Total pages in book: 204
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
“You bastard,” I hear myself say in Thale’s voice.
The bearded man kicks the silver pistol out of the way. Then he straddles my legs—
I groan and try to put an arm up to defend myself. He slaps it away, and lifts his fist over his shoulder. The wound across the front of my throat is deep enough to be a mortal one, but the death occurs when the man plunges his arm down.
The pain is so sharp, but it doesn’t last.
Or rather, my inability to breathe becomes the only thing I know. I can’t draw a breath, and my lungs are burning so badly, I retch to try to clear the blood out of my mouth. The bubbling froth that erupts from my lips is hot, my skin feels cold, my chest goes numb.
The last thing I see, as my vision recedes to a pinpoint, is the man leaning down and plucking the blood-soaked diamond from my tie—
All at once, the vision is over.
The death is done.
I come back into my body, and have a moment of confusion as I realize I’m on the floor and there’s broken glass shimmering all around me.
Looking up, I expect to see Thale standing over me. He’s not.
He’s stumbling back from me, and when he bumps into the bed in the middle of the room, he lands in a bouncing sit.
His face is drawn into a mask, and he is pale as milk. “Get out. Get … the fuck out.”
As I go to rise to my feet, I must be careful with all the glass, and when I’m standing, he shrinks away from me and covers his eyes with his hands. Like a child.
Then he reaches down and touches something on the side of the footboard.
As the panel we came through slides back and reveals the dim hallway, I look at him. “Where is the other release? To get me all the way out.”
He curses.
Then he surges to his feet and marches out past me into the hall. In a low voice, he says, “Don’t ever come anywhere near me again.”
Thale stomps his boot in another place, and the first panel we went through retracts to reveal the trestle table and the group of men. I walk out alone, and things are immediately closed up behind me. He’s smart. He needs time to recover from the shock, and he can’t be around anybody who knows him well until he has.
I’m very aware of the eyes that follow me as I step around the empty throne. Before I disappear into the pub proper, I glance back. The bearded one, the one who will murder him, is the only member of that private guard who isn’t looking in my direction.
He’s turned around and is staring at the wall.
Walking into the crowd, I weave my way in and out of the round tables, heading for the staircase. The entire time, I focus on the kitchen door and wonder how I could get in there and check to see if the maid is still alive.
It’s as I decide that I can’t, at least not without endangering her, that the cook himself comes out.
In a bloody apron that’s marked just like it had been in my vision.
Fifty-Six
A Visit from a Different Maid.
I stop short, then look around for Merc. He’s nowhere to be seen, so I refocus on the cook.
The man is counting something in his cupped palm. Coins, it seems? Whatever it is, he’s consumed by this effort, his fleshy brows eclipsing his eyes, his jowls pulling forward from his weak chin. That apron absolutely terrifies me, and I tell myself that maybe he’s just been breaking down sheeplings or cows?
As he pilots a distracted course for the nearest exit, he seems agitated, his free hand passing over his greasy hair repeatedly.
And then he’s gone.
The door flaps shut, and I wait for Merc to appear out of nowhere, anywhere, and follow him. When this doesn’t happen, and the cook doesn’t make an instant reappearance, I bolt for the kitchen entrance. My heart is pounding with anxiety as I worry that we are too late—
Things open again and I jump back. “Oh, sorry!”
A red-haired maid swings around with her tray of food—and then reaches out to steady me. “Pardon, miss. Are you all right then?”
I wish I knew the other maid’s name.
“Ah…” I try to see over her shoulder. “No, but thank you.”
As she bows and goes about her job, I have to enter the kitchen. I need to know.
Pushing the panel wide, I peer in—and get nowhere. Smoke from the chimney’s various hearths clouds the air, and there are so many maids circling the oven, I can’t track them. Brown hair, she has short brown hair …
So do most of them.
“Miss, do you need something?”
I turn around. It’s another young girl, who’s just come in from the floor. She has a huge load of empty tankards on her tray, and her exhaustion drags down the line of her shoulder and stoops her back.