noticing that Aliver still stared, Hephron gestured with his arm, a motion that both pointed at the scene and swiped it away. “They are Meins! Look at them. Hellel, there by the railing. And Havaran. And Melish on the steps. They have betrayed us! We should have expected it.” He was in motion the next instant, careening down the steps at breakneck speed, his feet jolting against the stones in a barely controlled fall. He tried to wrench his sword free as he moved, but it was not until he had paused on the terrace that he managed to unsheath the steel. He was instantly engaged, two men coming at him at once from opposite sides. Melio danced in behind him a second later, his blade spinning with blurring speed.

Aliver would try later to be sure of just what happened next. He would remember that he drew his sword and gritted his teeth and had just begun to rage down the staircase and into battle… That was exactly what he almost did. He wanted to have done so very badly. He would have, except that before he could move a hand clamped down on his forearm and spun him around.

It was Carver, the Marah captain. “Prince,” he said, “sheathe your sword. You must go to safety.” And to the flank of warriors behind, he gave orders for several of them to take Aliver away. The rest swarmed down the staircase behind Carver. That was all there was to it. Aliver, once pulled away, never saw how the skirmish ended. He went “to safety,” while Melio and Hephron became warriors.