Thaddeus Clegg entered his inner chambers, tired from a long day wrestling with the confusion inside him while functioning for all the world to see as an efficient chancellor. His cat, Mesha, rose from her curled comfort on a chair, stretched one paw and then the other, called to him with a thrumming chirp. She was a breed native to southern Talay, sand colored, short-haired everywhere except along her belly and under her chin. She was larger than normal indoor cats by half, and, as was common to her breed, she had an extra toe on each paw, an advantage she took great pleasure in exploiting when she slapped mice against the tiles. It also helped her hold her own against the golden monkeys, which had long since decided to give her a wide berth.

As Thaddeus shrugged off his cloak and draped it over a chair, Mesha leaped down from the chair and closed the distance between them with nimble steps. He stretched out his hand and received the soft impact of her head against his fingers. Though he certainly never revealed it to others, Thaddeus placed the greater portion of his desire for sensuous interaction with others in the tips of his fingers and reserved his most intimate touch for Mesha. This was all he wanted or needed now of companionship. He was too proud and self-conscious a man to distract himself with attachments to others, and he would not risk any greater love again.

“Mesha, you are my darling girl. You know that, yes? There is madness outside this room, but you have no part in it. How fortunate you are.”

A short time later, Thaddeus sat with Mesha curled in his lap. He sipped a syrupy liqueur redolent of peaches and tried to create a calm inside that would match his outward appearance of peace. He failed completely. The turmoil of a land struck and struck again, and now scurrying to prepare for war would have been more than enough to keep his mind reeling. He had spent the day in council with the generals preparing to meet Hanish Mein’s forces near Alecia, the target they believed he would attack first. They had gone through all the details of mustering the largest army the Known World had seen since Tinhadin’s time. What a daunting task, all done in haste and without a true king to control the tenor of the undertaking. Yes, Aliver sat through the council meetings, adding what he could, holding up bravely in the face of it all. But it was Thaddeus to whom the generals really spoke. And it was the fulcrum at which this side of his life collided with his own desire for revenge that truly baffled him.

He had not overtly agreed to aid Hanish Mein, but when he had read the chieftain’s simple message, part of him wished to obey. Perhaps he had been too long the servant of a king to feel comfortable as his own master. Or perhaps it was a sign of Hanish’s power, his ability to reach out over distances and turn other men’s hearts to his will. What to do about Hanish’s demand? He had ordered him to capture the Akaran children. Simple as that. Do this thing for him, and Thaddeus would be revenged against the Akarans. Do this thing and he would be rewarded for it in other ways as well. Thaddeus wondered if he could remake himself as a servant of the Meins. What might they give him in payment? A governorship maybe. Talay would suit him, that grand expanse, endless miles and miles of grasslands. It was a large enough province for him to get lost in. This seemed an attractive notion.

Or maybe he was not thinking large enough. Had he still contained the ambition Gridulan had sensed in him years ago, he would have found a way to seize the throne. He had effective control of affairs on the island. Considering those already dead, with the confusion on the Mainland and bloody clashes right here in the courtyards of Acacia, nobody else held the reins of power as surely as he did. The royal children trusted him, and he had had access to each of them even in their private chambers. He could have gone from one to the other and poisoned them: a cup of warm milk offered by a beloved uncle, a cake with a special icing, a salve on his thumb that he dabbed around their eyes, as if wiping away tears… He knew so many methods by which to deliver poison. He could have placed a pillow over their sleeping mouths, bled them from a wound in the neck, stopped their hearts with the flat-handed blow he had learned to deliver at just the right angle and force to stun the organ to stillness. He could end them and thereby repay Gridulan for his treachery.

“How pathetic it all is, Mesha,” he said, running his hand down the cat’s back. The feline looked up at him, slant eyed and bored. “I have made a mess of everything! I should think of the surest route and follow it. Nothing can stop the coming change; I see that as clearly as anyone. And these children are not the innocents they seem. Does not the young of a jackal grow into a jackal? Will it not someday bite the hand that feeds it? It can be no other way. It is foolishness to act as if either they or I could be other than we are. See, I can state all clearly. But I love them. That’s the trouble.”

Mesha had just begun to drift off again when Thaddeus rose and deposited her on the floor. He was annoyed with himself for speaking at all, even if it was only to a cat. He went to a cupboard built into the wall near his bed. From it he pulled the mist pipe that had once been the king’s. Strange that he was so late coming to this vice. Strange that he had lived a lifetime already before understanding the true craving for oblivion. He knew that on the morrow he would have to face again decisions made or not made, but between then and now he wished only to forget everything, or at least to reach that stage at which none of it mattered.

Later, he was awoken from black nothingness, a dreamless, thoughtless existence that was deeper than sleep ever could be. The force that pulled him out of this chosen place was frustratingly strong. It seemed an iron grip had fastened on some portion of his being and pulled him toward consciousness. He rolled over onto his back, thinking that such a change in his posture might ease him back to sleep, for the day had not yet come to demand his wakefulness. He felt a pressure at the foot of his bed and thought that Mesha was to blame. She sometimes fastened herself to his leg and sank her claws into the flesh of some imagined quarry.

But then a voice said, “Rise up and face me.”

Thaddeus started to shout for his guards, but before he could will his mouth to do so, the rest of his being obeyed the command. He tilted upright, the view before him rising to meet his changed posture. Except…except his actual body did not move. His chest and arms and head had not followed him. He tilted, but somehow he left his corporeal shell lying on the bed. It was as if he had slipped out of his skin with a gentle tug. He felt his organs, his muscles, and bones relinquish his spirit. His body released him, and there he was, sitting upright, the lower portion of him still contained within his hips and groin and legs, the upper portion an obedient spirit called to attention.

Before him, at the foot of his bed, hung a vague outline of a man. It had about it the shape of a body, but Thaddeus could see through the man into the dimly lit room behind him. The being produced his own illumination. His gray eyes flared into pinpoints of brilliance. They were the most visible portion of him, the two glowing orbs around which the rest of the being gathered. They were the only part of him that seemed solid enough to touch, and yet the energy that illumed them flickered behind them in waves. It dimmed for periods and then emerged again, as if inside them was the light of the moon interrupted by a cloud-dotted sky. They etched the features of his face and gave some solidity to his shoulders and arms, though his lower body faded into nothingness.