We hold the entire kingdom hostage, the two of us. We have their names. Those that her clerk cannot find for her, I search out myself in the stacks of Tsud’s library. Tsud was nothing if not meticulous. He had every clansman and kinsman listed, along with their wealth and their holdings. They send a tithe of their family to us, and we use them to again people the palace.

She gritted her teeth against the mounting pressure in her skull, like steam rising from a kettle. Is that when the void breaks through? A brokenness of the soul and a wound in the body; so Brighteye had described the moment of awakening to sorcery. There were people in the world who lusted for that terrible power. The same sort of people, Orha assumed, who would kill and leave the corpse its jewelry.