An Offer Nobody Wanted
The message came in under the seal of the Regent's private cabinet, which was not a seal many people alive had seen, and it was brought to the Crescent House by a single man on foot in the last of the weather, and the man was her half-brother's senior secretary, a thin colourless functionary named Orel whom Hest identified by sight and vouched for by reputation as honest within the narrow limits his office permitted.
The message was four lines. It invited the Lady Reyna Halleth to attend upon the Regent, alone, without advisor or witness, at the inner cabinet of the Regent's residence, at the eleventh hour of the next night. It named a door at which she would be received. It guaranteed her safe conduct in and out under the Regent's own oath. It was signed, in a hand she did not remember but recognised, *Corvas.*
"No," said Hest.
"I will go."
"Lady."
"I will go. If I do not go, he offers it to the boy in the marsh. If the boy accepts it, the kingdom splits three ways and the Chancellor takes the largest. If I go and refuse it, it is refused in a room nobody can deny the refusal happened in. Brother to sister is the only room in this kingdom where a refusal stays refused."
"Lady, his oath is worth —"
"His oath is worth the next three hours and no more. I know. I will not stay a third hour. Tell the admiral. Tell Illo. Tell Venna. Tell no one else."
She went alone. She was