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"My men need food, but they need victory more With me or without me, they are here for the winter," Lantano Garuwashi said "The tunnels idened to get through the mountains are rivers and ice now If you expose me, the sa’ceurai will kill me, but then what? They will vent their fury on your people For everyone’s sake, Night Angel, let that go Go instead and tell this queen to surrender I give you le Cenarian will die We will take nothing ranted her throne once "

And you won’t ask for anything else once you have Cenaria and Ceur’caelestos both, right?

Kylar shook his head "You’ll surrender"

"I can’t," Garuwashi said through gritted teeth "In surrender, even Cenarians lay down their swords at the victor’s feet"

Kylar hadn’t thought of that It wasn’t the thought of surrender that was impossible for Lantano Garuwashi, it was the physical act

"Maybe," Kylar said, "maybe there’s a third way"

27

When Dorian’s half-brother Paerik had brought his army to Khaliras to seize the throne, he had abandoned a vital post The general who had served under hia, stood in front of the throne, explaining how the wild

"Sixty thousand of them?" Dorian asked "How could they raise so many?"

"Raise may be exactly the word, Your Holiness," the tiny Lodricari a said

"Who are you?" Dorian asked

"This is Ashaiah Vul," the general said "He was your father’s Raptus Morgi, Keeper of the Dead I think you need to hear what he can tell you"

"I’ve never heard of such an office," Dorian said And "raptus" didn’t primarily mean keeper, either It meant taker, stealer Dorian’s stomach turned

"By your father’s order and his father’s before him, it was a quiet office, Your Holiness," Ashaiah Vul said He was utterly bald, with a knobby skull and a pinched face with nearsighted eyes, though he looked barely forty years old "I was known only as the Keeper Your father’s Hands discouraged questions"

The Hands There was another probleuards who served as the Godking’s thousand hands had yet to show hiardless, Dorian doubted Ashaiah Vul would dare lie about them