Storm Breaking

The real challenges would come in dealing with those local leaders, people who had made themselves the top wolf in their own little territories, and would not care to hear from a bigger, tougher wolf than they were. Somehow he would have to persuade them that he had authority and power, perhaps in excess of what he really had, and that it was in their best interest to begin taking orders from him.

If he couldn't achieve that objective, he was going to have to eliminate them without direct confrontation, and put someone more amenable to authority in their places.

He put the cup down, out of the way, while he contemplated his options.

The real trick would be to get rid of them in ways that would not be traced back and connected with him. Getting rid of people was never difficult. It was doing so without leaving any tracks or signs pointing to who was responsible that was the hard part. Those clever, perceptive, and skilled enough to trace blame were few but devastating, and all plans had to be made with the assumption that such a sleuth would be investigating, though the odds were slim.

As with cards, duels, and death sports, look at the odds—but consider the stakes.

He picked up the report, leafed through it, and scanned the list of those local leaders and their brief dossiers again; his agents were good, and it was possible to get some idea of who would cooperate and who would not just from the thumbnail sketches of their personalities that had been provided to him. He had a short list of assassins to chose from, 'special agents' who were adept at making deaths look like accidents or illness. It was going to be difficult to get them into place, given the current conditions, but it would not be impossible. With the help of the Army, he ought to be able to get any individual to the right location within a few weeks.

It would probably be a good idea to place his best agents on his most likely targets immediately, rather than waste time attempting to persuade some provincial idiot with an overblown sense of his own competence. If the blow came before he even contacted a given fool, it definitely wouldn't be connected with him. That would leave the agent free to take on a second target if a at persuasion of someone worth saving failed.

He switched ink and paper, to the special colors of both that would tell these operatives that he had a job for them. The note he sent would be commonplace greetings, of course; no special agent would ever trust primary instructions that came written. This was a gamble on his part, for many of these people were free-lance workers. When they heard what he had to say, they might even turn him down; although they would be paid more for these targets than any of them had ever gotten for a job before, getting to their targets through the miserable conditions that existed now could be a real problem. And again, that was the privilege of an agent who was as good as these were; you couldn't persuade an artist to make a masterpiece by standing him in front of an easel and threatening him with death. It might be possible to pick off one or two of these provincial leaders with ordinary assassins, and if he came up short on the number of agents he needed, that was what he would do.

But he really would prefer it if all of these operatives found the jobs enough of a challenge to take them on. They were very good. He, above all, should know; he used to be one of them, as did Porthas, and he had even trained some of them in technique.

There was nothing like being able to call on old school ties...

As he wrote out his list of 'invitations,' it occurred to him that he actually did have a way to fulfill the Emperor's demands and 'bring Tremane to justice,' provided that the 'justice' came in the form of a swift, sure blade or the sharp bite of poison. There were three of these assassins—four, if he counted Porthas, though he did not intend to do without that worthy's talents right here, who could and possibly would go to Hardorn and eliminate Tremane. Magical assassination being out of the question, physical assassination would take a year or more, but it could be done.

He paused to consider it, even though the idea did not appear to be a particularly good one. There was a certain amount of personal satisfaction to be had if he could somehow kill Tremane. How had the man managed to wheedle his way into the hearts and minds of the Hardornens? It did not seem fair that his old enemy should come through a situation that should have destroyed him, only to be made a King. Granted, he would never see his home again, and granted, Melles was going to be an Emperor, not a mere King. Nevertheless, the prospect was galling. It would have been satisfying to bring him down altogether.

Porthas took away the cup, and left a fresh one and a plate of sliced fruit, bread, and cheese in its place. This was a subtle hint that he should eat something. He took the hint, and ate without tasting any of it.

He weighed all the considerations. Given that the agent sent out would be brilliant, crafty, and given every resource, the likelihood of anyone from the Empire reaching the center of Hardorn was remote. Success would be remoter still, for an agent of the Empire, without the magical aids that would enable him to study the people and conditions surrounding his target, would be operating blind in a foreign land. He would stick out like a single red fish in a school of green fish.

In a way, it was possible to sympathize with the Emperor's obsession. Tremane should be dead at this point. Normally, he did not give in to his own emotions, but there was a sick anger in the bottom of his stomach that twisted and bit as if he had swallowed a viper, and it would probably never give him rest. He wanted Tremane dead, and he wanted to do whatever it would take to get him there.

But even when he had been an operative himself, he had known that there was a point past which it was inadvisable to pursue your target, no matter what your employer said or offered. This was one of those times.

He got up from his desk and poured himself another drink, ignoring for the moment the cup of mulled wine; not brandy this time, but a thick cordial with no alcohol in it, made entirely of syrup and stomach-soothing and gut-