So Amberdrake is suffering because he is a murder suspect, and suffering twice because his dear gryphon friend is as much a suspect as he is. He may even be suffering three times over, thinking that the stupid beast might have decided to do away with some of their opponents in a more direct fashion than simply arguing them down!
He giggled, for that in itself was a sheer delight. But there was more, much more.
Winterhart had broken off publicly with the kestra’chern, declaring that she could not remain bound to one who was tainted with the suspicion of murder. According to Noyoki, her speech before the Court had been short, but passionate, and had taken everyone by surprise. It didn’t take him by surprise; Winterhart was a rigid bitch, and proud to boot. She would never stand for even a hint of impropriety, and her own pride would not tolerate a fall in status. He could have predicted this, although he would have thought it would not happen quite this soon.
But once he learned she had made her break, he knew what Noyoki’s next revelation would be. She would either find someone of higher rank than Amberdrake to attach herself to, like any other parasitic, leeching female, or she would turn around and go back to the city.
So he wasn’t particularly shocked when Noyoki revealed that the King had declared she had accepted his offer of marriage. It had simply fit in with Winterhart’s personality.
It had delighted him, though. Amberdrake must have been shattered; Noyoki didn’t know his reaction because he hadn’t emerged from his suite. She had moved out, though, into private apartments, which put the stamp of finality on the rift between them.
He giggled again, as he flung open the door to his room and glided inside, with a grace even Amberdrake couldn’t replicate. Oh, Amberdrake must be reduced to emotional shards, now—for there was nothing he could do to get Winterhart back! Not even if against all odds he proved himself innocent could he get her back! She would never, ever choose to return to someone like him, when she was to be the wife of a King!
The greedy little status hunter was probably rolling on her solitary bed right now in an ecstasy of pleasure over her coup and her good fortune.
He would have to find a way to bring her down, too, but without bringing her back to Amberdrake. That would make him suffer even more.
Now—how to go about that? And what to do to her, I wonder?
He sat himself down in his favorite chair, the one built into a replica of the little throne he had in his special room back in the settlement. The one with all the delightful surprises built into it. . . .
But before he could settle himself into a good planning session, there was a knock at the door. Frowning, he started to rise, but the door opened before he could get to it, and Noyoki and Kanshin strolled in as though they belonged there.
He glared at them in outrage, and they ignored the glare to appropriate two of the best chairs in the room for themselves. They sat down without even asking if he minded!
Anger held him breathless, which in rum made him speechless.
“You’ve done exactly as we wanted so far, Hadanelith,” Noyoki said, in that supercilious, ever-so-superior tone he always adopted when he spoke to Hadanelith. “The results have been excellent, and Kanshin and I are agreed that you have passed all the tests we set for you.”
Tests? Tests? These weren’t tests! What is he talking about? The overfed, obnoxious base-born bastard! What does he think he’s doing? Who does he think he’s dealing with?
“We’ve selected your next target, Hadanelith,” Kanshin said—nervously though. Very nervously. Hadanelith quieted his rage and set it aside. This was odd; he’d never seen the scrawny little thief nervous about any assignment ever before. What could be so difficult about this one?
“Your next victim will be Shalaman,” Noyoki said with such careless casualness that it had to be an act.
“Shalaman? The Emperor?” Hadanelith was incredulous, and even angrier than before. He jumped to his feet and faced them both with his fists clenched at his side.
“What have you been drinking? You know I won’t handle a man, I have no interest in them!”
He felt his face flush with fury and outrage. Just who did these two think they were? He’d told them he wouldn’t target males—not for that, anyway! There was only one man he’d ever be willing to kill, and only after he’d made Amberdrake suffer a great deal more than he had so far! It would take years, decades, to inflict all the misery he’d planned on Amberdrake’s soul!
“Now, Hadanelith, we know it’s going to be dangerous,” Kanshin said in a wheedling voice, as if he were a recalcitrant child. “We’re prepared to take care of that. Haven’t we always?”
Hadanelith shook his head violently in disgust, his vision turning red around the edges, he was so angry with them. What was the matter with them? Danger didn’t worry him, and they knew it—danger was only a spice!
“I am not targeting a male!” he spat. “I told you that before, and I’m not changing my mind just because you think you have a way to kill the Emperor and get away with it!”
“Well, if you’re afraid—” Noyoki began.
Hadanelith spat on the floor at his feet in a deliberate insult. “Hardly! Why should I fear one fat old man? I won’t take him as a target, that’s all! That was our bargain—I get targets I like!” He narrowed his eyes, and the red of thwarted rage suffused his entire field of vision. “You’re trying to cheat me!”
“Not cheat you—offering you a challenge to your talents!” Noyoki replied, in a coaxing tone of voice. “We know you’re brilliant, we planned to give you something with more spice to it than that last target.” He gave Hadanelith a sly, sideways look. “How can you resist a chance to assassinate Shalaman at the height of the Eclipse Ceremony?”
Anger vanished, collapsing into itself like a deflated bladder. He gaped at the two of them, certain now that they had gone mad—or else that they had been drinking or otherwise ingesting something that had turned their brains to mush in the past few hours.
Assassinate the King? In public?
“You’re both mad,” he repeated flatly, a chill creeping up his spine. “Completely mad. You only think I’m mad; you two ought to be locked away for your own good.”
Neither of them changed their expressions, or even said anything. They just watched him.
“What could you possibly tell me that would make me think you weren’t mad?” he challenged, beginning to wonder himself. “Killing Shalaman—that’s nothing more than suicidal! I’m not stupid, you know! And you’re going to have a fine time dragging me up to the Emperor, strapping a knife into my hand, and throwing me at him, because that’s the only way it’s going to happen!”
In spite of himself, he felt a tiny bit of intrigue as they continued to watch him narrowly but did not reply. They must have something up their capacious sleeves to make this idea possible!
Something besides making the sacrificial lamb out of me, anyway.
It was enough to pique even his curiosity. He wanted to know—but he still had no intention of doing anything about it.
Let them do it, if it’s such a good scheme. And besides, they still hadn’t overcome his basic objection. Shalaman was male. They had given him no reason whatsoever for him to target a male. Males were males, they were not inherently tainted like females were. There would be no thrill in it, and without the thrill, why bother?
“We have an absolutely foolproof scheme,” Noyoki said with confidence. “We can get you right next to the King, you can kill him, and we can get you away before he drops to the ground.”
Fine. There’s still no thrill. His mood turned again, back to anger, this time a sullen anger. What did they think he was, some sort of automaton, a killing machine like a makaar, something that could be sent out on a whim and didn’t care what it killed?
“No,” he said flatly, folding his arms across his chest. “I don’t care how well you planned this, or how foolproof it is. Shalaman’s male. Our bargains never included males.�
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“They didn’t include Winterhart, either,” Noyoki said, off-handedly.
Hadanelith went cold, then hot, then cold again. His groin flared with excitement, and he fought to get himself back under control before there were any visible signs of his interest. “Winterhart?” he said, lightly, and laughed. “And just how does she enter into this?”
If I could take Winterhart—better if I could have her, mold her—but I’ll never get her away from Shalaman. Death would be better; I could hold her in death forever. To be the last thing she saw as she died—to fill her mind and soul with my power to bring her down—
That would make her his forever. He would mark her, brand her as his, and take her away from Amberdrake at the same time.
“She’ll be at the ceremony at Shalaman’s side,” Noyoki told him. “And it fits our plans very well for you to get both of them at once. Unless, of course, you don’t think you have the strength and skill to kill the King.” He frowned. “I wouldn’t have thought that of you. Or is it that you haven’t the stomach or the courage?”
“I have all of those,” Hadanelith snapped. “It’s that I’m not—there’s no—I’m not interested in men!”
Noyoki’s eyes flashed for a moment, as if something had just come clear to him. Hadanelith ignored bis expression; this was a quandary, and no mistake about it. Was it worth wasting time on the King to get Winterhart?
I’ve done it before; gone through men to get to their women. Back in the camp, it was . . . and here, too. There is a thrill to that—actually—
When the women saw their protectors going down under Hadanelith’s skilled blade, when they realized that there was no one left to defend them—there was a real thrill in that. Could he possibly manage that in this case?
“We can get you all the time of the full Eclipse to do what you want,” Kanshin said persuasively. “Think of it—coming in out of the dark like a demon, striking and bringing fear as well as death! Besides, we haven’t told you the best part yet!”
The best part? There’s something more?
He felt his interest rising, and gave up trying to pretend otherwise. They had him, at least for the moment. He might just as well hear them out.
But he was going to do so in comfort.
He sat down again, assumed an expression of total boredom, and yawned. “All right,” he drawled, picking a tone of voice sure to infuriate both of them. “I can’t get rid of you until you get done trying to persuade me that you both aren’t fit only to be locked away, so you might just as well speak your piece.”
But they were neither infuriated nor offended, at least not openly, and Noyoki leaned forward in his chair with an eagerness that made Hadanelith think of a night-heron about to spear a fish.
“It’s very simple—” he began.
And before Noyoki was finished with the explanation, Hadanelith was giggling. This could be more fun than ever.
Nine
Skandranon spread his newly-dyed wings to dry in the hot sun, knowing he looked entirely too much like an oversized cormorant hanging its wings out to dry, and waiting for the inevitable sarcastic comments. Aubri would never be able to resist this opportunity.
“You look like a short-necked, crook-beaked, fisher-bird, old crow,” Aubri chuckled from his position atop a pile of pillows in the cool of the shaded garden. “Maybe one that ran into a rock because he wasn’t watching where he was going. I can’t wait to see the size of the trout you’ll pull up.”
“I am the one with the taste for fresh fish, lazy Aubri,” Zhaneel chided. “You are as forgetful as you are slothful.” She poked Aubri with a wingtip, then got up and circled Skan, eying him dubiously. “You will be lucky if those feathers dry at all by nightfall, as humid as it is.”
“They’ll dry,” Skan said, with as much dignity as he could muster, given the undignified circumstances. “Drake is good at this feather-painting business. He used every trick there was to make sure I dry out properly. Don’t you remember how humid it used to get in the summer, when Ma’ar pounded the camp with thunderstorms?”
Aubri shook his head. “I think you’re going about this all wrong. Damned if I know why you want to play the Black Gryphon again. These people already think that you’re a murderer—now you’re dyeing yourself black and flying around at night? Are you trying to give them more reasons to point fingers at you?”
Skan growled under his breath, while he continued to fluff his body-feathers. Were they sticky? He didn’t think so, but until they were dry and he’d had the excess dye rinsed off, he couldn’t preen them to find out. “They’ll be pointing a lot worse than fingers at me if I’m flying around at night as a white gryphon,” he pointed out. “I’ve been shot at once already. If we’re going to help catch the real culprits, I’ve got to find out how they’re getting at their victims. Drake thinks they’re using magic, but I don’t think so, or at least, they’re not using magic all the time. I may not be the greatest mage in the world, but I can tell when someone has used magic and there’s no trace of it.”
“You can tell, when magic is working right, you mean,” Aubri countered. “Not even Snowstar is relying on what used to work anymore.”
Skan just leveled a look of extreme skepticism at him. “I think they’re somehow sneaking onto the Palace grounds, maybe in disguise, lingering for a while to watch several potential victims, then taking the first opportunity they see. Or else they already live in the Palace, and they’re either servants or nobles. I think they’re outsiders, Drake thinks they’re insiders.”
He and Amberdrake had hashed out every possible combination of ideas, and they both had their pet theories. Amberdrake thought the murderers were in the Court and using magic to transport themselves from their own rooms to those of the murder victims and back again. It would be a very nice theory, if anyone could find a trace of magic as powerful as a Gate or Pass-through, and if magic was working at all reliably. Skandranon thought they were disguising themselves as servants and sneaking into the Palace complex, then using perfectly ordinary tricks of thieves to climb into the rooms from the outside.
Which is a nice theory if every guard and every servant is conveniently blind and deaf at the time, is what he says. And I must admit there’s something rather odd about the idea, because why would a thief who’s that good waste his time on something like this? He’d be robbing the Palace bare, then taking the loot off to live in luxury somewhere. Granted, a lot of what he’d take is identifiable, but it’s not that hard to melt down gold.
“I don’t know, old bird,” Aubri said dubiously. “I think you’ve picked prey too heavy to carry.”
Skan only shrugged. “You can think whatever you want,” he replied tartly, “but I’ve made my decisions, and until evidence comes along to make me change my plans, I’m sticking to them.”
“You’d stick to anything with feathers that wet,” Aubri retorted.
“Except you, you filthy buzzard,” Skan snapped back. “You people put me in charge, and that is the way I am going to approach this.”
Judeth chuckled sardonically from the deeper shadows under a low-hanging cascade of flowering vines. “I hate to be the one to tell you this, Skan, but you aren’t the one in charge. Amberdrake is.”
The words hit him like a pailful of cold water in the face. He almost dislocated his neck, whipping his head around to stare at her.
“Amberdrake is better at coordinating things than you are. You’re better at anything that requires action. Anyone who knows you both knows that.” Judeth shrugged. “Besides, Amberdrake can keep secrets. When have you ever been able to keep a secret?”
Skan just stared at her, unable to formulate a reply. “And further, when the evidence comes along that shows you’re being a foolhardy old feather-brain, risking your life like this, you’ll ignore it. We know you, Skan. We know what you’re like. That’s the other reason Amberdrake’s in charge.” She examined the leather trim on her black tunic with care, avoiding his eyes. “On
the other hand, right now, stupid as it seems to me, he says you know what you’re doing and we might as well let you go ahead with it.”
Skandranon thought about pretending he hadn’t heard her, but that would only prove her point rather than refute it. She’s taking Drake as the leader here? Does Drake know this? How could he not? But he didn’t say anything to me.
He felt as if he’d been caught in an invisible whirlwind, in the middle of a cloudless sky. Why would Amberdrake do this? And why not even mention it to Skan?
Maybe he didn’t think he needed to. Skan had made no secret of the fact that he was tired of being the leader, of making all the decisions. But—it would have been nice if someone had asked him before they arbitrarily decided to give the job to Amberdrake.
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