44

The crowds by the gate and the doors are eagerly watching all three of you now. Chancellor Aton is waiting for a response, but you'd be a fool not to imagine that anything you say will get back to Princess Despina. You'll have to be careful with your words.

Assuming you respond with words at all. With your illusions, you might be able to arrange a demonstration: either to make it appear as though the chancellor's spell was a fluke and the grounds really are well-defended, or to make matters look even worse. You'll have to be confident in your magical skill, though—if that backfires, it could cast suspicion on you.

After a moment of consideration, you gesture with a flourish toward the hedge next to the one Aton burnt. Slowly, with painstaking attention to every leaf, you make the foliage look brown and the branches appear to wither, until you've hidden the entire hedge behind the facade of a slowly dying one.

"Vulnerable to at least two kinds of magical assaults," you conclude. "Worse than you feared, Chancellor Aton."

Aton is delighted, though he swallows his grin after a moment and tries to appear somber. "Truly shocking, Jun. Thank you very much for your assistance."

Prince Evander looks more realistically serious. "Thank you for showing us that. This is worse than I thought." He ventures a small smile. "And, ah, thank you for doing it without igniting anything flammable."

You'll have to keep the illusion of the dead hedge there for a while, but it shouldn't be too draining, and you doubt it'll do much harm once it fades. It's right next to the burned hedge, and you doubt many people will remember precisely which hedges were damaged once the royal gardeners have cleared the area up.

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