Kings and Assassins Read Online Free

tend to Psyke.
    Janus nodded once, holding Rue's gaze with his own. Rue needn't worry. As much as Janus wanted to storm the old wing, shake the truth from Ivor, and then kill him, he knew that could wait. Ivor, ever confident, would wait, enjoying the chaos he'd created.
    Psyke's sobbing breaths gave way to another shriek. Janus, nerves on edge, jumped, hand flying to his borrowed pistol. The remaining guards put their hands over their weapons.
    Rue, about to close the inner door, said, “Lord Last, will you spare my guards' feelings and let them hold your weapon?”
    “No,” Janus said. “Not when the king has been killed. Not when there might be a plot against the entire royal family.” The pistol wasn't much, when all was said and done, not if the guards chose toheed Psyke's words and execute him on the spot. A pistol gave him one shot only, enough to kill the first guard, perhaps seize his sword…. Janus had done lethal damage with less in the Relicts.
    Rue made no reply but closed the door behind him.
    Psyke, proving she had been heeding Janus's words, gasped, gained coherence. “Adiran! Who's watching the prince?” The vivid panic in her eyes faded to a more normal terror.
    “Captain Rue sent another squad to guard the prince,” the bearded kingsguard said. “And the dogs are there.” He had taken advantage of the basin the physician's apprentice had brought and was cleaning the blood from his hands. Despite the confidence in his voice, his hands shook.
    “It won't be enough,” Psyke said, “not against him.” Her hand darted out, lightning fast, and slapped the apprentice as he bent over her arm. The thin metal lancet rang across the stones, came to rest at Janus's feet.
    The apprentice, his hand still tight on Psyke's wrist, said, “You're hysterical….”
    “And there's been enough blood spilled tonight without shedding mine,” she snapped. She jerked in his grip, but he held fast.
    “My lord,” he entreated. “Aid me?”
    Janus met Psyke's eyes, and the shivering calmness in her gaze fractured into near madness again. “I think not. Bleeding is an unclean practice. I'll have none of it. Give her a potion instead.”
    “Poison instead, you mean,” Psyke spat. “Silence the only witness to your crime.”
    The apprentice ducked his head, pretending he hadn't heard the Countess of Last accusing her husband of treason, and bent to mixing a posset for her.
    Rue, coming out of the inner room with a face white and set, knelt before her. “Psyke,” he said, and the presumption of her given name on his lips drew her attention. “Psyke,” Rue said again, and Janus belatedly recalled the rumors that said Rue had once courted her but, having no fortune and no future, been turned away.
    “Ask her your questions if you must, though her mind seems tobe wandering through impossibilities,” Janus said. “Either way, stop making eyes at her.”
    Phlegmatic Rue blushed, a red stain there and gone.
    The door to the hall opened, bringing in the king's other counselors, the financier Warrick Bull and Admiral Hector DeGuerre, distress in duplicate.
    Rue held up a hand, forestalling their agitated questions with a series of grim answers. “The king is dead. Murdered. In the old chapel. The assassin escaped but not without witness.”
    “Witness?” DeGuerre asked. His eyes lit on Janus, surrounded by wary guards, hand still resting close to his pistol, and said, “Who?”
    Bull, quicker on the uptake, or less blind to women, joined Rue at Psyke's side. “Is it true, Lady Last? Did you see who was to blame?”
    Psyke nodded, her lips quivering. Her voice was composed, though her hands, still bloodstained, wound round each other like serpents. “Janus,” she said. “My husband, the Earl of Last.”
    The resultant hush was broken by DeGuerre turning on Janus with the full force of a one-time admiral on battle-strewn seas. “Then why stands he here? Guards! Seize—”
    “No,” Janus said. His eyes