Kings and Assassins Read Online Free Page A

were all for his wife, for the strange light in her eyes, the way she huddled in on herself. “She's mistaken. Or maddened by this death, one piled upon others in a single year. Her mother, her sisters, her friends—all dead at mad Mirabile's hands.”
    “I am not mad,” Psyke said. “I know what I saw.”
    Bull said more temperately, “Will you tell us where you spent the evening, my lord? We require facts and not speculation.”
    “I played cards with Prince Ivor Sofia Grigor—”
    “With our country's enemy? Do you have witnesses to this? Or should we presume the prince aided you? He claims friendship with you, does he not?” DeGuerre said.
    “Two witnesses, actually,” Janus said. He inclined his head briefly toward Bull, whose expression had eased at Janus's quick answer. “Blythe graced us with his presence, and I'm afraid we lightened his purse for his pains.”
    DeGuerre growled. “Games at a time like this?” He crossed the room, content that he had scored a point, and stood beside Psyke, arms folded.
    Bull said, “Blythe is easily led. His words will lend no real weight to Last's claim.”
    “Then it's as well that our game was interrupted by the Duchess of Love,” Janus said, aware of Rue's attention. He let his lips curl in a sneer. “She chose to stop in and treat us all to a lecture on gaming, the nature of rats, and the king's notoriously soft heart.”
    Psyke whimpered, her hand clapped over her mouth, leaving dark smudges on her pallid cheeks. DeGuerre's hand fell protectively on Psyke's shoulder, and she flinched; the long rip in her sleeve that the apprentice had made preparatory to bleeding her parted, exposing a deep bruise spreading over her shoulder. “You're injured,” DeGuerre said, gesturing to the apprentice.
    The boy brought the posset over. It sloshed in his nervous hands and the scent of adulterated wine temporarily overlaid the heavy tang of blood in the air. Psyke pushed it away. “I won't take it. Not with him here.”
    “Send for them both,” Bull said, “Lord Blythe and the Duchess of Love.”
    The inner door opened, and the physician stepped out, borne on a waft of blood and alcohol. “My lords,” he said.
    Rue said, “You've examined the body, Sir Robert?”
    “I have,” the physician said. He took in his apprentice, still hovering over Psyke with the posset in his hand, and said, “Be gone with you, lad.”
    The boy set down the cup, dropped a grateful bow toward his master, a more nervous series of head bobs toward the rest of the party, and fled.
    DeGuerre took Psyke's hands in his. “She's chilled through. Need she remain?”
    Such solicitude
, Janus thought,
for a woman who told such wide-eyed lies. The very picture of innocent grief and pain
. He admired the theatrics, even as he worried about the results of her playacting.
    “For the moment, yes,” Rue said. “Your examination?”
    Sir Robert looked at Psyke, and she raised her head to meet his eyes with weary contempt. “I saw it done, sir, I am not like to quail over the retelling of it. He was shot and then worked over with a blade. A thick blade.”
    “Gut shot at close range,” Sir Robert said, “followed by saber. A foreigner's choice of weapon.”
    “No foreigner did this,” Psyke said. She darted her gaze up toward Janus, and the open blueness of her eyes, the fear and pain, the bewildered betrayal in them confused him. Was this acting? If so, it was of a caliber to match the grandes dames of the stage.
    The guards brought in Lord Blythe; the young man looked both furious and scared, full of fading bluster. Behind him, the Duchess of Love came in like mourning itself, draped in black bombazine and her jet-crystal gloves.
    “King Aris is dead, they tell me,” she said. “Is this true? Is Antyre without its king?”
    “It is,” Rue said. “Will you attest to—”
    “Last claims innocence,” DeGuerre said, interrupting, “though his wife claims otherwise. Last says you and