Ethlyn smiled and shook her head. "Don't worry--I'm not offended. As it happens, I wasn't the leader--there were others who took advantage of our king's frailty, but my family was never one to exploit another's weakness that way." She felt nothing for sympathy for old King Azmur--the loss of his son and his great age made him easy prey to manipulation; she didn't blame him for believing the lies that had been fed to him about her brother and father.

So if William was a monster in human guise, well, that didn't mean much in her view. She had met people here with animal features, people who described themselves openly as gods, abilities entirely different than what she knew, and expertise in inventions that hadn't even been dreamed of in her homeland. "So what you're accused of could mean anything--the personal biases of our accusers, or an ill-informed opinion. And we have more than one person living here who isn't quite human."