The soldiers, a mixture of armed retainers provided by all five conspirators, wore tabards with the same device. “King Carus!” the crowds cheered as they saw Garric. “Long live Carus!” At the back of Garric’s mind, a normally cheerful presence glowered at the flags. Garric turned to Liane, being carried in a sedan chair which put her head almost level with him on horseback, and said, “We ought to use the Gold Ring of the Old Kingdom. It symbolized both the diadem of kingship and the whole circuit of the Isles, not just one island.” Liane looked at him. “Did it?” she said. “I didn’t know that. Where did you learn it?” Garric coughed. “I think it’s in Aldebrand’s Dinner Party,” he muttered. It probably was somewhere in Aldebrand’s massive collection of bits and pieces of information from the literature of the Old Kingdom—which had fallen four hundred years before Aldebrand compiled it in the form of conversation at a dinner party of savants of the former age.
