A Draw of Kings

4

FLEX





ADORA SHOOK WITH EACH STEP she took back to her quarters, her body aching with the suppressed need to strike Sevra Weir. If she had to spend the rest of her days enduring one beating after another, she would find a way to make an answer to Oliver Turing’s death, but no recompense could be made until she escaped.

She drew a trembling breath that mirrored the shaking in her hands. Sevra must not be allowed to suspect she intended to escape. The consequences of discovery chilled her more than the wind that cut across the island. The duke’s daughter had killed Turing both as a punishment and as a goad. Sevra wanted her to fight back. It would give her the justification she needed to have her beaten again.

And Adora would have to allow it. Sudden compliance on her part would arouse Sevra’s suspicions. Yet her response would have to be measured. If she pushed Sevra too far, the woman would have her bound or placed under constant watch. Escape would be impossible.

Dread of another beating compressed the time it took to make the trip back to her quarters. Inside the sitting room with the guards posted outside once more, Sevra regarded her with a broad, condescending smile, which did nothing to relieve the cruel severity of her features. The duke’s daughter resembled a gleeful vulture, feasting on another’s death. Adora waited. Nothing she did could appear premeditated. She allowed all the disdain and contempt she felt to show in her eyes.

Sevra’s head rocked with laughter. “I’m surprised you haven’t thanked me yet, Your Highness. After all, that could have been your peasant lover.” She came forward, her head jutting forth on her neck like a stinkweed blossom on its stalk. “He’ll die, Princess, and I promise you’ll be there to see it. Thank me, Highness. Thank me for allowing you to see your filthy little peasant one last time.”

Before Sevra could dodge, Adora leapt forward and backhanded her across the mouth. Savoring the impact of Sevra’s skin against her knuckles, she clenched her fist for a return strike, but the women were on her with cudgels, pounding her into submission. Sevra’s boots beat into her with the force of hammers. Adora rolled away, toward the cudgels, but the duke’s daughter followed.

Adora tried to rise, but the women pressed her down while Sevra continued to kick her. Several times she missed, connecting instead with her ladies-in-waiting. Adora squirmed in their grasp, trying to spread the blows. Her plan would fail if she could not stand or lift a sword.

At last they stopped. She made no attempt to hide her tears, vowing instead to make them serve her.

Sevra backed away. “Let us see what a few days without food will do for your temperament.”

When the door closed after them, Adora wanted to cry in triumph. Instead she raised herself off the floor on arms and legs mottled with new bruises and tottered to the window. Sunset would be six hours or more in coming.

Ignoring the screams from her abused muscles, she moved through her bedroom to the balcony. The sight of the drop made the world pitch, and she grabbed the stone rail in an attempt to force her vision to normalcy. Heights always appeared greater looking down. Still, the distance had to be thirty or forty feet. A jump from such an elevation would at least break her legs if it didn’t kill her. Despair crashed in on waves as grim and cold as any in the Beron Strait. She needed a sword and a way down. Impossible.

Tears, hot against her skin, wet her cheeks. No. She pounded her fist against the stone. The attempt must be made. She returned to the bedroom and began ripping blankets into strips, testing and tying, working the cloth in an attempt to keep visions of falling from conquering her resolve. She considered it might make more sense to forego a weapon and simply sneak over the balcony under the cover of night, but when she envisioned discovery, the need for a sword consumed her.

At sunset she knotted her improvised rope to the heavy baluster, set a pack carrying her disguise on the balcony—in case she had to attempt a quick exit—and moved to the door in her sitting room that opened onto the hallway. She curled up in her cloak on the floor with her ear to the crack and listened. Church guards split the day into four watches and changed duty near sunset when vespers rang, but did Weir’s men follow the same schedule? The sky outside darkened from crimson to purple to black, and still the same two voices carried on their murmured conversation. The bruises on her legs throbbed in time to the grief measured by each sluggish pulse of her blood. She closed her eyes.


Adora started awake, her heart hammering with the realization she’d fallen asleep. No. She couldn’t have. The sky outside was still black, but no voices came from outside the door. Had the guard changed?

She cursed herself. How could she have fallen asleep? Breath shuddered into her lungs. The attempt must be made. She stood, shed her cloak, and ripped her clothes to reveal as much skin as she dared.

Shame heated her face, but she rebuked it. If she could stand being paraded in silk inside the ilhotep’s harem, she could endure this charade. She ripped the back of her shirt. The bruises needed to show. If Weir’s men retained any sense of justice or chivalry, they would help her. If not . . .

Adora shrugged away the thought of what might happen when the guards saw so much of her. She stepped to the door and threw it open. Before either man could react, she fell against the nearest, clutching at his hand. “Please. You have to help me.” She allowed enough of her fear loose to make her voice tremble. “She’ll kill me.”

The guard smiled at her, but his gaze lingered on her torn clothing. “I’ll help you, Highness.” One hand wandered to a hole in her shirt, his fingers rough against her skin.

The other guard stepped in. “If the duke discovers you’ve had her, he’ll have your head.”

The first guard gave a coarse laugh. “The way the lady’s been training her, the princess would say anything now, wouldn’t she? Nobody will believe her.” His gaze met Adora’s at last, looking at her as if she were a thing to be taken.

She let her eyes grow wide. Now. It had to be now, before he took hold of her. With a sob she brought her knee up to the guard’s groin and yanked his sword free. Instead of doubling over, the guard lunged at her. With a twitch of her wrists, she brought the point in line . . . and watched in horror as the blade slipped between his ribs like a knife falling into water.

He died before he hit the floor.

Adora danced backward, but the other guard only looked at her. The sole evidence of any concern he had lay in the increased distance between them.

“Barda never was too bright.” He shrugged as if he’d just noted the weather. “I imagine most people would say he got what he deserved.”

She’d killed him. A minute ago there’d been a man—a cruel, opportunistic brute of a man, but a living being. Now there was just a corpse, a hunk of meat, as Rokha would say. Blood dropped from her head into her stomach at the thought, and the taste of bile rested on the back of her tongue. If she’d been allowed to eat, she’d be throwing up.

“I wouldn’t let it bother you none, Princess. There’s no shortage of people, women mostly, that would thank you.” He drew his sword, gestured toward the door of her apartment. “Drop the sword, Your Highness. I’ll tell Sevra what happened.”

Adora almost succeeded in keeping the hysterical tone from her laughter. “Do you think she’ll care?” She straightened so the guard could see the evidence of Sevra’s abuse, but she continued to grip the sword like a club, with the point trained on the guard’s chest. “You know her. What kind of punishment will she contrive for this?”

The guard’s face went cold and flat as he advanced. “That’s not my place. You don’t even know how to hold a sword, Your Highness.”

She didn’t want to kill again. This man wasn’t her enemy. “Help me escape.”

The guard shook his head. “No, Highness, a man who changes sides is never trusted. I’m the duke’s man until he dies or I do. You can’t hope to get away. The moment our swords cross, the rest of the guards will come running.”

He was right. Without changing her grip, she shuffled her feet into position, as Count Rula had taught her. She would have only one chance. The guard glowered at her in frustration and stepped forward, his blade whistling to knock the sword from her hands.

Now. She dropped her left hand from her sword and pivoted to present her right side. With a flex of her wrist, she forced her blade down, out of the path of his strike. The guard’s stroke met nothing but air, leaving him exposed.

Adora lunged, saw the guard’s eyes widen as he realized his mistake. She saw his brows lower as he braced for the blow that would kill him. The tip took him in the chest.

Time slowed. The guard tried to counter. Adora’s sword entered his side. His riposte came at her, a final attempt to rouse the guards. She pushed and twisted, striving for his heart. She wasn’t going to make it. The swords were going to hit.

Adora fell into her thrust, taking the guard’s stroke along her shoulder. The blade found one of the rents in her shirt, bit into her flesh. She twisted her wrist, tried to ignore his shuddering gasp as her sword found his heart.

The guard sighed. With her free hand, she grabbed his hilt. The thud of his body against the floor sounded no louder than a casual footfall.

The hall remained empty.

Her hands trembled so violently she almost dropped the swords she held. She stumbled to the sitting room and tossed the bloody weapons onto a couch. Shaking, she dragged the dead weight of the guards just inside the door and wiped the blood from the polished marble of the hallway. Deadweight. The thought threatened to send her into hysterics until her hand closed on the red-stained tunic of one of the men she’d killed.

Killed. She threw the door closed and shot the bolt home as sobs wracked her body. Her breath came in shuddering gasps as her fury drained away. She’d killed two of her own subjects, one of whom had committed no wrong other than to be loyal to the lord who’d employed him.

She cursed Duke Weir and his entire questionable lineage. After her weeping subsided to tremors, she extinguished the candles in her sitting room, recovered her pack of clothes from the balcony, and donned the disguise she’d worn numerous times to sneak out into the city to help Healer Norv with the sick. The practice, almost forgotten after all she’d been through in past months, stilled the trembling in her chest as she became “Dorrie” once again.

Pocketing the key, she extinguished the last of the candles in her rooms. Before she moved to the balcony, she smudged her face and hair with ash from the fireplace. She threw her makeshift rope over the balcony . . . and stopped. The sword. She’d nearly forgotten. She groped her way back to the sitting room for the weapon.

A knock at the door pulled a frightened gasp from her lungs. She’d floundered back to her balcony when the knock came again, insistent and pounding. The fabric of her knotted sheets burned her hands as she slid toward the ground. Above her, heavy impacts sounded against the wooden frame.

Her heartbeat screamed at her to run straight for the garden door. With an effort she ignored it. No one had noticed her descent. The winter cloud cover obscured the moon, and unless she drew attention to herself, she would be difficult to spot.

How long before they broke down her door?

Adora merged with the shadows and moved as quickly as she dared toward the gate. Halfway there, she stopped. A guard, walking with the bored gait of a soldier in peacetime, blocked her path, standing within feet of the thick ivy that hid the gate. She crouched beneath the boughs of a holly tree, willing him to make his turn and go back.

A retort of splintering wood sounded from the area of her apartments.

“Guards!” a man’s voice yelled. “Someone has taken the princess. Search the grounds.”

Adora stared. They believed someone had taken her? The guard by the gate peered into the darkness but made no move. A reckless ploy took root in her mind. She twisted the sword belt around to hide the weapon behind her back, then she broke cover and ran toward the guard.


“Over there,” she gasped, pointing back the way she’d come. “They’re behind those trees.”

The guard followed her point and nodded. “Guards, to me,” he yelled and charged away, his weapon flashing.

Men with weapons and lanterns cascaded into the courtyard as Adora squirmed behind the thick wall of ivy, trying to ignore the scratch of vines against her skin. She pulled the key from her pocket.

“Where’s the princess?” The voice, uncomfortably close, belonged to the guard she’d sent away.

A detachment of guards milling beneath her balcony headed toward her. The lock wouldn’t turn. No, it had to. With both hands on the key she wrenched at the mechanism. Then, with a soft groan the tumblers moved, and the door swung open. She slipped through into another mass of ivy that hid the door from the other side, pausing just long enough to lock the gate and pocket the key. Hugging the wall, she inched along behind the vines until she emerged into the open air forty paces later.

A clean wind lifted her hair. Adora loosed the restraint that had bound her movements in stealth and ran toward the city.