"We are being followed. I regret to be the bearer of bad
tidings, but wise counsel must bear in mind the possibility that it
could be Kadrug."
Si'Wren's ears pricked at this.
"Kadrug!" exclaimed Emperor Euphrates, looking greatly alarmed.
"Following me?"
"Aye, and perhaps also--Conabar. It was rumored, you will recall,
Highness, that they had sought to join forces."
"A pact made in hell!" said Emperor Euphrates, as if it were a
slanderous oath. "I gave orders that their entrails should be brought
to me, that I might read of them."
"...to their eternal regret," suffixed Borla decorously, as he stood
looking contemplatively across the vista of the lowlands they had
already traversed so laboriously.
"Highness," Borla went on, tugging thoughtfully at the fringes of his
beard, "if we should run across them before eventide, it might very
well become the expedient thing to do that one of my foot soldiers
should inspect their entrails with a common sword, ere the day is done."
Borla always kept his beard carefully trimmed a fraction shorter than
Emperor Euphrates', out of a canny sense of deference. By this, and
other, equally subtle devices, he was left free to maximize his own
powers to the fullest possible extent, while at the same time seeming
always, ever to be the scrupulously faithful servant and minutely
lesser intellect.
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