“Yes, I saw him enter, but he wouldn’t do this. Where did he go? Oh, here he is...” The defender’s voice dropped away. I caught the sound of something being pushed aside and a gasp of horror. “Master Renato, you need to see this.”
“I will be right with you,” Renato called to me and then a moment later he was back. “Can you hear me Hadrian?”
“Yes,” I replied. “Beware of Lorne. He attacked me.”
Renato was silent for a moment before he replied. “He won’t be attacking anyone else. He is dead.”
Dead? The word resonated through my mind. He couldn’t be. There was no reason. The dart wouldn’t have killed him unless... “Is there a sign of cause of death?”
“No, nothing that I can see,” the defender’s voice replied. “I only see the gisto dart, but that shouldn’t have killed him unless it was filled with something other than stracken. Let me just pull it out and we will know.”
“Don’t touch the dart,” I cried. “I believe you are right. Leave it there. It will not do him any more harm than it already has.”
The table lifted from the desk and dropped to the floor with a crash. “What happened?” Tristan’s voice demanded as the desk was finally moved back and the afternoon light broke into my cave beneath it. He must have just arrived.
Renato’s face appeared before me, worry pulling at the features. “Are you injured?” he asked.
“A few bruises from dodging under the desk and a wrenched knee, but nothing critical.” I took his offered hand. He pulled me to my feet just as three more men arrived demanding to know who had caused their headaches. Shooting me a glance that told me that he would get his answer later, Tristan turned away to explain that a small accident had occurred and everything was under control. “I hope he remembers to apologize for me,” I commented to my assistant as he shoved a shoulder under my arm.
“You will be apologizing for days; everyone on the compound is going to be hurting for a day or two from that mental shout. Can you rest weight on it?”
I gingerly shifted pressure onto my throbbing limb and received the expected feedback. “I can move it.” I demonstrated the fact by rotating my knee. “It is just a bruising and possibly a small strain. It will heal.”
“Sept Son?” Both us looked up to find the defender standing over Lorne’s prone body. At his feet a healer was leaning over the corpse without touching it. “He wants to move the body, Master.”
“We need to begin cleaning up the mess,” the healer pointed out.
“Just be cautious when removing that dart. It should have my blood, stricken extract, and, I suspect, a poison.”
The man’s eyes narrowed. “Poison, Master?” His expert eyes scanned me as his energy probed my vital signs.
“I am feeling no effects, healer. Just be careful when you remove the dart.”
“You will need examining as well.” He rose and nodded to the orderlies standing a short ways off before turning to Renato. “Bring him this way.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but he didn’t give me a chance. Pinning me with a sharp glare, he frowned. “And that is an order. I have watched too many men die from delayed reactions. You are not going to walk away and collapse later. Now, where is the closest place of privacy so I can examine you?”
“My office is just next door,” Renato offered.
Nodding firmly, the healer headed in that direction. Renato helped me hobble in his wake.
“IT WASN’T POISON,” Renato announced two days later. He entered my study in the early morning and planted himself before my replacement desk. “From all we can see, there was no reason for his death and we can’t check his mind.”
I looked up from the fist-thick stack of notes I had made on the changes to law that the High King was proposing to find him frowning at me.
“What do you mean?”
“Lorne attacks you, shoots you with a gisto dart, you pluck it out of your own arm and plant it into his chest. Meanwhile, he lifts a table over his head, hurls it at you, and we have no explanation when he suddenly dies.”
“A planted suicide trigger.” It was the next logical step, but it scared me to my core. The poisoned food wasn’t working so it made sense for them to try another method. Incapacitating me talent-wise and then crushing me with a piece of furniture was a crude but almost effective plan. What frightened me was the person they had used. Lorne had not been a soft man in terms of skill or strength talent-wise. There was no reason for Lorne to lose control like that. His sent plea haunted my thoughts. “I am more worried about how they got into Lorne’s head.”
“You did say that he claimed to not be in control.”
“Yes, and he pleaded for help. I want to know what they did to him and who did it, but he died with that secret locked within his head.”
Renato swallowed carefully. “What you are suggesting is...”
“Terrible, I know.” I closed my eyes and leaned back in my chair, leaving the High King’s document on the desk. “But it is possible and probable given what we do know, and so we must consider it, Renato. More importantly, we need to find a way to guard against it.”
“Satoconatus is against everything in the code. To invade the mind and plant a directive that goes against the will of the individual is unethical. Planting a suicide trigger is unheard of.”
“But we are dealing with unethical men, Renato. They have kidnapped, raped, and stripped women of their identities. They are greedy for power and control and will stop at nothing to obtain it. I cannot put it beyond them to take a man’s
