Chapter One The king must die." Four single-syllable words. One by one they were nothing special. Put together? They called up all kinds of bad shit: Murder. Betrayal. Treason. Death. In the thick moments after they were spoken to him, Rehvenge kept quiet, letting the quartet hang in the stuffy air of the study, four points of a dark, evil compass he was intimately familiar with. "Have you any response?" Montrag, son of Rehm, said. "Nope." Montrag blinked and fiddled with the silk cravat at his neck. Like most members of the glymera, he had both velvet slippers firmly planted in the dry, rarified sand of his class. Which meant he was just plain precious, all the way around. In his smoking jacket and his natty pin-striped slacks and...shit, were those actually spats?...he was right out of the pages of Vanity Fair. Like, a hundred years ago. And in his myriad condescensions and his bright frickin' ideas, he was Kissinger without a president when it came to politics: all analysis, no authority. Which explained this meeting, didn't it. "Don't stop now," Rehv said. "You've already jumped off the building. The landing isn't getting any softer." Montrag frowned. "I fail to view this with your kind of levity." "Who's laughing." A knock on the study's door brought Montrag's head to the side, and he had a profile like an Irish setter: all nose. "Come in." The doggen