...She scans the destruction. "Easy."
"Ah, yes," I murmur, trying to quell the emotions that rush through me at seeing my childhood home destroyed. "Simple's sibling, Easy. I don't even want to imagine the levels of chaos that would prompt visits from their cousins Straightforward and Uncomplicated."
-- Elizabeth May, The Vanishing Throne

A chilly, distant sort of politeness existed between Kilan and Qihadal for the next few days. Neither spoke to the other more than was absolutely necessary. It annoyed Kilan, but there was nothing he could do about it. What did Qihadal want him to do? Forbid Death from visiting when she wasn't doing any harm? That would make things even worse. So they existed in a sort of armed neutrality, neither outright confronting the other but neither inclined to forgive and forget.

Death, thank goodness, had the common sense to stay away for a week. When she finally returned, everyone's tempers had cooled. That didn't mean Kilan had nothing to worry about, however. She found him in the middle of reading a letter from Prince Shuradin.

"What's wrong now?" she asked, leaning on the back of his chair and reading the letter over his shoulder.

There was no reason to hide it from her, so Kilan handed her the letter. "Read that, and you'll know."

Death scanned the letter. It was almost entirely typed, except at the bottom where the writer had signed their name in shaky Carannish. "Prince Shuradin sends greetings to Emperor Tinuviel... wishes to reclaim his rightful throne... humbly requests aid... in light of recent agreement... I see. For once you do have a reason to worry, Kilan."

"Thank you," he said dryly. "What do you think about this? How should I reply?"

She handed the letter back to him and sat down on the bed. She propped her chin in her hands and tried to see into the future. It was still cloudy and unclear, but she could get a vague impression of it now. "I believe the best thing you can do is try to buy time. Give him every excuse you can think of. Pretend to be acting in his best interests. Eventually he will grow tired of it and will try to make himself Iqui on his own. Your treaty with him is only to acknowledge his claim to the throne, not necessarily to back his attempts to claim it. Reread it, and get Nimetath to read it too. She'll be able to tell you exactly how to get out of it without actually breaking it."

Kilan frowned. "It still feels uncomfortably like breaking my word."

Death almost smiled. Even after all this time, he still wasn't thinking like an emperor. "Your people will hardly criticise you for it in this case."

Their discussion moved to more general topics. Neither talked about Linyie, or Qihadal, or their recent argument. Instead they spoke of the latest High Council meeting, and a trip Kilan -- and Qihadal, though he only mentioned her in passing -- would soon be taking to one of the empire's provinces, and Nimetath's arrest of several Malishese spies.

"I think the Malishese must recruit their spies from the biggest idiots in the land," Kilan remarked. "One of the spies made no attempt to blend in with our people, and another claimed to be a merchant while obviously having no goods to sell."

Death shook her head with a wry smile. "I think you'll find that some Carannish spies are every bit as stupid."

Gradually the talk turned back to Shuradin.

"I never thought I'd say this, but I'm tempted to pretend I never signed that agreement," Kilan grumbled. He drummed his fingers against the arm of his chair, a habit he had picked up from Death. "No one would dare contradict the emperor if I ordered them not to. And what could Shuradin do? He'd whine and complain, but he can't do anything when he's staying in a distant monastery with no money and no supporters."

A curious emotion, half-pride and half-amusement, filled Death's eyes. "Now you're beginning to think like a Caranilnav. I might have known that blood would show eventually."

He got the distinct impression this was not a compliment.

"Of course I'd never actually do it," Kilan said. "But when people annoy me I like to imagine horrible things happening to them."

"Perfectly normal," Death said without her tone giving any hint what she thought of this. "But since you are not going to do the things you think of doing to Shuradin, you might be better served in thinking of what you will actually do to him."

~~~~

Shuradin ground his teeth when he received the letter from Emperor Tinuviel. It was written with perfect politeness, and nary a hint of any treachery, yet reading between the lines he knew perfectly well what it meant. "Carann will do nothing to help you. If you want to be Iqui, you must make yourself one."

How was he to react to this?

He knew how he would like to react to it. With screaming and swearing and threats of vengeance, and all the other ways the typical Malishese man reacted to being refused anything. But he didn't trust the priests in this monastery Emperor Tinuviel had so kindly allowed him to stay in. He had noticed them lurking around at odd hours. They always appeared in the most unexpected places. Undoubtedly they were keeping an eye on him and reporting to... someone. Probably not to Tinuviel himself, but to one of his lackeys.

Shuradin was as good as a prisoner here. And all the time that bitch ruled the empire that was rightfully his. It would drive any man mad.

Well, he wasn't going to stand for it. He was going to go back to Malish and claim his throne if he had to do it all himself.

~~~~

Far away from both Shuradin and Kilan, in the old manor where Kilan had grown up, another little child was growing up. Qihadal's daughter was almost two now, and knew nothing of who she really was. In the eyes of the world, little Lethil wasn't a princess. She was just a creature the Duke and Duchess had taken in out of pity, with no right to any title. Death wouldn't dispute that. At present Lethil had no title, or land, and barely any existence outside the walls of the manor. But in the future...

It was the knowledge of the future that first made her seek the little girl's acquaintance. Empires rose and fell, but Death remained eternal. Universal. Inescapable. And if Lethil learnt that when she was young, she would be better off years down the line.

The little girl toddled around the garden under the watchful eyes of her nurses or step-grandparents. She babbled happily to herself or them in a mixture of understandable speech and words she invented herself. Like all young children, she could see Death. Like all young children, she didn't understand what it was she saw.

Death first appeared to her when she was picking flowers growing in the garden. Lethil toddled about cheerfully from one cluster of flowers to another, clutching the ones she'd already picked to her chest. Today those flowers were bright and colourful. Tomorrow they would wilt and fade. Their bright petals would crumble to dust. But what did a child know of that? Nothing. She thought only of her own pleasure, and she made no attempt to hide it.

Sometimes Death thought that in this respect, children were the most honest mortals in existence.

Lethil looked up when Death's shadow fell over her. She gave the odd-looking stranger a gap-toothed grin and waved the hand holding her flowers. Death smiled and held another flower out to her.

It was one of her powers that she could call objects from her realm into the Land of the Living. She used it mostly to get her scythe without the bother of going to fetch it. But now she used it to give Lethil a flower from Varan's garden. As the future queen cooed over it happily, Death gave her a half-bow and disappeared.

Later, the little girl's nursemaid was at a loss to understand where her charge had found such a strange flower. Nothing like it had ever been seen before in Carann, with its strange pale petals shot through with blood red and its glossy dark green leaves.

~~~~

If Gialma had learnt anything from his ordeal of earlier in the year, it was that agreements should never be lightly signed. He had argued against his cousin making that agreement with Shuradin at all. But now it was made, and now Tinuviel clearly wanted to get out of it. So Gialma was left searching for a way to help them all out of this mess.

He didn't tell his cousin, or any of the other High Counsellors. Instead he spoke with Varan.

"It's really very easy," Varan said. She lay on the floor in front of the fireplace, her wings conspicuous by their absence. (He'd asked why they were gone, and received a complicated answer that boiled down to, "Sometimes I have them and sometimes I don't.") "All Kilan has to do is pretend he didn't sign any agreement. The best way to do this is to destroy it. I'll do it tonight. And if Shuradin complains, what can he do about it?"

What indeed? Fate could answer that question. But She wasn't inclined to. Not when everything was working out exactly as She hoped.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. It's been said thousands of times by thousands of people. But no matter how many times it's said, no one ever remembers it in time. Certainly Varan and Gialma didn't. If they had, they would never have burnt that agreement.

But Varan stole the agreement, and they burnt it in Gialma's fireplace, and no one else knew a thing of what was happening. Death felt a curious chill wash over her as she went about her duties. But it passed, and she thought no more of it.

~~~~

An uncomfortable few months passed. Linyie started teething, to the despair of her nursemaids and the exasperation of Qihadal. Kilan learnt very quickly to stay out of her way during this trying time unless he wanted his head -- metaphorically -- bitten off. Shuradin was remarkably quiet. Nothing of importance seemed to be happening in Malish. There were the usual squabbles among the High Council, and Gialma was curiously unable to look Kilan in the eye for a week or two, but those were minor incidents.

Then came the bombshell.

Kilan was in the Land of the Dead, losing at chess against his distant cousin Arialn, when it exploded. He didn't know a thing about it until the next morning.

"What do you mean, Shuradin's vanished?"

The unfortunate priest who had come in person to deliver this news cowered in the face of the emperor's wrath. "We can't understand it, your Majesty. We kept a close eye on him all the time like you asked, your Majesty. But when none of his family appeared in the kitchens to collect their food, we went to investigate, your Majesty."

Kilan's patience, stretched to breaking point as it was, almost snapped at this. "For goodness's sake stop calling me 'your Majesty'! Once is enough."

The priest bowed until he was bent almost double. "Yes, y--" He stopped himself just in time. "We found their quarters empty, yo--" One glance at Kilan's face reminded him not to finish that phrase. "We searched everywhere for them. But we couldn't find them, or how they escaped."

Thank heavens he'd stopped that infernal "your Majesty"ing. There was only so much Kilan could stand. "You haven't found anyone who reported seeing them?"

"No one, your Majesty." The priest's eyes widened comically when he realised what he'd just said. "Forgive me!"

Kilan waved his hand in exasperation. Obviously he was fighting a losing battle here. "You've alerted the local police?"

The priest had the good sense not to try speaking. Instead he nodded silently.

"Good. Then you can go back to your monastery. I'm sure the police will solve this mystery soon."

Inwardly Kilan was not nearly as sure as he pretended to be. But he'd be damned if he let anyone else know that.

~~~~

Death, never one to beat around the bush, had no qualms about raising the subject the minute she appeared that afternoon.

"Kilan, did you know that Shuradin has been smuggled across the border by a group of Malishese revolutionaries?"

Oh, for the love of-- Kilan felt the strong urge to hit his head against a wall. "What do they want with him?"

"To put him on the throne, of course!" Death's scowl implied she thought he should had known this without being told. "They don't like Jalakanavu's regency, and they're trying to cast doubt of the paternity of the future Iqui. So they've brought Shuradin and his family back and put them in a safe hideout to keep him out of the way until they've stirred up enough discontent among the people. Then they'll produce him and announce his claim to the throne."

Kilan set down the letter he'd been reading. "At least he's someone else's problem now. Is there any immediate danger to Carann?"

"No," Death said, leaning over his shoulder to read the letter. "For at least five years, he'll be occupied in stirring up trouble in Malish."

Thank goodness for small mercies. If they had five years to prepare, they would have time to gather information and train enough soldiers to win the war quickly. And they had Varan's battle plan. There was no way Malish could win.

Death changed the subject with her usual abruptness. "What's this?" she asked, picking up the letter. "An itinerary of someone's holiday?"

Kilan rolled his eyes with a mixture of exasperation and fondness. "No. It's a list of places Qihadal and I will visit on our tour of the empire. And when will you learn not to read other people's letters?"

He should have saved his breath. It was doubtful if she even heard his last sentence.

"What tour is this?" Death studied the list. "Why do I get the feeling your old friend Chief Counsellor Dilves has something to do with choosing the places you visit?"

"It was her idea," Kilan said. "But how can you tell?"

"She has powerful friends in almost all these provinces. I imagine she wants to keep a close eye on you even though she can't be there."

Kilan's thoughts came to an abrupt halt at these words. Dilves had been the one to first suggest this tour, and the one to select the destination, but he had never realised that meant she would use it to essentially spy on him!

"Excuse me," he said through gritted teeth, getting up and stalking towards the door. "I must have a few words with her about this."

Really, with a Chief Counsellor like that, who needed Malishese princes?