Thren placed one of his shortswords on the table with his uninjured hand. Although old for a guildmaster, he was still full of strength and vitality, a fact proven by Aaron’s birth so late in his marriage to Marion. He dared his son to meet his eyes and challenge him. For once, he was wrong about his elder son.
“I may leave the mansion be,” Randith said. “But I will not cower and hide. You are right, father. These are the opening hours. Our actions here will decide the course of months of fighting. Let the merchants and nobles hide. We rule the night.”
He pulled his gray cloak over his head and turned to the hidden door. Thren watched him go, his hands shaking, but not from the toxin.
“Be careful,” Thren said.
“I’ll get Senke,” said Randith. “He’ll watch over you until Aaron returns with the mage.”
Then he was gone. Thren struck the table and swore. He thought of all the hours invested in Randith, all the training, teaching, and lecturing in an attempt to cultivate a worthy heir. Wasted, he thought. Wasted.
He heard the click of the latch, and then the door creaked open. Thren expected the mage, or perhaps his son returning to smooth over his abrupt exit, but instead a short man with a black cloth wrapped around his face stepped inside.
“Don’t run,” the intruder said. Thren snapped up his shortsword and blocked the first two blows from the man’s dagger. He tried to counter, but his vision was blurred and his speed a pathetic remnant of his finely honed reflexes. A savage chop knocked the sword from his hand. Thren fell back, using his chair to force a stumble out of his pursuer. The best he could do was limp, however, and when a heel kicked his knee, he fell. He spun, refusing to die with a dagger in his back.
“Connington sends his greetings,” the man said, his dagger aimed for a final, lethal blow.
He suddenly jerked forward. His eyes widened. The dagger fell from his limp hand as the would-be assassin collapsed. Behind him stood Aaron, holding a bloody shortsword. Thren’s eyes widened as his younger son knelt, presenting the sword. The flat edge rested on his palms, blood running down his wrists.
“Your sword,” Aaron said.
“How…why did you return?” he asked.
“The man was hiding,” the boy said, his voice still quiet. He didn’t sound the least bit upset. “Waiting for us to go. So I waited for him.”
Thren felt the corner’s of his mouth twitch. He took the sword from a boy who spent his days reading underneath his bed and skulking within closets. A boy who never threw a punch when forced into a fight. A boy who had killed a man at the age of eight.
“I know you’re bright,” Thren said. “But can you read a man’s meaning from his words? Not from what he says, but what he doesn’t say. Can you, my son?”
“I can,” Aaron said.
“Good,” said Thren. “Wait with me. Randith will return soon.”
Ten minutes later the door crept open.
“Father?” Randith asked as he stepped inside. Senke was with him. He looked slightly older than Randith, with a trimmed blonde beard and a thick mace held in hand. They both startled at the bloody body lying on the floor, a gaping wound in its back.
“He waited until you left,” Thren said from his chair facing the entrance.
“Where?” his son asked. He pointed to Aaron. “And why is he here?”
Thren shook his head. “You don’t understand. One too many, Randith. One fatal mistake too many.”
Then he waited. And hoped.
Aaron stepped toward his older brother. His blue eyes were calm, unworried. In a single smooth motion, he yanked Randith’s dagger from his belt, flipped it around, and thrust it to the hilt in his brother’s chest. Senke stepped back but wisely held his tongue. Aaron withdrew the dagger, spun around, and presented it as a gift to his father.
Thren’s eyes twinkled as he rose from his seat and placed a hand on Aaron’s shoulder.
“You did well, my son,” he said. “My heir.”
Aaron only smiled and bowed as the body of his brother bled out on the floor.
1
Maynard Gemcroft paced the halls, his bare feet cushioned by the thick carpet. He paced far from the windows. Even though he had paid handsomely for thick glass, he did not trust it. A thick stone followed by a single arrow was all it’d take to lay him out on the carpet, bleeding red on the blue weave. A thin, wiry man, he lived within his castle-mansion protected by over a hundred guards. Only the king was as well protected.
Yet two days prior, he had nearly died.
A guard opened a door and stepped inside. He wore chain armor with a dark sash wrapped around his waist signifying his allegiance to the Gemcroft family line. His teeth were crooked, and when he talked the sight of them disgusted Maynard.
“Your daughter is here to see you.”
“Send her in,” Maynard said as he checked his robes and smoothed his hair. He always prided himself on his appearance, but lately he found less and less time to primp and preen. It seemed like every other night he’d awake to alarms and cries of trespassers. Come the morning, yet another guard would lie dead somewhere on the grounds.
The guard stepped out, and then in came his daughter.
“Alyssa,” said Maynard as he approached with open arms. “You’ve returned early. Were the men in Kinamn too boring for you?”
She was short for a lady, but her slender body was supple and strong. Maynard had never seen a man best his Alyssa in any feats of dexterity, and he knew many she could out-drink as well. Her mother had been a wild one, he remembered. A shame she had slept with another man. Connington’s gentle touchers had never been given a woman so fine.
Alyssa brushed a hand over her red hair cropped around her neck and interwoven with tight braids. Her fingers pulled aside her bangs and tucked them behind an ear. Her green eyes twinkled with mild amusement.
“Very much so,” she said in a husky voice. “Their women preen and prattle like they’ve never heard of a cock, and so the men oblige by never pulling it out to teach them otherwise.”
She snickered at her father’s blush. In truth, she had found many men eager for her bed, but he didn’t need to know that. She wanted him feeling awkward, not mortified.
“Must you use such…such… common language?” Maynard asked.
“You sent me to live with common women. Fosters and sitters whose entire wealth couldn’t buy the privilege to clean the…filth from my bottom.”
She winked at her father.
“I did so for your own safety,” Maynard said. He caught her nearing the windows and put himself in the way. When he opened his mouth to explain she pressed a finger against his lips and kissed his forehead.
Servants arrived informing them that the evening meal was ready. Maynard took his daughter’s hand and led her through the mansion to the extravagant dining room. Suits of armor lined the walls, holding erect lances decorated with silken flags of kings, nobles, and ancient members of the family. Over a hundred chairs waited at the giant table, their dark wood upholstered in purple. Decorating the top were twelve roses in ruby-encrusted vases.
Twenty servants stood ready although only the two Gemcrofts would eat first. Maynard took a seat at the head of the table as Alyssa sat to his left.
“Don’t worry about the food,” the older man said. “I have everything tasted.”
“You’re the worrier, not me,” Alyssa said.
Maynard thought she might have held her tongue if she had known four tasters had died over the past three years, including one only two days ago.
The first course was steamed mushrooms smothered with gravy. Servants flitted in and out of sight, always
