Time's Assassin, page 5
part #3 of The Islevale Cycle Series
“You’ll help me.”
“We both will.” When she frowned, he said, “The other you and me.
There will be three of us in all. Even Jispar won’t be prepared for that.”
They agreed that she would be better off going back in time as far as the king instructed and doing all that he asked of her in that past. If she were to disappoint him in the past, he would
know of it in the altered future and might be more leery of her.
They also shared ideas for the assassination, and the precautions necessary to keep Lenna from interacting with the other version of herself and thus risking insanity. They made no firm decisions, though, and didn’t speak of these matters for long.
“You should return to your quarters,” she said. “It wouldn’t do for someone to discover that you’re not there.”
“You’ll accompany me to the top of the tower? That way you can reclaim your robe.”
“Yes, all right.”
She eased to the door, intending to check the corridor for guards. When Quinnel joined her there, she paused. After a moment’s hesitation, she rose onto her toes and kissed him lightly on the lips.
“What was that for?” he whispered.
She lifted a shoulder. “I’m glad you’ve come back to my life.
I’ve missed you.”
“And I you.”
They shared a smile. Then she held a finger to her lips, opened the door, and peered out into the torchlight. Seeing no guards, she motioned for him to follow and led him up the nearest tower, back into the cool air and moon glow.
They avoided the soldiers patrolling the ramparts. Quinnel crept a short distance from her and removed the robe. She averted her gaze but couldn’t help glancing his way. The moon silvered a body that was lean, muscular. His sextant flashed in that argent light, and she feared guards might see. An instant later, he was gone, tugged into the gap.
Lenna gazed across the courtyard, thought she glimpsed a dark form on the ramparts there. She didn’t linger atop the tower but retreated to her chamber. Long after she climbed into her bed and doused the candle beside her, she lay awake, thinking of how she might smuggle a weapon into Jispar’s chamber. In a reprise of this night that loomed in her immediate future.
image-Z7JOPGSD.png
In the morning of the second day after Quinnel’s departure, Jispar summoned Lenna to his hall. She was no closer to knowing how they should kill him, but she had resolved to make the attempt no matter the risks. Only the Two knew when he might send her back through time again, and she tired of living with her hatred and her humiliation. She had made what preparations she could. She had decided what to wear on the night in question, once she arrived in the past—a dark blue gown she knew he liked.
She would leave her hair down, again knowing that he preferred her this way. She would claim three blades from her wardrobe: one she would hide in her bodice, another she would strap to her calf, the third she could carry at the small of her back. If they were discovered—all three of them, or even just one—he would know what she planned and she would die.
When she reached the king’s hall on this morning, he was in discussion with his ministers of protocol, arms, and commerce, as well as the omnipresent Seer. Eyeing the Magi as she entered and approached the throne, she wondered if the old man would know what she had in mind to do. He was said to have the power of divination. Could such powers detect an assassination that would be carried out in the past?
Halfway to the throne, she paused to make obeisance. Then she straightened and walked the rest of the way to the king, stopping before him. Normally, he might have ignored her, kept her waiting as he continued his deliberations with the others. Not today.
“Walker, good morning.”
“And to you, my liege.”
“The Walk of which we spoke the other night—I’m ready for you to undertake it now.”
She bowed again, as he would expect. “Of course, my liege. How far?”
He eyed his Seer, who said, “Three and ten, my liege. I believe that is what we decided.”
“Yes. Three and ten.”
“To be clear, my liege: three turns and ten days.”
“That’s right.” He canted his head, indicating her chronofor, which rested on a small table near the throne. She took it, the gold cool against her fingers.
“When you arrive in the past, you will tell me the following.”
He began a lengthy description of steps he wished to take in establishing trade in the Bone Sea. Some of it was complicated; Lenna asked him to repeat certain phrases several times, saying them after him so as to commit them to memory. Very soon, she hoped, the message would be rendered irrelevant. In the interim, this Jispar expected her to pay close attention, and the Jispar in the past might grow suspicious if the information she delivered didn’t sound authentic. Not to mention that if—the Two forbid—her journey into the past went poorly, she would be better off having repeated his instructions exactly as he intended them.
When she had mastered all he wanted her to say, she bowed a third time.
“Very well, my liege. I shall repair to my quarters immediately and—”
“No. You will Walk from here.”
Ashes on her tongue, her mouth so dry she could hardly speak.
“From here?”
“Of course. Aside from the chronofor, what could you possibly need? Why is it so important that you Walk from your chamber?”
Lenna tightened her hold on the chronofor, peeked down at it. It was more lovely than any jewel she had ever seen, more dear to her than any item she had ever held. The embodiment of her gift, and, now, the key that might unlock this cage Jispar had constructed around her. Burnished gold on the face, an engraved design on its back, which, as it happened, closely resembled the etchings around His Majesty’s eye.
Etchings that shifted menacingly now.
“It’s not that I need anything, my liege.” She fought to keep her voice level, reasonable, devoid of panic. “But in order to Walk, I have to be wearing nothing.”
“I know that.”
“Of course, my liege. Going back so far, however, I cannot be sure of the exact time I might arrive. I could emerge from the between, naked in your hall, in the middle of an audience.” He remained unmoved, and she grasped at another possibility, one that might carry greater weight. “Or at a time when you’re speaking with someone who ought not to know of your plans with respect to these negotiations with Milnos.”
That reached him. He sent another glance at the Seer, and then looked to his minister of finance. Both of them, she thought, had been persuaded by her argument.
“Yes, all right. You will do this in your quarters then. Upon your arrival in the past, you will come directly to me and you will tell me exactly what I’ve instructed you to say.
Understood?”
She tried not to let her relief show. “Yes, my liege.”
He assigned a guard to her, but that didn’t trouble her. The man couldn’t follow her into the past.
She left Jispar, bowing to him one last time, and walked in silence through the corridors with the king’s guard. She told the man to await her return outside her door and, when he hesitated,
informed him that she could only Walk when naked. His face burned red and he stammered his acquiescence.
Once inside the chamber, she removed her clothes, set her chronofor for three and ten, and prepared to thumb the central stem of her device. She faltered, wondering if she ought to aim for sometime earlier or later in the day, again fearing a chance encounter with herself in the past.
In the end, she decided that no particular time of day was more or less safe than another. She took a long breath and pressed the stem.
She tumbled back into a fury of light and clamor. A thousand tastes and smells assailed her, the combinations so foul she couldn’t help but gag. Which made her gasp for breath. No air.
Panic. The between held her fast, pounding at her senses, choking her. She had believed she could endure such a Walk. She knew others of her kind went back farther. Under the terms of his contract with Windhome, Jispar could have sent her back a full year. Three turns shouldn’t have been enough to kill her.
Her chest ached. The pressure on her lungs grew unbearable. The abusive glare of light and shadow went on and on, but now black spots darkened her vision. Not the between this time, but her own mind, shutting down, denied air for too long. An irony that, having chosen not to kill herself, she might die before she had the chance to slay her king.
She fell out of the between onto cool stone, hands and knees throbbing, her chamber dull with the gray light of morning. The window was unshuttered; she had left behind the cool of autumn for a comfortable dawn in the growing turns. The other her did not stir. Perhaps she was sleeping off yet another of Jispar’s assaults.
“Who’s there?”
Awake after all.
Lenna held perfectly still, afraid, warnings blaring again in her memory.
Linens rustled.
“Stay there,” she said, terror tearing the words from her throat.
A pause, and then, “How far?”
“Three turns and ten.”
“Something’s happened?”
This was dangerous ground as well. How much should she tell herself?
“Nothing of great consequence. He wants his earlier self to have certain knowledge.”
“Of course.”
Amazing that two words could convey so much: hatred, pain, shame, despair.
“We haven’t gone insane,” said the other Lenna from her bed.
“We haven’t looked at each other. I believe that lessens the danger. I need to get dressed and go to the king’s hall.”
“It’s early yet.”
“Earlier than I intended. My Walk was less precise than I had hoped.”
“Is this the first?”
“Yes.” Only after she said this did Lenna pause to wonder how much she ought to reveal to herself.
“This is our first opportunity then.”
Lenna went still, unsure of how to answer. Silence stretched, implication hanging between them.
“I suppose it is,” she said.
She forced herself to her feet, staggered to the wardrobe. A fivecount later, candlelight bloomed. Lenna resisted the urge to peer back at herself.
“Thank you.”
She found undergarments, the blue gown, a robe, a pair of leather shoes. She dressed as quickly as she could, but was slowed by cold fingers and trembling hands. She left her hair unbound.
“I take it he hasn’t stopped,” said Lenna from the bed.
How to answer? It might be dangerous to reveal the pregnancy, but was it any safer to lie?
“I don’t think I should tell you any more than I have to.”
“Maybe not. Maybe it’s enough to know that we still hate him.”
Lenna smiled briefly, even knowing the other her couldn’t see.
“Yes, we do.”
“Then you won’t squander this chance.”
Again she hesitated. “As I said—”
“I’m not not asking you to tell me your plan. Just... I need...”
Her voice broke. A full tencount passed before she could go on.
“I need to know that you have one.”
Lenna wanted to weep for herself. “You have to trust in us, you and me. And you need to be patient.”
“Three and ten.”
She wished she hadn’t revealed even that much, but she said,
“Just so.”
The other Lenna took a long, ragged breath. “Yes, all right. Not today then.”
“No. Not today. And after I speak with him, I’ll need to return here and Walk back.” She revealed no more than that.
“Of course. I’ll be away, in another part of the castle, or in the city.”
“Again, thank you.”
A moment later, something slid across the stone floor, stopping a stride short of her. Her small dagger.
“You should be armed,” the other her said. “Who knows? If you kill him while people can see me in a tavern or in the gardens, we might get away with it.”
She said nothing, stared at the weapon, then stooped for it and hid it in the bodice of her gown.
Lenna stepped to the door, paused there. Did the other her deserve to know of the child? Probably, and she would soon enough. She pushed back against a surge of guilt. “May the Two keep you safe,” she said.
“And you.”
Lenna slipped out of the chamber, followed corridors to Jispar’s hall, where guards stopped her.
“Is he expecting you, Walker?” one of the men asked, both courteous and stern.
“He’s not, but he’ll want to speak with me as soon as possible.”
The guard frowned, even as he gestured to one of his fellow soldiers. This second man entered the hall, only to reemerge a tencount later. He nodded once.
They let her enter.
As she advanced on the throne, she held her head high, her chin raised, her gaze fixed on the king. Jispar spoke with the Seer as she walked and barely spared her a glance. Initially.
He sent a second look her way. At the same time, she opened her hand slightly, allowing light to catch the back of her chronofor.
A signal she hoped only he would notice.
He eyed her for another instant, then turned his attention back to Curden Sten. Lenna slid her chronofor into the folds of her gown.
Jispar and the Seer spoke for another spirecount—long enough that Lenna began to question whether he had noticed the golden device.
As Seer Sten withdrew, however, Jispar told his herald, “You will clear the hall.”
Sten cast a wary glance at Lenna, but he filed out with the others. Soon Jispar, Lenna, and a pair of guards near the main doors were the only people left in the grand chamber. A lesson there. Even when discussing matters of great sensitivity, Jispar was never anything less than vigilant. He trusted no one, was never alone. Or almost never.
Jispar waved her forward. Lenna walked toward him, struggling to control her heart, her breathing.
“You have come back?” he asked, his voice low.
“Yes, my liege.”
“How much time?”
“Three and ten.”
He studied her, taking in her hair. His eyes met hers again. “You are...changed.”
“Am I?” she said, panic rising.
“You are. For the better, I think. I sense resolve, maturity.”
She dropped her gaze, sketched a small bow. “My liege is kind.”
“I assume you bear a message from a future me.”
“Yes, my liege.” She proceeded to relate to him all that he had told her to say about what were, in this time, the impending negotiations with representatives of Milnos’s king. He listened, intent upon her the way he had been in those first days, when she thought him beautiful and believed he was taken with her. She understood now that his passions were limited to gold and power and control over everything and everyone in his demesne, and likely beyond.
She finished her recitation, and he asked her to repeat a few points.
When she had answered his questions to his satisfaction, he thanked her, told her how helpful she had been. His gaze lingered on her, making her skin pebble and her stomach crawl. She should have tied back her hair. She endured his attention, though, and even managed to smile back at him. It could behoove her to make him think that in the future they had reached some sort of accommodation.
She bowed to him again. “If that is all, my liege, I will Walk forward to my own time.”
Before she could move, he caught her hand in his powerful grip, turned it, and held her wrist to his lips.
She resisted twin urges—to yank her hand from his grasp and pull the knife from her bodice.
“For some reason I find this version of you quite compelling.
Perhaps that maturity you mentioned. And your hair. I like your hair this way.”
Carefully.
“I must not tarry here, my liege. Walkers are taught to limit the length of our forays into the past, and to encounter as few people as possible. I really must Travel to my time.”
She had seen anger in him too often not to recognize the signs: the tensing of his jaw, the twist of the snake around his eye.
“I wish you to stay,” he said, still gripping her hand. “Besides, for what I have in mind, there is no need for you to encounter anyone else.”
A knock at the hall doors drew his glare. He dropped her hand, allowing her to sidle away from him.
“Find out who it is,” he said to one of the guards.
The man opened the door a crack, spoke in a lowered voice to someone in the antechamber before facing Jispar again.
“Your Seer, Your Majesty. He wishes a word.”
For once, Sten’s mistrust of her served her purposes.
“This is what I mean, my liege,” she said in a whisper. “I should leave you, allow you to discuss with your ministers and the Seer the tidings I’ve brought. This is what the future you wanted.”
His expression soured, like a boy denied sweets. “Yes, very well,” he said. “Go.”
Lenna feared for the other her. He would be in a towering rage tonight, and he might well take it out on her. That couldn’t be helped. She needed to be away from this time.
She bowed to him and left the chamber, walking by the Seer without so much as a glance passing between them. She followed the corridors back to her quarters. Finding it empty, she entered, set the knife on her night table, and replaced the gown, garments, and shoes in her wardrobe. She then set her chronofor.
Hardly more than a bell had passed since her arrival here, but given the imprecision of her Walk back to this time, she feared that made little difference.
Still, she set the chronofor for three turns, eight days and seven bells, hoping she would arrive near to the time when she and Quinnel commenced their walk through the castle gardens. She inhaled, closed her eyes, and thumbed the central stem of her device.
This journey through the between proved no less harrowing than the previous one. A storm of light and noise and fetor that stretched on and on, until she thought her chest would explode for want of a breath.
“We both will.” When she frowned, he said, “The other you and me.
There will be three of us in all. Even Jispar won’t be prepared for that.”
They agreed that she would be better off going back in time as far as the king instructed and doing all that he asked of her in that past. If she were to disappoint him in the past, he would
know of it in the altered future and might be more leery of her.
They also shared ideas for the assassination, and the precautions necessary to keep Lenna from interacting with the other version of herself and thus risking insanity. They made no firm decisions, though, and didn’t speak of these matters for long.
“You should return to your quarters,” she said. “It wouldn’t do for someone to discover that you’re not there.”
“You’ll accompany me to the top of the tower? That way you can reclaim your robe.”
“Yes, all right.”
She eased to the door, intending to check the corridor for guards. When Quinnel joined her there, she paused. After a moment’s hesitation, she rose onto her toes and kissed him lightly on the lips.
“What was that for?” he whispered.
She lifted a shoulder. “I’m glad you’ve come back to my life.
I’ve missed you.”
“And I you.”
They shared a smile. Then she held a finger to her lips, opened the door, and peered out into the torchlight. Seeing no guards, she motioned for him to follow and led him up the nearest tower, back into the cool air and moon glow.
They avoided the soldiers patrolling the ramparts. Quinnel crept a short distance from her and removed the robe. She averted her gaze but couldn’t help glancing his way. The moon silvered a body that was lean, muscular. His sextant flashed in that argent light, and she feared guards might see. An instant later, he was gone, tugged into the gap.
Lenna gazed across the courtyard, thought she glimpsed a dark form on the ramparts there. She didn’t linger atop the tower but retreated to her chamber. Long after she climbed into her bed and doused the candle beside her, she lay awake, thinking of how she might smuggle a weapon into Jispar’s chamber. In a reprise of this night that loomed in her immediate future.
image-Z7JOPGSD.png
In the morning of the second day after Quinnel’s departure, Jispar summoned Lenna to his hall. She was no closer to knowing how they should kill him, but she had resolved to make the attempt no matter the risks. Only the Two knew when he might send her back through time again, and she tired of living with her hatred and her humiliation. She had made what preparations she could. She had decided what to wear on the night in question, once she arrived in the past—a dark blue gown she knew he liked.
She would leave her hair down, again knowing that he preferred her this way. She would claim three blades from her wardrobe: one she would hide in her bodice, another she would strap to her calf, the third she could carry at the small of her back. If they were discovered—all three of them, or even just one—he would know what she planned and she would die.
When she reached the king’s hall on this morning, he was in discussion with his ministers of protocol, arms, and commerce, as well as the omnipresent Seer. Eyeing the Magi as she entered and approached the throne, she wondered if the old man would know what she had in mind to do. He was said to have the power of divination. Could such powers detect an assassination that would be carried out in the past?
Halfway to the throne, she paused to make obeisance. Then she straightened and walked the rest of the way to the king, stopping before him. Normally, he might have ignored her, kept her waiting as he continued his deliberations with the others. Not today.
“Walker, good morning.”
“And to you, my liege.”
“The Walk of which we spoke the other night—I’m ready for you to undertake it now.”
She bowed again, as he would expect. “Of course, my liege. How far?”
He eyed his Seer, who said, “Three and ten, my liege. I believe that is what we decided.”
“Yes. Three and ten.”
“To be clear, my liege: three turns and ten days.”
“That’s right.” He canted his head, indicating her chronofor, which rested on a small table near the throne. She took it, the gold cool against her fingers.
“When you arrive in the past, you will tell me the following.”
He began a lengthy description of steps he wished to take in establishing trade in the Bone Sea. Some of it was complicated; Lenna asked him to repeat certain phrases several times, saying them after him so as to commit them to memory. Very soon, she hoped, the message would be rendered irrelevant. In the interim, this Jispar expected her to pay close attention, and the Jispar in the past might grow suspicious if the information she delivered didn’t sound authentic. Not to mention that if—the Two forbid—her journey into the past went poorly, she would be better off having repeated his instructions exactly as he intended them.
When she had mastered all he wanted her to say, she bowed a third time.
“Very well, my liege. I shall repair to my quarters immediately and—”
“No. You will Walk from here.”
Ashes on her tongue, her mouth so dry she could hardly speak.
“From here?”
“Of course. Aside from the chronofor, what could you possibly need? Why is it so important that you Walk from your chamber?”
Lenna tightened her hold on the chronofor, peeked down at it. It was more lovely than any jewel she had ever seen, more dear to her than any item she had ever held. The embodiment of her gift, and, now, the key that might unlock this cage Jispar had constructed around her. Burnished gold on the face, an engraved design on its back, which, as it happened, closely resembled the etchings around His Majesty’s eye.
Etchings that shifted menacingly now.
“It’s not that I need anything, my liege.” She fought to keep her voice level, reasonable, devoid of panic. “But in order to Walk, I have to be wearing nothing.”
“I know that.”
“Of course, my liege. Going back so far, however, I cannot be sure of the exact time I might arrive. I could emerge from the between, naked in your hall, in the middle of an audience.” He remained unmoved, and she grasped at another possibility, one that might carry greater weight. “Or at a time when you’re speaking with someone who ought not to know of your plans with respect to these negotiations with Milnos.”
That reached him. He sent another glance at the Seer, and then looked to his minister of finance. Both of them, she thought, had been persuaded by her argument.
“Yes, all right. You will do this in your quarters then. Upon your arrival in the past, you will come directly to me and you will tell me exactly what I’ve instructed you to say.
Understood?”
She tried not to let her relief show. “Yes, my liege.”
He assigned a guard to her, but that didn’t trouble her. The man couldn’t follow her into the past.
She left Jispar, bowing to him one last time, and walked in silence through the corridors with the king’s guard. She told the man to await her return outside her door and, when he hesitated,
informed him that she could only Walk when naked. His face burned red and he stammered his acquiescence.
Once inside the chamber, she removed her clothes, set her chronofor for three and ten, and prepared to thumb the central stem of her device. She faltered, wondering if she ought to aim for sometime earlier or later in the day, again fearing a chance encounter with herself in the past.
In the end, she decided that no particular time of day was more or less safe than another. She took a long breath and pressed the stem.
She tumbled back into a fury of light and clamor. A thousand tastes and smells assailed her, the combinations so foul she couldn’t help but gag. Which made her gasp for breath. No air.
Panic. The between held her fast, pounding at her senses, choking her. She had believed she could endure such a Walk. She knew others of her kind went back farther. Under the terms of his contract with Windhome, Jispar could have sent her back a full year. Three turns shouldn’t have been enough to kill her.
Her chest ached. The pressure on her lungs grew unbearable. The abusive glare of light and shadow went on and on, but now black spots darkened her vision. Not the between this time, but her own mind, shutting down, denied air for too long. An irony that, having chosen not to kill herself, she might die before she had the chance to slay her king.
She fell out of the between onto cool stone, hands and knees throbbing, her chamber dull with the gray light of morning. The window was unshuttered; she had left behind the cool of autumn for a comfortable dawn in the growing turns. The other her did not stir. Perhaps she was sleeping off yet another of Jispar’s assaults.
“Who’s there?”
Awake after all.
Lenna held perfectly still, afraid, warnings blaring again in her memory.
Linens rustled.
“Stay there,” she said, terror tearing the words from her throat.
A pause, and then, “How far?”
“Three turns and ten.”
“Something’s happened?”
This was dangerous ground as well. How much should she tell herself?
“Nothing of great consequence. He wants his earlier self to have certain knowledge.”
“Of course.”
Amazing that two words could convey so much: hatred, pain, shame, despair.
“We haven’t gone insane,” said the other Lenna from her bed.
“We haven’t looked at each other. I believe that lessens the danger. I need to get dressed and go to the king’s hall.”
“It’s early yet.”
“Earlier than I intended. My Walk was less precise than I had hoped.”
“Is this the first?”
“Yes.” Only after she said this did Lenna pause to wonder how much she ought to reveal to herself.
“This is our first opportunity then.”
Lenna went still, unsure of how to answer. Silence stretched, implication hanging between them.
“I suppose it is,” she said.
She forced herself to her feet, staggered to the wardrobe. A fivecount later, candlelight bloomed. Lenna resisted the urge to peer back at herself.
“Thank you.”
She found undergarments, the blue gown, a robe, a pair of leather shoes. She dressed as quickly as she could, but was slowed by cold fingers and trembling hands. She left her hair unbound.
“I take it he hasn’t stopped,” said Lenna from the bed.
How to answer? It might be dangerous to reveal the pregnancy, but was it any safer to lie?
“I don’t think I should tell you any more than I have to.”
“Maybe not. Maybe it’s enough to know that we still hate him.”
Lenna smiled briefly, even knowing the other her couldn’t see.
“Yes, we do.”
“Then you won’t squander this chance.”
Again she hesitated. “As I said—”
“I’m not not asking you to tell me your plan. Just... I need...”
Her voice broke. A full tencount passed before she could go on.
“I need to know that you have one.”
Lenna wanted to weep for herself. “You have to trust in us, you and me. And you need to be patient.”
“Three and ten.”
She wished she hadn’t revealed even that much, but she said,
“Just so.”
The other Lenna took a long, ragged breath. “Yes, all right. Not today then.”
“No. Not today. And after I speak with him, I’ll need to return here and Walk back.” She revealed no more than that.
“Of course. I’ll be away, in another part of the castle, or in the city.”
“Again, thank you.”
A moment later, something slid across the stone floor, stopping a stride short of her. Her small dagger.
“You should be armed,” the other her said. “Who knows? If you kill him while people can see me in a tavern or in the gardens, we might get away with it.”
She said nothing, stared at the weapon, then stooped for it and hid it in the bodice of her gown.
Lenna stepped to the door, paused there. Did the other her deserve to know of the child? Probably, and she would soon enough. She pushed back against a surge of guilt. “May the Two keep you safe,” she said.
“And you.”
Lenna slipped out of the chamber, followed corridors to Jispar’s hall, where guards stopped her.
“Is he expecting you, Walker?” one of the men asked, both courteous and stern.
“He’s not, but he’ll want to speak with me as soon as possible.”
The guard frowned, even as he gestured to one of his fellow soldiers. This second man entered the hall, only to reemerge a tencount later. He nodded once.
They let her enter.
As she advanced on the throne, she held her head high, her chin raised, her gaze fixed on the king. Jispar spoke with the Seer as she walked and barely spared her a glance. Initially.
He sent a second look her way. At the same time, she opened her hand slightly, allowing light to catch the back of her chronofor.
A signal she hoped only he would notice.
He eyed her for another instant, then turned his attention back to Curden Sten. Lenna slid her chronofor into the folds of her gown.
Jispar and the Seer spoke for another spirecount—long enough that Lenna began to question whether he had noticed the golden device.
As Seer Sten withdrew, however, Jispar told his herald, “You will clear the hall.”
Sten cast a wary glance at Lenna, but he filed out with the others. Soon Jispar, Lenna, and a pair of guards near the main doors were the only people left in the grand chamber. A lesson there. Even when discussing matters of great sensitivity, Jispar was never anything less than vigilant. He trusted no one, was never alone. Or almost never.
Jispar waved her forward. Lenna walked toward him, struggling to control her heart, her breathing.
“You have come back?” he asked, his voice low.
“Yes, my liege.”
“How much time?”
“Three and ten.”
He studied her, taking in her hair. His eyes met hers again. “You are...changed.”
“Am I?” she said, panic rising.
“You are. For the better, I think. I sense resolve, maturity.”
She dropped her gaze, sketched a small bow. “My liege is kind.”
“I assume you bear a message from a future me.”
“Yes, my liege.” She proceeded to relate to him all that he had told her to say about what were, in this time, the impending negotiations with representatives of Milnos’s king. He listened, intent upon her the way he had been in those first days, when she thought him beautiful and believed he was taken with her. She understood now that his passions were limited to gold and power and control over everything and everyone in his demesne, and likely beyond.
She finished her recitation, and he asked her to repeat a few points.
When she had answered his questions to his satisfaction, he thanked her, told her how helpful she had been. His gaze lingered on her, making her skin pebble and her stomach crawl. She should have tied back her hair. She endured his attention, though, and even managed to smile back at him. It could behoove her to make him think that in the future they had reached some sort of accommodation.
She bowed to him again. “If that is all, my liege, I will Walk forward to my own time.”
Before she could move, he caught her hand in his powerful grip, turned it, and held her wrist to his lips.
She resisted twin urges—to yank her hand from his grasp and pull the knife from her bodice.
“For some reason I find this version of you quite compelling.
Perhaps that maturity you mentioned. And your hair. I like your hair this way.”
Carefully.
“I must not tarry here, my liege. Walkers are taught to limit the length of our forays into the past, and to encounter as few people as possible. I really must Travel to my time.”
She had seen anger in him too often not to recognize the signs: the tensing of his jaw, the twist of the snake around his eye.
“I wish you to stay,” he said, still gripping her hand. “Besides, for what I have in mind, there is no need for you to encounter anyone else.”
A knock at the hall doors drew his glare. He dropped her hand, allowing her to sidle away from him.
“Find out who it is,” he said to one of the guards.
The man opened the door a crack, spoke in a lowered voice to someone in the antechamber before facing Jispar again.
“Your Seer, Your Majesty. He wishes a word.”
For once, Sten’s mistrust of her served her purposes.
“This is what I mean, my liege,” she said in a whisper. “I should leave you, allow you to discuss with your ministers and the Seer the tidings I’ve brought. This is what the future you wanted.”
His expression soured, like a boy denied sweets. “Yes, very well,” he said. “Go.”
Lenna feared for the other her. He would be in a towering rage tonight, and he might well take it out on her. That couldn’t be helped. She needed to be away from this time.
She bowed to him and left the chamber, walking by the Seer without so much as a glance passing between them. She followed the corridors back to her quarters. Finding it empty, she entered, set the knife on her night table, and replaced the gown, garments, and shoes in her wardrobe. She then set her chronofor.
Hardly more than a bell had passed since her arrival here, but given the imprecision of her Walk back to this time, she feared that made little difference.
Still, she set the chronofor for three turns, eight days and seven bells, hoping she would arrive near to the time when she and Quinnel commenced their walk through the castle gardens. She inhaled, closed her eyes, and thumbed the central stem of her device.
This journey through the between proved no less harrowing than the previous one. A storm of light and noise and fetor that stretched on and on, until she thought her chest would explode for want of a breath.
