The King Rolen's Kin: The Uncrowned King - By Rowena Cory Daniells Page 0,8

now only the cook remained awake, planning the menu for the next day. When the last of the whispers died away and it was clear the kitchen children were fast asleep under the long wooden tables, the cook put her notes away and rose, glancing to the scullery where Piro was hidden. Piro's stomach rumbled in anticipation. Just then two servants returned with laden trays.

'What's this?' the cook demanded. 'Didn't he touch his dinner? But it's his favourite.'

Piro went very still.

'The king suffers something awful. Won't eat. Can't sleep for the pain and there's nothing the healers can do for him,' the servant explained, sliding the tray onto the table. 'It's terrible to see.'

Piro's heart went out to her father. He was not the man he had been at midwinter. Back then King Rolen's deep voice had boomed across the great hall as he demanded a second serving. It was nothing for him to sit down to a meal that lasted for four hours, consuming great qualities of rich food and fine Rolencian red wine. She had always felt so safe with him but now... now he had been diminished by the renegade Power-worker Cobalt had placed in his service.

Under guise of treating her father's old war injuries, the man had been leaching the king's strength, making him dependent on a concoction of herbs that stole his will and left him a shell of the man who had saved Rolencia at eighteen. Piro and her mother had uncovered the trickery and removed the manservant, but the damage was done.

Despite her father's sudden frailty - no, because of it, Piro loved him fiercely.

She had to see him. She was certain she could do more than the healers. Back before these troubles began, one of the spit-turners had burnt his hand and she'd helped ease his pain, using her Affinity to draw it off, and no one had been any the wiser.

The cook glanced once in Piro's direction and dismissed the servants. Piro waited until they had gone and hurried out on soft slippers.

'I must go to Father,' she whispered, no longer hungry.

'Cobalt's sure to have told the guard to be on the look out for you,' the cook warned, plump jowls wobbling with worry.

'I know. But I must go.'

'Cobalt's offered a bag of gold for your recapture,' the cook revealed.

Piro frowned. 'Only one?'

The cook smiled briefly. 'Take care, kingsdaughter. Cobalt cannot be charmed.'

'I know,' Piro whispered. 'For he has no heart.' When she'd learnt how his bride had been murdered by Utland raiders, she had tried to ease his sorrow, and found only emptiness behind his tears.

The cook shook her head as Piro slipped away.

Byren woke with a smile on his lips. He'd come up with a simple, elegant way to save the child and the Affinity beast. True, he could not defeat a Power-worker, but the Utlander had revealed the very tool that could kill him. Byren should have seen it right away. His only excuse was that he had no Affinity, so he wasn't used to thinking in those terms.

He mustn't fall into that trap again.

Rubbing sleep from his eyes, Byren checked the position of the wanderers against the backdrop of stars. Good, it was nearly midnight. Rising carefully, he went to find the sentry. Another man had taken the same place as the other and was dozing at his post, shrouded in a thick fur cloak. From this angle he would not see Byren enter the seep.

The hollow glowed softly, lit by the accumulated power in the sorbt stone. Byren's skin crawled as he approached the stone. It was the knowledge that this thing pulsed with untamed Affinity that made him wary, not an innate ability to sense Affinity. He'd been tested as a child and found to be blind to it, unlike his brother. Poor little Fyn.

His mother had put on a brave face when the six-year-old had to go to the abbey, but she had wept when she thought no one was looking. As a lad of barely ten summers Byren hadn't known how to console her. All he could do was hug her and bring her pretty things he'd collected especially for her.

Now Byren picked up the sorbt stone, grateful for his gloves and his lack of Affinity, and tucked it inside his vest. He needed his hands free for the sentry.

Byren did not enjoy killing a man while he slept, but it was necessary. The sentry didn't know what happened. With luck, the others