both in prodigious quantities. Still, he was not exactly a glutton. One or two Lithuanian agents in Rome dead—most likely by poison or knife; possibly by magic—meant less chance of a shaman’s skin being fried in Vilna.
The shaman even made so bold as to speak. “For all his strength, lord, the priest is groping in the dark. Best to leave him there, until it is too late. Whereas, if you strike at him . . . and the thing is mishandled or goes awry . . .”
Ensconced in his heavy robes of office, the body of the grand duke filled the chair to overflowing. When the body shifted, as it did now, the sturdy piece of furniture creaked alarmingly.
With as much alarm, if not more, the shaman studied that shifting form surreptitiously, from under lowered eyelids. Suggesting that the grand duke might be contemplating error, as the shaman was now doing, was risky.
The shaman was relieved to see that the shifting seemed more a matter of a heavy body adjusting its weight than of one gathering itself for the attack. The grand duke’s obesity, as the shaman had many occasions to recall, was deceptive. Beneath the rolls of fat lay slabs of muscle whose power went beyond the human. And while Jagiellon was now a great sorcerer in his own right, the ruler of Lithuania was partial to more physical means of expressing his displeasure. As a prince, before the fat which came upon his body after the change, Jagiellon had been a famous warrior.
“Um.” Jagiellon said no more than that, for a few minutes. Throughout that time, the shaman squatted silently, unmoving, his eyes hidden under the lowered brow and the great mane of shaggy hair. Trying to make himself as inconspicuous as possible.
“You