The palace was asleep when Damin and his small band of invaders entered the reception room through the slaveways. Damin chose the upstairs exit from the slaveways because at this hour of the night, it was certain to be empty. The last thing they needed was to stumble over a squad of early rising slaves taking care of the ashes in the hearth of one of the more commonly used rooms downstairs.
They stepped into the cavernous hall, hurrying across the polished parquet floor with footsteps that sounded far too loud for comfort. When they reached the entrance, Damin halted everyone with a hand signal, and then he turned to face them.
“I’m guessing Mahkas will be in his bed at this hour,” Damin told them softly. “So that’s where I’m headed. Wrayan, I need you to find Xanda and Luciena. Starros and Kraig, ladies, you’re with me. Luc, you and your people are with Wrayan.”
The thief nodded. “What do we do if we encounter any resistance?”
“We won’t,” Wrayan assured him, but he was looking at Damin when he answered. Damin understood immediately. Between his magical powers and his status in the Thieves’ Guild, Wrayan feared very few men. Besides, once they found Xanda, his cousin would be able to order any Raiders left in the palace to lay down their arms with a good expectation of being obeyed, even without Wrayan’s magical assistance.
“And if we find Mahkas?” Wrayan asked.
“You come and get me. I’ll deal with him.”
The thief looked relieved that he and his men weren’t going to be held accountable for the death of Krakandar’s
regent, regardless of how much everyone thought he deserved it.
Nothing more was said as the intruders left the empty room and turned in opposite directions down the corridor. Damin made no further attempt to conceal his presence. He strode through the darkened halls as if he owned the place. It was bad enough that he’d had to enter the palace by skulking through the slaveways. He didn’t intend to skulk any more. Certainly not in his own home.
“Where do you want to look first?” Starros asked softly as he caught up with Damin’s long-legged stride, looking around with concern. He would have been much more comfortable if they were skulking, Damin thought. Kraig, Barlaina and Lyrian, on the other hand were looking around with open curiosity as they followed him through the palace.
“We’ll start with the bedrooms,” he announced, making no attempt to lower his voice. “If what you’re telling me about Mahkas being ill is correct, he may well be sound asleep in his bed.”
Starros glanced at Damin sceptically. “Are we taking odds on that?”
They took the stairs to the next floor without encountering a single soul. Damin had wandered the halls of Krakandar Palace any number of times as a boy, but he had never before experienced such an eerie feeling of emptiness. It was as if the life had been sucked out of the building, leaving only an empty shell, haunted by painful memories.
The wing of the palace that housed the sleeping quarters was just as deserted as the rest of the building. Damin passed his own room, the one he’d shared with Starros as a child, Leila’s room, the bedroom the twins had always called their own, the oddness of it all tugging on his memories of this place. He’d never seen this passage devoid of guards before. Never seen it plunged into darkness like this: Not a lamp was lit, not a single soul seemed to be in residence.
He hesitated when he reached Mahkas’s room at the end of the hall.
“Is this where we will find your uncle?” Kraig asked.
Damin nodded. Immediately Lyrian and Barlaina began to reach for their weapons.
“He’s a sick man and he’s probably asleep,” Damin informed them with a frown. “Let’s not get too excited, ladies.”
“You remain calm if you wish, your highness,” Lyrian suggested tartly. “In my experience it’s the probablys that usually require weapons. Besides, did we not come here to kill this man?”
This bloodthirsty need to inflict violence on someone—anyone—was an alarming tendency he’d noticed both women appeared to be suffering from, ever since he’d removed the slave collars and returned their own clothes and weapons after they’d left Lasting Drift. Everything was far too black and white in Lyrian’s world, and he really didn’t have the time to explain all the various shades of grey to her. Damin looked to Kraig for a bit of support, confident the prince would understand why he couldn’t risk Lyrian and Barlaina bursting into Mahkas’s room and slicing him into little pieces just for fun.
Kraig seemed to understand what Damin wanted of him. “You must not harm this man,” he ordered his bodyguards. “It is Prince Damin’s right alone to butcher this pretender.”
He frowned, thinking the phrase butcher this pretender was a little extreme, but the prince’s words seemed to have the desired effect. The women looked quite disappointed they were to be denied the opportunity to shed some blood and reluctantly returned their knives to the tooled leather sheaths they were wearing.
“Actually, why don’t you two go with Starros and check the other bedrooms?” he suggested. That would keep them occupied and lessen the opportunity for butchering pretenders. “Just don’t kill anyone without asking first.”
Starros looked at the two women a little warily, and headed back down the hall with them, leaving Damin and Kraig standing outside Mahkas’s door.
Damin hesitated, afraid of what he might find.
“You have come this far,” Kraig said. “Don’t falter on the brink of victory.”
“Is it victory to kill a sick old man in cold blood?”
“Compassion is something one can only afford when one is through being ruthless, Damin.”
The prince smiled faintly, not at the Denikan’s words so much, as how similar he sounded to Elezaar. Physically, the handsome big Denikan and the deformed little dwarf had nothing in common, but in every other way they were soul mates.
“Then let’s go butcher the pretender, shall we?”
But he got no further than putting his hand on the latch before Starros called out urgently from down the hall.
“Damin! In here!”
Abandoning Mahkas’s room, Damin and Kraig turned and ran, following the young thief’s cry into the next suite down the hall. Bylinda’s room.
When they burst through the door, Damin discovered Lyrian lighting all the candles she could find in the room.
Mahkas Damaran—the man he’d come here to remove or kill—was lying on the floor near the settee.
At least, Damin assumed it was Mahkas. It was hard to tell with all the blood.
“It would appear someone has already butchered the pretender for you,” Kraig remarked, staring down at the body.
Whoever had killed Mahkas Damaran had stabbed him over and over again until there was little left but a bloody carcass. He’d been stabbed so many times it was impossible to guess which of the hundreds of blows might have killed him. The rage, the pain behind such a vicious attack left Damin gasping.
“Luciena!”
Damin looked up and discovered Starros bending over his adopted sister’s body, which lay lifeless and broken by the fireplace, the pool of blood under her head glistening in the candlelight.
“Dear gods! Is she …” he began, hurrying over to them, almost afraid to complete the question.
Starros shook his head. “She’s alive. Help me.”
Mahkas temporarily forgotten, Lyrian and Barlaina hurried
to Starros’s aid and together, the three of them lifted her gently onto the settee. Damin stared at her limp form, guilt warring with concern.
It was his fault Luciena had stayed in Krakandar with Xanda.
“Are you sure she’s … there’s an awful lot of blood.”
“Head wounds always bleed profusely,” Barlaina informed them, pushing Starros out of the way so she could tend to Luciena. “Bring me more light.”
Lyrian hurried to comply and Starros stepped back as he found himself superfluous in the face of the Denikan woman’s competence. Damin watched Barlaina working, wondering if it was Luciena who had murdered Mahkas so brutally.
And what might have driven her to it.
“Damin.”
He glanced over at Kraig, wondering at his odd tone. The Denikan was standing by Mahkas’s body, pointing to the floor.
With the additional light, a series of small, bloody footsteps were revealed, leading away from the corpse. Curiously, Damin picked up a candlestick and followed them. They led, not out into the hall, but into the bedroom.
Had Mahkas’s murderer come and gone through the slaveways?
He opened the bedroom door and found it undisturbed. The bed was made, the entrance to the slaveways in the dressing room off to the left still firmly closed.
The footsteps led to the open window.
Was it an assassin, then, Damin wondered, who finally ended Mahkas’s life?
The curtains billowed in a faint wisp of breeze and Damin caught sight of someone moving out on the roof. He put the candle down on the table by the door and walked over to the window, wondering if the assassin was still out there.
Were they so close on his heels they’d disturbed him in the act?
He pushed the curtain aside and froze when he realised
the figure standing on the edge of the sloped roof was Bylinda Damaran.
He turned to Kraig. “Find Wrayan,” he ordered softly, thinking if he couldn’t get his aunt back from the edge, then Wrayan might be able to force her back magically.
Kraig glanced out of the window, saw the figure perched on the edge of the roof and nodded. He was gone from the room by the time Damin climbed out of the window and began to make his way cautiously towards the edge of the roof, high above the paved courtyard of Krakandar Palace, where the blood-splattered figure of Bylinda Damaran stood, perched at the very edge of oblivion.