I said to Seg: “D’you know what’s happened to Queen Lush? I thought for sure she’d be sobbing at the bedside.”
“She had to return to Lome. Some pressing affair of state. The emperor saw her off — Thelda says he was in full health then.”
“We haven’t seen the last of her. She has designs on the emperor. This dire news will bring her scurrying back.”
“Aye. It’s bad, Dray.”
“Yes. How stands Falinur?”
He knew what I meant. The old recklessness of his face sobered, for the men of Erthyrdrin, Seg’s homeland, are fey and wild and also highly practical. “I have worked hard there, trying to make the kovnate into the kind of paradise you have in Valka. There are always cramphs against whatever I try to do. Their malignancy lingers on. They remember. I wouldn’t take a sheaf of arrows on their loy
