“Make him a sarkar, and he’ll stand for anything,” Prince Toron dryly observed. “You remember how he gave up his agitation for a two-hour day, when you made him minister of public works. And he has been fighting loyally in our ranks ever since this present war started.”
A laugh went up from all those present.
“No quarter is all very well,” the Princess Lilla interjected from the other end of the table, “but what about the prisoners in the stadium? You can’t shoot them down in cold blood, can you?”
“We might invoke the ley fuego,” replied her husband.
“What is that?”
“That is an old Spanish custom in vogue on my own planet,” he explained. “Political prisoners, whose continued existence might prove embarrassing, are let loose, and then are pursued and shot for ‘attempting to escape.’”
“A dirty trick!” Toron objected.
“Much like that which Satan, the Formian, played on you in Wautoosa years ago,” Lilla added.
Cabot grimaced.
“And,” Hah Babbuh added, with a smile at his chief’s discomfiture, “the situation is complicated by the fact that our old ant friend, Doggo, is one of the prisoners in the stadium.”