Night of the Hats

  The Baker’s Boy In the prologue Lord Baralis sneaks through the secret passages of the castle to drug and rape the queen, performs risky magic to find out if he’s impregnated her, then murders the brighter of his two servants because he might figure out what’s going on. He’s the villain! Some years later Baralis, now Chancellor of the Four Kingdoms, poisons the king. Not fatally, but so he is unable to rule, leaving the kingdom, unofficially, in the hands of the queen. She does fairly well, despite the war with Holcus. Baralis learns that Lord Maybor plans to marry his daughter Melliande (Melli) to Prince Krylock, so he acts to try and prevent this. He also has borrowed some rare books from Archbishop Tavalisk (in a southern city state) and needs a blind scribe, someone who can copy but not read. The candidate he finds is Jack, an apprentice baker, or perhaps Baker’s Boy. Tavalisk meanwhile has captured a knight named Tawl, having learned that he’s been given a quest by t...