The Need for War - Part 5

"…If you would give me room to dodge an answer, my Queen, I would gladly take it," Lord Idris said meekly.

"I refuse," Queen Asabel said, her fire returning, to the point that she was near overwhelming. "You will speak with all the honesty you can muster. I command it of you."

"Then I can declare, without any degree of uncertainty, that it is the High King," Lord Idris said, and the way he said it, it was like Verdant was standing in the room with them. He oozed loyalty, and vision, and that reliability that Oliver had come to appreciate in the man's son. "I have kept an eye to the manoeuvrings of the Capital, and there have been characters too that I have kept an eye on. There has been a particular assassin, by the name of Melicos, that has been sighted within range of him – but never together."