The eunuch stared as though hypnotised at the tip of the sword, for all that it was a couple of strides away from him. He raised one shaking hand towards the pale dome above.
'They are in,' he said in a quiet, shaking whisper, 'the top-most level, sir, in the small court.'
DeWar looked around and saw the stairs. He ran for them, then in a spiral up them, to the top. There were ten or so doors arranged all around the highest level, but across the well of the courtyard he could see a wider entrance which formed a truncated corridor with double doors at its end. He ran, breathing hard now, round the gallery to the short hallway and the twinned doors. They were locked. The second key he tried opened them.
He found himself in another domed internal courtyard. This one had but a single level, and the columns supporting the roof and the translucent plaster dome were of a more delicate turn than those in the main court. There was a fountain and a pool in the centre of this yard too, which at first sight appeared to be deserted. The fountain was in the shape of three intertwined maidens, delicately sculpted from pure white marble. DeWar sensed movement behind the pale carvings of the fountain. Behind this, on the far side of the court, beyond the columns, one door lay ajar.
The fountain splashed, tinkling. It was the only sound in the wide, circular space. Shadows moved on the polished marble of the floor, near the fountain. DeWar glanced behind him, then walked forward and round.
The lady Perrund knelt before the fountain's raised pool, washing her hands slowly and methodically. Her good hand massaged and wiped at the wasted hand, which lay floating just under the surface of the water like the limb of a drowned child.
She was dressed in a thin gown of red. It was semitransparent, and the light from the glowing plaster dome above fell down across her dishevelled blonde hair and picked out her shoulders, breasts and hips within the gauzy material. She did not look up when DeWar appeared round the side of the fountain. Instead she concentrated on washing her hands, until she was satisfied. She lifted the wasted limb out of the water and placed it gently by her side, where it hung, limp and thin and pale. She rolled the flimsy red sleeve down over it. Then she looked slowly round and up at DeWar, who had approached to within a few steps, his face pale and terrible and full of fear.
Still she did not say a word, but looked slowly round at the door which lay open behind her, opposite the double doors through which DeWar had entered.
DeWar moved quickly. He pushed the door open with the pommel of his sword and looked into the room. He stood there for some time. He backed away, until his shoulder hit one of the columns supporting the roof of the room. The sword hung loose in his hand. His head lowered until his chin rested on the white shirt over his chest.
Perrund watched him for a moment, then turned away. Still kneeling, she dried her hands as best she could on her thin gown, looking at the rim of the fountain's bowl, a hand or so in front of her eyes.
Suddenly DeWar was at her side, standing by her wasted arm, his bare feet by her calf. The sword came slowly down to rest on the marble rim of the fountain's bowl, then slid with a grating noise near to her nose. It dipped, and the blade went under her chin. The metal was cold on her skin. A gentle pressure lifted her face until she was looking up at him. The sword remained pressed against her throat, cold and thin and sharp.
'Why?' he asked her. There were, she saw, tears in his eyes.
'Revenge, DeWar,' she said quietly. She had thought that if she could speak at all, her voice would quiver and shake and quickly break and leave her sobbing, but her voice was steady and unstrained.
'For what?'
'For killing me, and my family, and for raping my mother and my sisters.' She thought her own voice sounded much less affected than DeWar's. She sounded reasonable, almost unconcerned, she thought.
He stood looking down at her, his face wet with tears. His chest was coming and going inside the loosely tucked and still unbuttoned shirt. The sword at her throat, she noticed, did not move.
'The King's men,' he said, his voice catching. The tears continued to stream.
She wanted to shake her head, though she was worried that the slightest movement would cut her skin. But then he would be doing that soon enough anyway, if she was lucky, she thought, and so, tentatively, she did shake her head. The pressure of the sword blade across her throat did not waver, but she avoided cutting herself.
'No, DeWar. Not the King's men. His men. Him. His people. He and his cronies, those closest to him.'
DeWar stared down at her. The tears were fewer now. They had made a damp patch on the white shirt, below his chin.
'It was all as I have told you, DeWar, except that it was the Protector and his friends, not one of the old nobles still loyal to the King. UrLeyn killed me, DeWar. I thought I would return the compliment.' She opened her eyes wide and let her gaze fall to the blade of the sword in front of her. 'May I beg you to be quick, for the friends we once were?'
'But you
'Those were my orders, DeWar.'
'Orders?' He sounded incredulous.
'When what had happened to my town and my family and to me had happened, I wandered away. I found a camp, one night, and offered myself to some soldiers, for food. They all took me too, and I did not care,
because I knew then that I had become dead. But one was cruel and wanted me in a way I did not want to be taken, and I found that once one was dead it was very easy indeed to kill. I think they would have killed me in return for his death, and that would have been that, and perhaps the better for all of us, but instead their officer took me away. I was brought to a fortress over the border, in Outer Haspidus, mostly manned by Quience's men but commanded by forces loyal to the old King. I was treated kindly, and there I was introduced to the art of being a spy and an assassin.' Perrund smiled.
If she had been alive, she thought, her knees, on the cold white marble tiles, would be hurting a little by now, but she was dead and so they troubled somebody else. DeWar's face was still streaked with tears. His eyes stared, seeming to bulge in their sockets. 'But I was ordered to bide my time, by King Quience himself,' she told him. 'UrLeyn was to die, but not at the height of his fame and power. I was commanded that I must do everything I could to keep him alive until his utter ruin had been contrived.'
She gave a small, shy smile and moved her head fractionally to look at her wasted arm. 'I did. And in the process I became above suspicion.'
There was a look of utter horror on DeWar's face. It was, she thought, like looking at the face of somebody who had died in agony and despair.
She had not seen, or wanted to see, UrLeyn's face. She had waited until, having been given the news she claimed to have been called away to receive, he had fallen into a fit of sobbing and buried his face in the pillow, then she had risen, lifted a heavy jet vase in her one good hand and brought it crashing down on the back of his skull. The sobbing had stopped. He had not moved again or made a further sound. She'd slit his throat for good measure, but she had done that while straddling his back, and still she had not seen his face.
'Quience was behind it all,' DeWar said. His voice
,sounded strangled, as though he had a sword at his throat, not she at hers. 'The war, the poisoning.'
'I do not know, DeWar, but I imagine so.' She looked deliberately down at the sword blade. 'DeWar.' She looked up into his eyes with a hurt, pleading expression. 'There is no more I can tell you. The poison was delivered by innocents to the Paupers' Hospital, where I received it. Nobody I know knew what it was or what it was for. If you have the nurse as well, you have the totality of our conspiracy. There is no more to tell.' She paused. 'I am already dead, DeWar. Please, if you would, finish the job. I am suddenly so weary.' She let the muscles supporting her head relax so that her chin rested on the blade. It, and through it DeWar, was now taking all the weight of her head and its memories.
The metal, warm now, dropped slowly away from beneath her, so that she had to stop herself falling forwards and striking the rim of the fountain pool. She looked up. DeWar, his own head hanging down, was sliding the sword back into its scabbard.
'I told him the boy was dead, DeWar!' she said angrily. 'I lied to him before I crushed his filthy skull and slit his scrawny old-man's throat!' She struggled to her feet, her joints protesting. She went to DeWar and took his arm with her good hand. 'Would you leave me to the guard and the questioner? Is that your judgment?'
She shook him, but he did not respond. She looked down, then grabbed at the nearest weapon, his long knife. She pulled it from its sheath. He looked alarmed and took two rapid steps backwards, away from her, but he could have stopped her taking it, and he had not.
'Then I'll do it myself!' she said, and brought the knife quickly up to her throat. His arm was a blur. She saw
