Bearers of the Black Staff

She would never be ready for anything having to do with Isoeld unless it involved watching her father give the little scut a kick in the backside out the door, but she supposed there was no putting it off. Between the meetings with her grandmother and now this one, she would be grateful if she weren’t summoned to anything more than dinner for a month.

They left the room and made their way down the palace hallways toward the library, Oparion Amarantyne leading, his daughter trudging reluctantly behind. Phryne listened to the sound of their footfalls in the silence, thinking it unusually quiet even for late afternoon, when visitors were no longer admitted and the day was winding down toward dinnertime. She mulled over anew her inevitable confrontation with her grandmother, trying to think how to speak the required words. She found it impossible.

The library door was ajar when they reached the chamber, and her father pushed through first, Phryne following. Isoeld stood at the center of the room, right in front of her husband’s desk, hands clasped before her, smiling warmly.

Teonette stood beside her, grim-faced.

“Thank you both for coming,” she greeted. “This won’t take long.”

“Why is he here?” Phryne snapped, stepping forward to confront them both. She spoke out of turn, but she was too angry to care. She was incensed at the boldness of this woman, bringing her lover to a meeting with her husband.

“What is this about?” Oparion Amarantyne demanded.

Isoeld took a step forward. “It is about you. It is about taking the measure of a life. Your own, to be precise. Good-bye, Oparion.”

In the next instant, a masked figure slipped from the shadows behind the open door and drove a dagger deep into the King’s chest. The King cried out and lurched forward, but the assassin locked his free arm about his victim’s neck and, holding him tight, drove the dagger in a second and third time. Phryne screamed in shock and rage, but Isoeld was on top of her by now and struck her hard across the face—once, twice, three times—dropping her to her knees, stunned.

The assassin yanked the dagger free from the dying King and allowed him to fall. Without a word, he turned, placed the dagger next to Phryne, and disappeared through the open door.

Isoeld bent close. “Your father is dead, Phryne, and you killed him. A terrible quarrel of some sort, it appears. We may never know the truth of it. But you attacked him with your knife—it is your dagger, you know—and although Teonette and I came running at the sounds of a struggle, we arrived too late to stop you.”

Phryne tried to scramble up, but Teonette was behind her, holding her fast. She started to scream, and Isoeld said, “Good, scream all you want! But your anguish at what you’ve done comes too late for your father. Such a terrible thing, patricide. I imagine we won’t be seeing much of you again for many years. That’s if they don’t decide to put you to death. I’ll do what I can to see that they don’t. I like the idea of you alive and well and locked away for the rest of your life.”

Phryne gasped for breath. “They’ll never believe—”

Isoeld struck her across the face several times more. The girl’s vision blurred as tears filled her eyes, and she felt everything begin to spin.

“Your father fought back, which is why you have all these marks on your face. He fought hard for his life, even as he was dying. But it wasn’t enough. His wounds were too grievous. Drop her.”

Teonette let go, and Phryne collapsed to the floor. Isoeld kicked her down all the way and put her foot on her neck. “The King is dead, Phryne,” she hissed. “Long live the Queen!”





TWENTY-NINE




RAIN SPLASHED DOWN ON HIS FACE, CHILL AND stinging, the wind whipping the droplets of water into tiny missiles, and he was conscious again. He lay staring up at a sky that looked like the bottom of a churning cauldron, dark and wild. He turned his head, blinked away the rain, and tried to focus.

What had happened?

Then Deladion Inch remembered, and he was awake instantly. The crawler had inexplicably come apart beneath him. For no discernible reason, a two-ton monster made of iron had disintegrated. That wasn’t possible. It wasn’t even conceivable.

He felt the pain then, ratcheting through him. He took inventory of his body, a careful investigation that didn’t require him to move. His ribs, several broken. His arm, aching badly enough that it might be broken, as well. His head, of course, but when he felt along the skin there didn’t appear to be any deep wounds.

Then he remembered the girl.

He looked around, realizing for the first time that he wasn’t in the vehicle anymore. He was lying on the ground a short distance away. He had been thrown clear, sustained injuries in the process, and lost consciousness.

But where was the girl?