The Way of Shadows
Page 72

“Explain this,” he said. He lifted the red dress she’d worn the night before. His men had discovered it wadded up in the closet. It was still damp with hardening blood. A lot of blood.
“After—after the assassin stabbed the prince, he fell, and I—I caught him. And he died in my arms. I tried to go get help, but the assassin was still in the hall. I was terrified. I panicked. I couldn’t stand to have his blood all over me.”
“What were the two of you doing alone in the bedchamber?”
The duchess stared at him as if her eyes were hot coals. “How dare you!”
“How dare you, Trudana?” Agon said. “How dare you cheat on your husband not just with the king but also with the king’s son? What kind of perverse pleasure did you take out of that? Did you like making the prince betray his father?”
She tried to slap him, but he moved.
“You can’t slap everyone in the kingdom, Trudana. We found the bloody knife in your room. Your servants vouch that it’s yours. I’d say the odds are that you’re going to be beheaded. Unless, that is, the king decides you deserve a common traitor’s death on the wheel.”
At those words, Trudana Jadwin paled and turned green, but she didn’t say another word. Agon gestured angrily, and his men took her away.
“That was unworthy of you,” a woman said.
Agon turned and saw Elene Cromwyll, the Jadwins’ maidservant who’d been found beaten up and unconscious in her room. She was curvaceous, pretty except for the scars and bruises on her face. But Lady Jadwin fancied herself an artist, so she liked to surround herself with pretty things.
“Yes,” Agon said. “I suppose it was. But seeing what she’s done . . . what a waste.”
“My mistress has made many poor choices,” Elene said. “She’s hurt many people, destroyed marriages, but she isn’t a murderer, Lord General. My lord, I know what happened here last night.”
“Really? So you’re the one.” His voice was more cutting than he intended. He was still trying to put the pieces together himself. How had that guard, Stumpy, who now resembled his nickname more than ever, been killed? Why would the duchess kill the prince silently and change her clothes but not finish washing her hands and face before screaming for help?
Surely, if she’d been cold-blooded enough to murder the prince, maybe in a cold rage as he left her, and been self-possessed enough to start hiding the evidence, she would have done a better job of it before calling people to her.
But then, some of the guests had claimed it was a man’s voice they had heard yell upstairs. The guard? Had he stumbled upon the murder, yelled wordlessly, and then been beheaded? Beheading someone wasn’t easy. Agon knew that. Even if you cut between the vertebrae, it took substantial strength. Agon had examined Stumpy, and the blade had cut through the vertebra.
He turned his eyes back to Elene. “Sorry,” he said. “This has been a difficult night. Any way you can help would be welcome.”
She looked up, and there were tears in her eyes. “I know who killed the prince. He’s a wetboy masquerading as a lord. I knew what he was, and I knew that he was coming, but I didn’t think he’d hurt anybody. His name is Kylar. Kylar Stern.”
“What?” Agon said.
“It’s true. I swear it.”
“Look, young lady, your loyalty to your mistress is admirable, but you don’t need to do this. If you hold to that story, you’ll go to jail. At the least. If you’re found to be an accomplice, or even an unwitting accessory to the murder of the prince, you may be hanged. Are you sure you want to do that, just to save Trudana Jadwin?”
“It isn’t for her.” Tears coursed down her cheeks.
“Then it’s for this Kylar Stern? He was the young man who had the fight with Logan Gyre? You must hate him fiercely.”
She just looked away. In the rising sunlight, the tears on her cheeks glowed like jewels. “No, sir. Not at all.”
“Lord General,” a soldier said quietly from the doorway. He looked shaken. “I just came from the Gyre estate, sir. It’s chaos there. There are hundreds of people going through the house, wailing, sir. They’re dead, sir.”
“Get a hold of yourself. What do you mean dead? You mean murdered?”
“More like butchered, sir.”
“Who’s been murdered, soldier?”
“Sir. All of them.”
43
The king fidgeted in his throne. It was a vast piece of ivory and horn inlaid with gold tracery, and it made him look a boy. The audience chamber was empty today except for the regular guards, several guards hidden in the room’s secret exits, and Durzo Blint. The emptiness made the chamber seem cavernous. Banners and tapestries adorned the walls, but did nothing to stave off the perpetual chill of such a large stone room. Seven pairs of pillars held the high ceiling and two sets of seven steps each led to the throne.
Durzo stood quietly, waiting for the king to initiate the conversation. He already had a battle plan, if it came to that. It was second nature to him. The meister standing by the king would have to die first, then the two guards flanking the throne, then the king himself. With his Talent, he could probably jump from the throne up to the passage above it, currently obscured by a banner. He’d kill the archer within, and from there he’d be uncatchable.
Like all battle plans, it would last only until the first move, but it was always useful to have a general plan, especially when you had no idea what your enemies knew. Durzo felt himself reaching into his garlic pouch, but he forced his hand to be still. Now was no time to show nerves. It was harder to stop his hand than he would have guessed, something about the bite of garlic was comforting when he was stressed.
“You let my boy die,” the king said, rising. “They killed my boy last night and you did nothing!”
“I’m not a bodyguard.”
The king grabbed a spear from the guard standing beside him and threw it. Durzo was surprised at how good a throw it was. Had he stood still, the spear would have caught him in the sternum.
But of course he didn’t stand still. He swayed to the side, not even moving his feet, with careless—and he hoped infuriating—ease.
The spear bounced off the floor and then hissed as wood and steel slid across stone. There was a rattle of armor and the whisper of arrows being drawn back all around the room, but the guards didn’t attack.
“You’re not shit unless I say so!” the king said. He strode forward, coming down his double flight of seven steps to stand in front of Durzo. Tactically, a poor move. He was now blocking at least three of the archers’ shots. “You’re . . . you’re shit! You shitting, shitting shit!”
“Your Majesty,” Durzo said gravely. “A man of your stature’s cursing vocabulary ought to extend beyond a tedious reiteration of the excreta that fills the void between his ears.”
The king looked momentarily confused. The guards looked at each other, aghast. The king saw the look, and realized from their expressions that he’d been insulted. He backhanded Durzo, and Durzo let the blow fall. Any quick motion now, and a nervous archer might loose his arrow.
The king wore rings on all of his fingers, and two of them carved furrows in Durzo’s cheek.