Someone saw it happen, saw Laeth slip the knife in —Lord Jarroh, that’s who it had been. His thoughts had a familiar touch; she could remember his rage from her days as a dancer at the club in Kentar.
Rialla shook her head in frustration. She knew that Laeth hadn’t killed his brother; she had felt his grief and rage also when he saw his brother fall. Why had Lord Jarroh seen something that hadn’t happened? Where was Laeth? Why was she here?
Ignoring her wounded leg, Rialla managed to set her feet on the floor, but that was as close to standing up as she was going to get. Frustrated, she reached empathically to touch Laeth and assure herself that he was well. It wasn’t until then that she realized the scars that had limited her ability were gone, as if they had never been. The battle with the monster must have finished what the death of the Eastern empath had begun.
She found the mouse in the wall, and a deer eating grass in the forest nearby. But she couldn’t touch Laeth—or anyone else for that matter. Experimentally, she constructed the shields that would protect her from unwanted contact. Her awareness of the deer and then the mouse faded. She dropped the shields again, to look for anyone she could read.
She touched something else. It felt familiar, as if she’d just been dreaming about it. Without willing it, a smile began to spread across her face. It wasn’t what she was used to feeling when she touched a living creature. She received no emotions, no thoughts; just beauty—as if a sculptor had learned to work in a new medium and created something extraordinary. Something just for her.
Fascinated, she drew closer to it. She was so absorbed in her study that when the door opened and the healer, Tris, walked in, he startled her. She instinctively closed off her gift and assumed the blank face that slaves normally wear.
Now, where had he come from? With her barriers down and her talent free, she should have been able to sense him before he’d gotten that close. Although she couldn’t read Winterseine without touching him, she’d been able to tell where he was. She must have let herself be distracted by the… whatever it was that she’d been sensing.
At least his presence gave her some clue as to where she was. From that and the herbal smells wafting through the room’s open door, she concluded she was at the healer’s cottage in the village of Tallonwood.
“Good morning,” he said with suspicious blandness. “How are you feeling?”
She narrowed her eyes at him, trying to read his face. “I have been better,” she finally allowed neutrally.
He smiled, humor warming his gray-green eyes as it animated his voice. “I bet you have. You’ll feel better if you put your legs back on the bed.” He made no move to help her.
She gave him a wary look, but since it was obvious that she wasn’t going to be going anywhere soon, she painfully maneuvered back under the quilt.
He waited until she was settled comfortably, before sitting on the end of the bed and leaning against the wall.
He was a big man, and the end of the bed sank considerably with his weight.
“I don’t know how much you saw of last night’s events.” He let the end of his sentence rise in a question.
“I was fairly busy,” said Rialla, truthfully enough.
The healer grunted, then said, “Lord Karsten was killed by a knife in the back, while you were slaying the monster. Lord Laeth is locked in the guard tower at Westhold. The evidence against him is quite strong.
“Lord Jarroh himself saw Laeth stab Karsten in the confusion. A guard reported seeing the Lady of the Hold leaving Laeth’s rooms late at night. He also apparently launched quite a verbal attack on his brother the night before Karsten died. The only mystery seems to be what happened to the dagger with which Karsten was murdered.
“Several people, including myself, saw it, but it appears to be missing. It was quite distinctive; the hilt was silver and shaped like a coiled serpent with ruby eyes—the one that Laeth was wearing the night Lord Karsten was poisoned. You have probably seen it.”
“Yawan,” swore Rialla with some heat, forgetting her role altogether. She was left with a real mess to clean up.
“Quite,” replied the healer, Tris, relaxing even more against the wall. “It certainly looks as if someone has planned carefully to insure Lord Laeth is blamed for Karsten’s death; unless Laeth is stupid enough to have actually done it.”
“No,” said Rialla. “It wasn’t Laeth.”
Tris nodded. “Lord Winterseine was anxiously explaining to Lord Jarroh that he had caught his young nephew, Laeth, playing with magic one afternoon when Laeth was a boy. Obviously the adult Laeth took magic up again while he was living in Sianim, and transported the monster from the Great Swamp.
“Indeed, I thought Winterseine knew a great deal about the unusual creature. He told Jarroh that the monster feeds on emotions and that you are an empath—not that anyone in the ballroom last night was in any doubt of that.
“Obviously Laeth intended the thing to act as a diversion while he killed Karsten. He needed you to draw the beast’s attention—so it wouldn’t kill anyone it wasn’t supposed to. Winterseine explained that he had requested that Laeth return you to him and Laeth refused. Winterseine was surprised and hurt until he understood Laeth’s motivation.”
“All that you have is my word that Laeth didn’t kill Karsten. Why doesn’t all this evidence convince you?” asked Rialla finally.
Tris looked at her briefly, sincerity clear in his eyes, and then looked out the window, as if he knew how uncomfortable she was meeting anyone’s gaze.
“Aside from my personal opinion of Winterseine?” he asked. “I was watching Lord Laeth while Karsten was stabbed. I didn’t see who killed Karsten, but it wasn’t Laeth. He was trying to get through the crowd and help you battle the monster.”
Rialla looked out the window too, keeping Tris in her peripheral vision. His cordiality was making her nervous; he wasn’t treating her like a slave. She liked people to be predictable; she couldn’t understand what motivated the healer.
Deliberately, she looked at him until she drew his eye, wanting to watch his face. “Why do you think that I care about what happens to Lord Laeth? I am only his slave.”
The healer smiled, and she could see a hint of a dimple under his close-shaven beard. Humor lit his eyes.
“Ah yes, a slave.” He rubbed his jaw, as if in thought, and then snapped his ringers. “But I didn’t finish telling you the rest of it. Lord Winterseine was here early this morning. It seems that with Karsten dead, he is Laeth’s closest relative: as such he is claiming custody of Laeth’s valuables, including you. I told him that you were currently too ill to move. Are you sure you are merely Laeth’s slave?”
Rialla took an involuntary breath, forgetting momentarily the trepidation she had about the healer. She had been so worried about Laeth that she had forgotten what his imprisonment would mean to his slave. Ren had promised that she wouldn’t remain a slave, no matter how the bones fell, but she’d rather not risk it. She also would rather not see Laeth executed for a crime he didn’t commit.
The problem was that she couldn’t do anything about Laeth or her impending return to slavery. She was effectively immobilized on the wrong side of the Darranian border, with a tattoo that proclaimed her property of Winterseine, who sounded as if he were intent on the death of her closest friend.
She looked at Tris, who had turned back to the window, giving her time to think about his words. She was unsure why Tris sounded so certain that she was not Laeth’s slave, but at this point she didn’t believe it mattered much. With Karsten dead and Laeth imprisoned, somehow keeping their investigations secret hardly seemed imperative—especially since they had failed so spectacularly at foiling Karsten’s murderer. On the other hand, with Tris’s cooperation, she might be able to stall Winterseine long enough to do something about freeing Laeth.