The White Gryphon

I thought this through completely, he told it sternly. And I consulted Shalaman. If I’d let anyone else in on the plan, Winterhart would have gotten word of it, and I have to have a real reaction out of her, not something feigned. Leyuet’s not the only Truthsayer in the place and besides, she’s good at hiding emotions. She isn’t very good at creating them.

His conscience grumbled that he was underestimating her. Well, he might be, but it was too late now.

He took a deep breath and slumped his shoulders, opened the door of the small room Shalaman used for private appointments, and headed toward the Audience Chamber. If he did his work right, this would be something that the courtiers here would talk about for decades.

If he did it wrong, they would still talk about it for decades, but Winterhart would rightfully never speak to him again.

He waited at the edge of the crowd for the best possible moment to act. At this instant, Winterhart had no idea that she was in the same room with him—but he knew very well that both his appearance and his reputation as a killer would soon clear a path between them. That, and the expectation induced by his appearance that something dramatic was going to happen.

Whispered word spread through the crowd as if by magic, and as if by magic the courtiers parted along the line his eyes followed toward his lady. The gathered Haighlei parted neatly, as if invisible guards were clearing a path for him, and as they moved back they turned to stare avidly at him.

He waited; she suddenly realized by the stares and stir he created that he was standing near the door to the Audience Chamber, at the end of a cleared corridor that divided the courtiers into near-equal groups. She turned, met his eyes, and started. Silence descended, the heavy silence that falls whenever a mob senses drama.

“Oh, gods!” he shouted into the silence, clutching his robe melodramatically at his throat. “Oh, gods, it is truel I thought they were lying, I thought—”

He advanced toward her, where she stood at the foot of the platform holding the Emperor’s bench. Shalaman might have been a statue; he neither stirred nor spoke. “You bitch!” he snarled. “You faithless dog, running to lick the hand of the first man who offers you a better bone and wallow at his feet! You mongrel cur! You—you— perchil”

She stood staring at him, her eyes round and shocked, her mouth open in disbelief.

“It is not enough that I am accused of vile crimes I know nothing about!” he cried, his voice already hoarse with shouting. “It is not enough that I am a prisoner without a trial! It is not enough that you lose faith in me! But to run to fawn at the feet of him, to use this as an excuse to make yourself a queen—you are lower than a perchil At least aperchi gives satisfaction for the money! You give nothing but hollow lies and false smiles, you feign what you cannot feel, and you don’t even do it well!”

He went on with an extensive account of her faults, ranting graphically and at length about her failures as a lover. Finally she reddened, lost the look of utter shock, and he knew he was about to get as good as he had just given.

She was a lady—but she had worked in an army. She had worked among soldiers who saw no reason to temper their language around her, and she had tended gryphons, who were the earthiest creatures he knew. She was absolutely outraged and not thinking at all, and all she wanted to do was to strike back. By the time she was well wound up and in full voice, if he’d had a reputation left, it would have been in shreds.

He got caught up in her hysteria, which fed back to her, and only made the performance better. They railed at each other like a pair of gutter-whores, and for several agonizing moments he was afraid that he had done his work too well. She wasn’t holding back—and she sounded as if she meant it all.

Then, just as his voice began to hold the intimation of real heartache, he caught a familiar sparkle in her eyes.

Relief nearly made him faint—which certainly would have been a dramatic ending to the fight, but not the one he’d intended!

End it now, before she starts laughing!

“I cannot bear this!” he cried, pulling out the knife he’d concealed in the breast of his robe. He raised it over his head—making the motion vague enough that it was open to interpretation whether he was going to kill himself or her.

It didn’t matter; the King’s bodyguards, specifically warned by the King to watch for this particular gesture, rushed at him, seized him and the knife, and bundled him out. He heard the King issuing orders over his screams to lock him in his rooms.

Now he had every reason in the world never to appear in public—as himself.