It is hard to describe the commotion that Setrabohst caused when he entered the banquet hall. I and Vaenahma were two steps behind him when he paused in the doorway. For a moment no one noticed him. Then someone let out a gasp, and someone else a delighted cry. His father, sitting on the dais with the patriarchs and matriarchs of the First Families on either side of him, raised his head to see what was causing the disturbance. He blinked. A chinless man beside him followed his gaze and his reaction told me that he must be the Jahnadee patriarch. He shrank back in his chair, then looked hurriedly around, either for allies or an escape route. A woman who was sitting beside him noticed his distress and reacted by quaffing from her wine cup. His wife, I thought, and her quaffing told me a lot about her. Pleasure before anything else. The sound of the hall had been large even before we entered it, but now the disparate chatter seemed to join in chorus. Neighbor nudged neighbor and all heads turned as Setrabohst’s name found its way to every voice.

  Setrabohst took one step forward and they all fell silent. It was amazing. Like when a loud noise in a forest silences all of the birdsong. Only he made no noise. He simply moved, and they hushed.

  Duke Khuldara was on his feet. He was blinking rapidly and discharge was running down the sides of his nose like slow tears. “My son?”

  “Father,” Setrabohst said, “arrest Laesehn Jahnadee.”

  Now, the Jahnadee were the largest of the First Families of Nhadtereyba. Most of their clients were there in the hall. Perhaps a hundred men. Most of the actual family members, the brothers and sisters and cousins of the patriarch, were sitting at a table near the duke’s dais. I was watching them with a sharp eye. Some of them were picking up their knives, but others were casting glances at each other, calculated and wary. The family’s clients were all grouped at tables against the hall’s east wall. This is always the way. Clients from different families only mingle with each other in the happiest of cities. In most places they clump together in clannish superstition. Not in Rahasabahst, of course, for Rahasabahst overthrew its First Families hundreds of years ago. Some say that this is why it was so easy for the Sarangbaus to conquer us. But I digress. What I am trying to convey is that there was some ground for Setrabohst to cover between the doorway and his father, and some it was hostile territory.

  Laesehn Jahnadee was getting to his feet. His lack of a chin made his mouth seem too loose to form actual words. But he was beginning a speech, and his high, wheedling, rhetorical tones made it clear that it was a speech that he had rehearsed. “Friends among the Naukuhohna, friends among the Vevigbi,” he piped, “we have long seen our fortunes diminish under the boot of the Sarangbaus. Our treasure dissipated, our blades dulled by disuse! The time has come to rise up, to take back what is ours! This fair city belongs to us, and not some bandit king in Rahasabahst! That city has fallen. King Poritifahr is dead! Long live King Dasuekoh! He has promised us freedom. He has promised to rule with a light hand!”

  This singularly contradictory speech was met by shocked silence. I stared at the back of Setrabohst’s head, expecting him to stride forward heroically and smite the gibbering fruit merchant. I should have been looking at Duke Khuldara. A scream brought my attention back to the dais. Laesehn Jahnadee’s wife had dropped her wine cup. She was standing and screaming with both palms pressed hard into the table in front of her. She wasn’t looking at her husband, but at the ceiling, as if refusing to see the dagger that Duke Khuldara had plunged into Laesehn Jahnadee’s chest.

  Duke Ibansarjae, Khuldara’s brother, was also standing, and looking very grim. The troops he had brought from Taokeihla had stood with him, and swords were coming out of scabbards. The hall became very quiet. I glanced among the tables, trying to discern the reactions of the Naukuhohna and Vevigbi clients. They were all looking to the high table, where the patriarchs of those two families were still seated, frozen, like deer sensing danger in the woods.

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  The tableau was altered by another chinless man getting up from the table where the Jahnadee family sat. He was wearing very diaphanous robes, and as he tried to move around the table his sleeve caught a pewter plate and sent it flying, spattering rice and curry over the people sitting around him. They were so afraid that they barely reacted. The man in the diaphanous robes didn’t seem to notice the clattering plate. He was intent on making his way to the clear space in front of the dais. When he reached his objective, he fell to his knees.

  “Your Grace,” he said in a small voice, and then he cleared his throat. “Your Grace, my brother seems to be involved in some plot. I assure you, your grace, that we do not support him. That the Jahnadee knew nothing of his plot or…well, very little. We argued about it, but we hadn’t come to any conclusion. We were at odds with each other. Only four in ten among us supported him. Well, maybe six in ten. Maybe eight. You can see, Your Grace, that I am an honest man! I will not lie to you. He convinced many of us! But not me! Not me, Your Grace, nor my lady wife, nor my children. Nor my sisters and brothers. Nor my cousins. Really, Your Grace, very few of us were convinced.”

  Duke Khuldara seemed utterly indifferent to this incoherent babbling. He was staring across the hall towards his son. Sensing his cue, Setrabohst walked forward. I and Vaenahma accompanied him, our hands on our hilts. When Setrabohst came up beside the groveling Jahnadee patriarch, he knelt for a moment beside the man and laid his hand on his back. The man fell silent and turned his red face to stare at him. Setrabohst was gentle as he raised the man to his feet. He smiled sadly at him for a long moment. Then he punched him in the stomach.

  The crowd in the hall let out a long sigh. Setrabohst turned and faced the dais. “Father,” he said, “I have been a captive of the Jahnadee throughout a very long night. I would appreciate a cup of wine, and something to eat.”

  Duke Khuldara stared down at him. He blinked, then raised a quivering hand to his face and wiped at the discharge. “Son,” he said, “you were made hostage?”

  “Yes, Father. And they tell a pack of lies. As far as I know King Poritifahr is still alive.”

  The Duke regarded him silently. His brother Ibansarjae, the Duke of Taokeihla, walked down the long table to whisper something in his ear. Khuldara nodded. “You were truly a prisoner?”

  Setrabohst turned and looked at me. I couldn’t understand the reason for the Duke’s question. His son had carried a tray from that tinker’s cart while I ran down the river. The knuckle of his left hand was still cut from one of the arrows. “Your Grace,” I said, “your son was with us at Rahasabahst Shrine. He rode off to summon help, and it seems that he was captured. As I came through the city today, I saw one of the conspirators in the Jahnadee compound. With your permission, I returned there this evening. I regret that the conspirator escaped. But we did find Lord Setrabohst. He was imprisoned in a secret chamber in the courtyard.”

  I was speaking to the crowd, not the Duke, whose expression was very blank as he watched me. He turned and began to make his way down the long table, and the courtiers made way for him, stepping backwards and teetering at the edge of the dais. He passed by the Vevigbi and Naukuhohna patriarchs and they made no gesture of violence towards him. He came to the short set of steps that led down into the hall, and he looked very strong and dignified, poised there above his people. Fearless. He had chosen a route that led him right through the Jahnadee tables, and the clients of that disgraced family let him pass in stunned silence. He stepped around the weeping speechifier in his diaphanous robes and stood in front of Setrabohst. Then he placed his hands on either side of his son’s shoulders and pulled him in for an embrace. “My child, my child,” he said, “you are safe!”

  Copyright KPB Stevens, 2026

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