Page 53 of The Poisoned King (Impossible Creatures #2)

Dousha

It is neither an easy nor a simple thing, to abolish one system of government and establish another; but that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible.

Birth, Anya said, was a mad, a frivolous, a lunatically unhinged way to decide who should rule a kingdom. It left you vulnerable to uncles.

In the end, in consultation with the Flying Senate, they established a parliament of fifty humans—twenty-five men and twenty-five women—and fifty creatures: gaganas, dryads, a mermaid who was brought in a great silver basin, to speak to the needs of the waters close to Dousha’s shores.

The winged unicorns would breathe courage into the participants.

There were, of course, disagreements, tensions, and chaos, but it was, on the whole, a system in which wisdom was made most possible.

There were details to be studied and solved. Details take time: that is their nature. But the change had begun, and sunlight was allowed to come streaming in.

Claude Argen had gathered a staggering amount of gold.

It would have been enough to build an army larger than any in the Archipelago, for there will always be men and women who will fight in exchange for money.

Most of it was discovered, and returned to the dragons, but some, it transpired later, he had hidden.

A month after his arrest, the warden of the cells arrived to find that Claude had escaped. It had been enough to bribe one of the jailors. A manhunt across the Archipelago was in progress.

Anya had heard this, and she had screamed. But she and Christopher had the recipe for the antidote now. They could, at least, protect those most likely to need it.

She was leaving Dousha, she and her father together. Her bags were already packed. She had taken her dresses, but she had other plans for the tiara, the jewels. She wouldn’t need them, she thought, where she was going: it had beauty enough already.