After the chancellor left, Hand glanced at the one other person in the room. That was Gustav Adolf's personal bodyguard Erling Ljungberg, who was perched on a stool in a corner.

Ljungberg was new to the assignment. Silently, Erik cursed the fates on that evil battlefield that had not only stuck down the king but slain his bodyguard as well. That had been Anders Jonsson, a man whom Hand had known very well indeed. Had Anders still been alive…

But, he wasn't. And Erik simply didn't know Ljungberg well enough yet-he'd correct that as soon as possible, of course-to speak freely to him.

He was moving in perilous waters now, which the ancient Roman poet Ovid had described very well indeed. If treason prospers, none dare call it treason.

So, he did no more than give Ljungberg the same not-quite-a-bow, and then left the room. As he was passing through the door, he heard Gustav Adolf call out behind him.

"Weather not a wagon! Be drunken blue! Can empty trolls whisper crow?"

A protest? A question?

Probably both, Erik thought. What else would be coming from a king trapped in the chaos of his own mind, while those in power around him plotted treason?

For treason, it surely was. Hand was certain he knew what Oxenstierna and his cohorts were planning-and it was no accident that none of them would have dared propose those same plans to their sovereign while he still had his senses.

Six months. By then, one of them would be publicly given the label of traitor.

That might very well be Erik Haakansson Hand himself, of course, but he'd always enjoyed a challenge. No assignment his cousin had ever given him was as challenging as the one that he hadn't because he could no longer speak.

Six months, then.