Free Goblinopolis, The Tol Chronicles, Book 1 by Robert G. Ferrell

With Preotimast looking over his shoulder constantly, and his Apprentices supervising preparations at the Arnoc, the king would have to be extremely crafty to stack the deck, though. As it turned out, craft and guile were piranhas that swam freely in the Lungmuch gene pool.
    “And this, Your Majesty, is a pointer . It’s called a pointer because it points to an area in memory where a value is stored. It’s important to remember that operations performed on a pointer do not affect the value to which the pointer points. If you want to get at the actual data, you have to do so by dereferencing that pointer.”
    Rexingrasha was struggling with several sensations at once: incomprehension, acute boredom, and incipient panic. He was so totally out of his league here that it felt as though he were learning a completely new language, being taught by an alien to boot. He sighed and tried to grasp what Sildran, the Chief Arnoc programmer, had just told him.
    “So if I want to change the value in memory, I have to change the pointer, too?”
    “No, not at all. If a house changes occupants, the address of that house doesn’t change, does it? That’s the same principle we’re talking about here.”
    The king rubbed his royal temples. “I need a break, Sildran. I’m going to take a walk out on the parapets to clear my head. Amuse yourself. Write some code or something. I’ll be back in a little while.”
    “As His Majesty wishes.”
    Rexingrasha strolled along the wind-swept walkway perched high above the Royal Palace. From here he could just see the sunlight glimmering off the Sea of Fleriz far to the northeast; to the southwest he could make out the dark wavering line of the majestic Espwe Mountains, to the east the heavily-wooded Bungash range was visible. The vast forbidding desert basin of Asga Teslu lay off to the west. Virtually every nook and cranny of the sprawling city of Goblinopolis could be observed from here, as well, especially through the array of high-definition telescopic surveillance optics spaced regularly up and down the guardrails of the ten kilometer-long parapet that completely encircled the Royal Compound.
    Rexingrasha hadn’t made very much use of the monitors himself—he preferred his network of spies and operatives on the ground—but his father had been a regular visitor to the security observation stations. The old boy had always been a bit of voyeur, though. The king chuckled at the thought of his father sitting in a room full of screens, his gaze eagerly darting to and fro among them.
    After two weeks of almost non-stop study, it was becoming apparent to Rexingrasha that he wasn’t going to be able to compete successfully in the upcoming challenge if it were a fair fight. He just wasn’t the hacker type. Various possible solutions to this dilemma suggested themselves: sneak in a “pinch-hacker” (hard to pass off as legitimate); find some way to compromise the network beforehand (hard to arrange); see to it that the other candidates were “indisposed” (hard to get away with); or buy off one or more of the judges...yes. This last alternative was much more in keeping with his background, training, and inclination.
    Money wasn’t an issue. After all, he was the king, and had the vast Tragacanthan Royal Treasury at his beck and call. No, the critical decision here was exactly whom to bribe, and how to broach the subject diplomatically. Discretion was obviously a key element, as was proper sizing up of potential bribees. Fortunately, Rexingrasha had for just such a contingency retained the services of perhaps the best practitioner of these ancient arts in the world: an antelf named Nessendar. The antelves were so called because they eschewed most of the character traits generally ascribed to their elvish kindred: kindness, bravery, non-violence, optimism, and goodwill chief among them. That’s not to say that they weren’t capable of expressing these characteristics, but they were not part