The warrior grunted in shock as he awoke to her lips pressing onto his and her arms locking around his neck. He grabbed her and wrestled, rocking left and then right trying to dislodge her. Finally he broke her grip with a powerful heave and rolled off one side of the bed as she tumbled off the other side. Her head popped back up quickly, and she glared at him. “Why do you keep rejecting me?” she demanded.
“Why, we, t-t-t-tomorrow is our ”
“Yes. Our wedding. And you will be my lover, Rosha. I will no longer tolerate this simple-minded resistance.”
“B-but I’ve n-not ”
“You have. But you’ll not anymore.” She scrambled to her feet and circled the bed toward him, her eyes locked into his. “We are going to settle this right ”
Rosha got sick. He did it with an artistry that would have amazed even his teacher. And the ploy certainly succeeded. Ligne stopped where she was, then backed to the far side of the room. “You’re sick!” she shrilled, and Rosha nodded. “Why didn’t you tell me you were sick.”
“I tried.” Rosha shrugged.
“And I just took a bath,” the Queen moaned. Then she glared at him again. “I’m going back to bathe again. You go to the infirmary.”
“On my way,” the young warrior assented, and he hustled out the door.
He was halfway down the hall before Carlad woke up enough to pursue him.
A few minutes later he was begging the Lord of Herbs for some word of his friends. “I tell you, I don’t know where they are,” the harried chemist screeched. “I know they were all sick, that’s all, and that I had no medicine to give them. And then, when I made a call this morning on the little woman with the ample figure, she was gone.
They’re all gone. And if you want my opinion, we’re well rid of the nuisances,” he added nastily. He was most unhappy about being stood up.
Rosha nodded, postive that he knew where the troupe was now or at any rate, where they’d gone. He forced himself not to glance over at the low cot that hid the door into the tunnels below. Obviously, Yona Parmi had passed the word to gather, and the plan had succeeded in drawing the herbalist out of his infirmary long enough for them all to make entry. Rosha had certainly expected to be included in that summons. Had Pelmen and the others abandoned him to Ligne?
Rosha took deep breaths as Parmi had taught him to do, seeking to control his anxiety. Pelmen wouldn’t abandon him. Logically, there was no way they could have passed the word to him, since Ligne now posted a pair of guards outside his apartments on a permanent basis, in addition to assigning Carlad to dog his heels wherever he went in the castle. Carlad presently stood napping just outside the door of the infirmary.
lv Rosha shook his curly head to rid himself of these distracting fears and tried to think clearly. If they were in the tiassage below, as he believed they must be, they couldn’t A$afely get out while the pharmacist remained in the room.
a wondered if he could assist them… M-my apologies for b-b-bothering you,” Rosha said, sh-sure that it wasn-nothing just a bit of undigested breakfast.”
“Humph,” the gaunt man grunted, and he turned back to his pestle and his bottles of herbs.
“I imagine you are s-s-summoned often in the m-m-mddle of the n-night…”
“Too often,” the Lord of Herbs snorted. “Especially last flight”
“M-must get very little s-s-sleep…”
“Too little.”
“P-perhaps you sh-sh-should take off this morning, and cat eh a nap—”
“And leave my post?” the man exploded self-righteously. “Never!”
He turned back to his mixing bowl.. l “What are you m-making? A love p-p-potion?” /V The Lord of Herbs spun around and backed up against JMs table, aghast. “Wh-wh-what a ridiculous notion!” he bouted.
“Ah-ah-ah of course not.” Once more the blood filled his old cheeks, and they radiated warmth. A love potion was exactly what he was making, and once this intruder left him alone, he planned to steal away slip it, somehow, to a merchant’s lovely daughter. Not he actually believed it would work, of course… “Ah-ah-ah why do you ask?” he demanded.
“You really ought to d-do something about that Rosha goaded. Then he turned on his heel and talked out of the room. He decided if he couldn’t push the chemist out of the infirmary, he would summon him from…” Carlad fell into step behind him as he climbed the spiral stairs to return to his apartment. As he passed the door of the throne room he glanced in, just to check if the troupe night have somehow eluded his search and gathered here. It was empty but for the brocade-swathed dais and the Ornately carved throne. Rosha blanched, then, for he saw Something had been added a smaller throne, carved ex-y like Ligne’s, now sat on the floor to the right of her platform. Rosha knew who the chair was intended for, and his sudden nausea truly warranted his calling the doctor. He continued down the hall to his new apartment, thankful at least that Ligne had moved him out of his rooftop prison and down to this level. He was that much closer to the gate and freedom.
As he passed alone through the double doors into his room and closed them on his weary guard, he was contrasting Ligne to his thoughtful, sensitive Bronwynn, Then something slammed into his back.
Bronwynn had grown up inside this castle. While she’d known nothing of the nether tunnels until Admon Faye had revealed them to her, once she was through the infirmary floor and into the House proper she was loose on her home territory. She’d explored these halls as a child, had stuck her turned-up nose into every corner and closet. She’d learned thereby all the secrets to moving into and out of the hidden passageways that laced through the upper levels. Fortuitously, she escaped the infirmary without being seen. Mere seconds later, she was safely hidden in the walls.
She brushed cobwebs aside as she walked. Evidently, Ligne had either not discovered all of these narrow aisles, or else she used them infrequently. Either way, Bronwynn thought grimly, they would prove the wanton imposter’s downfall. Whether Admon Faye and the others survived the battle below her feet or not, Bronwynn was resolved to dispatch Queen Ligne by nightfall after she’d dealt with Rosha, of course. She made that vengeance her first order of business.
Methodically, she searched the rooms of the castle for him, quite unnoticed behind the drapes and panels.
She’d already determined that he could most easily be killed in his bed which she assumed would be in Ligne’s own apartments. She climbed a dark ladder, barely a foot and a half wide, to peer through a crack into the royal apartments on the second floor.
She watched as a trio of maidservants made up Ligne’s vast bed. She bit her tongue in rage, to think that the usurper of her throne now slept here, in her parent’s room. She choked back hot tears as she remembered crawling up into very bed between them, when common sounds made by the night drove her, frightened, from her own.
strained to hear the words of these servants, but the porn was vast, and the sound didn’t carry through the %WliBs. She shifted position, circling through the darkness to tiny portal closer to the women, arriving in time only to ice them leave. One half-heard comment was enough, how
QjfWt. As they left the room, the senior of the three said lky would need to do a complete cleaning the next morn-c’ffafr when the new young master moved in. It was fortunate for Bronwynn that the ladies made their tit then, for she couldn’t contain her boiling temper, and y occupant of the room could have heard her vent her ftage on the walls. Once she’d controlled herself, she concluded that Rosha must either be in one of the guest rooms left side the royal suite, or else In the rooftop room where her letter had himself placed Ligne. She shuffled sideways ilftound the perimeter of the wall to check the guest rooms.