"Bastards need to do more than that to kill me. Let me go. Come on. We need to... Sammah's apartments. We need to get to Sammah."
Shiver shrugged. "We'd already sent the militia to Sammah. He was sitting there quietly with his healer boy and his retinue. No problems there."
"Eden will tell you. Where's your lad?"
"We had to arrest him. He's in the gaol."
"What? He's your son!"
Ross tried to sit up and winced at the pain that lanced through his shoulder and across his collarbone. He collapsed back down to the bed.
"Sammah wouldn't let us release Maertn. Torran had a look at you instead. Can't do anything, he says. Just bruises. Nothing broken."
Ross set his jaw. "It feels like everything is broken. Why is Eden in the gaol?"
"We found him next to you, covered in blood, with two of Sammah's guardsmen dead. We haven't mentioned it yet to Sammah, being as he looked so damned calm when we went in to see him. We wanted to find out what happened from you, first. Now. What happened?"
"Sammah! Sammah happened. He's going to kill the king, Shiver, though you knew that anyway. Your son can help stop him. Just...just let him out, okay?"
"I can't do that, Ross."
"Look, you ignorant fool, no one but Sammah knows how deeply you're in the mire with him. I don't count, I'll promise you that I'll keep my mouth shut. If you help us now, all the plotting you've done will be ignored, do you hear? Vance cannot convict you for a crime you haven't done. So help me out of this bed before I do something I regret. And get your son out of the damn gaol!"
"You're sick, Ross. You must have been hit really hard. You need to rest. You're clearly mad with hysteria." Shiver waved someone over. Ross looked across to see one of Sammah's men looming over him. The man pinched his nose and poured a foul concoction down his throat. Ross choked, spluttering and trying to spit it out. It was useless, though. His choices were to swallow or to choke to death; he swallowed. The spiked tea worked quickly, Ross's eyes drooping and his voice losing its vigour.
"Eden...let him out...save...stop Sammah."
"No one is stopping Sammah, Ross. It's far too late."
With the chamberlain asleep, Shiver addressed the remaining men. "Now, will you please let him go?"
The three mercenaries all smiled to each other. The one that had drugged Ross held up two fingers to the others. Eden, held between them with his mouth gagged and his arms bound, struggled wildly. They were still in Ross's quarters. The guards that had first seen the murder scene were in the corner, limp and prone. Neither Eden nor Shiver was sure if they were dead, but they wouldn't be alive for long if Sammah wasn't stopped. The maid whose screaming had set everyone off was lying on the bed. She, too, had been drugged. Shiver had sent away the guards that had come running. Ross had fallen, he had told them, and Torran had been summoned to tend to him. The hysterical maid, petrified at seeing her master fall, had been dealt with. All plain answers to questions that weren't probed far. The men of Everfell were no longer used to dealing with violence, and they couldn't see a plot of treason even when one was waved under their nose. Sammah's men, however, were born for this kind of plot. They were carrying out their master's orders to the very word. Shiver knew which side was being weighed and found wanting, and it wasn't the contingent from Sha'sek.
Eden was pushed forward. The door to Ross's rooms was closed as two of the mercenaries left. One man alone stayed to guard them, leaving his weapons drawn. Eden stayed bound, and Shiver did not move to release his bonds. That would not have been a welcome gesture in the eyes of their captor. At that point, Shiver didn't care. He was alive, and so was his son. Everyone else could go and hang, as far as he was concerned.