Sherilee sighed dramatically.

Her performance drew no response. After further vain sallies, the tragic doll declared, “There must be something we can do to rescue him.”

Sherilee was one of a tiny number of people who knew King Bragi was alive and a prisoner.

Kristen sighed herself, then plunged into the game. “Michael Trebilcock and Aral Dantice got away with that once, when they rescued Nepanthe. It won’t work again. He’s being held by the Tervola, not some dinkle-brain queen of Argon.”

She played loosely with history but facts did not matter here. What did was the undeniable futility of any effort to free the King. To start, no one knew where he was being held. Unless, maybe, Michael Trebilcock or Aral Dantice knew. But Michael was out of touch and Aral no longer haunted Kavelin. Trebilcock might be dead. He had not been seen for months.

But Michael was his own man. He went his own way. And that worried everyone.

Since coming to Kavelin Michael Trebilcock had created his own hidden realm of dedicated friends and allies who disdained the smallminded politics of the Lesser Kingdoms. Those people believed in the welfare of the whole instead of that of the partisan.

Michael Trebilcock had remained faithful to Bragi while Bragi was king but Bragi was never fully confident of Trebilcock.

Sherilee asked, “Do you think Aral is in touch with Michael?”

Those two had been friends since their school days in Hellin Daimiel. They had shared several fierce adventures in Kavelin and abroad. Dantice occasionally visited the Marena Dimura during more clement seasons. He lived in Ruderin nowadays but remained in the family business, being part trader, part smuggler, part gangster. Once upon a time, before the wars, his father had been a trader, too. A more legitimate trader.