The Master Read Online Free

not cry. Hobgoblins had not been created with the capacity to weep, and he had never anticipated the need. After all, weeping changed nothing. It didn’t alter fate, or soften evil hearts. It couldn’t raise the dead or cure the sick, so why should hobgoblins have been given such a visible weakness? What cared the goblin king that by not weeping Qasim was kept from something inside of himself—something that lived in desperate isolation? Better that the king’s soldiers never feel anything at all than feel weakness.
    But Gofimbel had somehow miscalculated, and inside Qasim did cry out. In his heart—if heart he had—he wailed and asked for Wren’s forgiveness.
    Of course, there was no answer. She was gone beyond where he could reach her, or make amends. And reparation meant nothing to the dead. He had learned this at Gofimbel’s hands. Comprehension of his loss was suddenly absolute:
    There would be no future with Wren. They would have no children.
    Gofimbel would remain king.
    Hobgoblins would remain slaves.
    â€œI failed, Wren.” The words were a wound in his throat.
    The realization was terrible. It filled him with . . . grief. That was the word. He felt
grief.
    Absently, Qasim reached out for Bastet. The cat permitted the touch. She hated goblins; they were anathema to her race. But Qasim was different. Part animal himself, he understood her. The cat hadn’t understood Wren as well, but the half-lutin female had belonged to Qasim, so Bastet had stayed with her in her exile. She had stayed even for her death.
    â€œI smell mimosa and orange blossoms,” Qasim said suddenly. “Wren loved mimosa and orange blossoms. They were her favorite flowers.”
    The cat looked toward the shuttered window.
    Qasim followed her gaze and then got to his feet. He went to the window, where a small current of air eddied at the shutters’ imprecise joining. He pulled the boards wide. Leaning out into the cool morning air, he grabbed limbs from the trees, ripping them free. Not sure what to do with the blossomed branches once he had them in hand, he took them to the bed. Bastet rose onto her hind legs and pawed the coverlet. Understanding, Qasim gently laid the bruised twigs on Wren’s small body, softening the grim view and making it look as though she was just sleeping in a bower. The gesture made him feel a little better.
    Below them, a door slammed. Bastet hissed a sharp warning and then leapt for the open window. There were two things the cat loathed: one was goblins, the other Queen Mabigon. Qasim had never been certain whether it was the queen herself who bothered the cat, or her constant companion, the ravenous gargoyle.
    Not knowing whom to expect—and, at the moment, not really caring—Qasim turned toward the door and waited.
    A moment later, the Dark Queen appeared. She came veiled in black and bearing an armload of deep, red roses. Qasim noted that they still had their thorns, and their stems were as ragged as the branches of orange blossoms and mimosa he had torn from the trees. She had probably ripped them off the bushes in the garden.
    â€œYou,” he said. He added ironically, “I’m honored.”
    Mabigon tactfully left her pet gargoyle outside the door.
    â€œI came as soon as I heard,” the queen said in her dark, smoky voice. She pulled back her long black veil and then scattered her flowers carelessly over Wren’s body and face, demonstrating her true indifference to Wren’s death. The room filled with the familiar scent of dragon’s blood, thickened with myrrh and tickles of clove; it was the queen’s favorite perfume, and Qasim realized that he hated it even as it attracted him. “How upset you must be. This does rather end your little plan for freedom, doesn’t it, my foolish one?”
    Qasim looked at her, wondering how—and why and when—she had heard about Wren. Mabigon was a jealous queen and also a