Chapter four
Concerning the power of Phu-Si-Yantong“See to it, Vanki,” I said to the empire’s chief spymaster.
“Yes, majister.”
His flat and chilling voice was just the same after all this time. His face, pale, composed, held that containment of himself, that inscrutable knowingness, that perhaps he did not realize revealed so much. This was a man who lived in the shadows and was of the darkness. And in contact with people in the everyday run of rubbing elbows they would regard him and know that this man lived within himself. He had proved a master of his trade. Also, and for this I forgave him much, including his part in dumping me under a thorn ivy bush in the Hostile Territories, he was devoted to Delia.
Anyone who tries to run a country, even a ramshackle kind of place as Vallia th
