The Rise and Fall of a Dragonking - By Lynn Abbey Page 0,8
really, half his age—and forced her to the ground in the kitchen yard of her own modest home.
The king seared the thief’s mind and flesh with a single thought. The last image that passed through the thief’s senses was the woman screaming as her rapist’s hot blood burst over her. Then the thief was thoroughly dead, and the last petitioner was walking across the palace roof.
The civil bureau templars who prepared the petitions—for fees, bribes, and other favors—had written the plea of a merchant named Eden. Hamanu had mistaken Eden for a man’s name, and mistaken the mind he’d touched moments ago for a man’s mind, too. Everyone made mistakes. Enver notwithstanding, Hamanu was not omniscient. He didn’t know everything and couldn’t know everything about a living mind. The dead were another matter, of course. A dead mind yielded all its secrets, after which it was useless. Hamanu didn’t kill for secrets.
Deceit was another matter.
He watched the merchant—Eden—lift the hem of her gown and step over the blasted remains of the day’s most unfortunate petitioner. Most unfortunate, so far.
Her mind was filled with disgust, not fear. For the corpse, Hamanu hoped. As himself—as Hamanu, King of Urik—he dealt with few women, save templars and whores. His reputation was burdened with an ancient layer of tarnish. Respectable families hid their wives and daughters from him, as if that had ever protected anyone.
This Eden, with her white linen gown, pulled-back hair, and unpainted face, was the epitome of respectability. Far more respectable than the young nobleman—the late, young nobleman—whose bowels were beginning to stink in the brutal sunlight.
Hamanu didn’t truly mind that Renady Soleuse had inherited his estate through the proven expedient of slaughtering his father and his brothers and the rest of his inconvenient kin; link’s king didn’t meddle in family affairs. And Hamanu wasn’t outraged that the accusations of water-theft Renady leveled against his neighbors were whole-cloth lies; audacity was, in truth, a reliable pathway to royal favor. But the young man had lied when Hamanu had asked questions about the financial health of the Soleuse estate, and worse, the fool had counted on a defiler charlatan’s lizard-skin charm to protect him while he lied.
Hamanu killed for deceit.
The hereditary honor of Soleuse had been extinguished with thought and fire, both somewhat sorcerous in origin and wielded with a soldier’s precision. Now, Hamanu and Urik were short a noble family to manage the farms and folk the Soleuse had been lord to. Most likely he’d offer the honor to Enver. After more than an age overseeing a king’s private life, Hamanu judged that the affairs of a noble estate should be child’s play for the likes of Enver. But, perhaps he’d offer the spoils of Soleuse to this Eden, this plain half-elf woman with a man’s name.
He’d hate to have to kill her. Two petitioners in one morning: that was both careless and wasteful.
“Why are you here?” Hamanu asked. His templars had written that she offered trade. No surprise there: she was a merchant; trade was her life’s work. But, what sort of trade? “Recount.”
She hesitated, moistening her lips with a pasty tongue and wrinkling her linen gown between anxious fingers. “O Mighty King of Urik, King of Athas, King of the Mountains—” Her face turned as pale as her gown: she’d lost the rhythm of his titles and her mind—Hamanu knew for certain—had gone blank.
“And so on,” he said helpfully. “You have my attention.”
“I am charged with a message from my husband, Chorlas, colleague of the House of Werlithaen.”
“I know the name Werlithaen,” Hamanu admitted. As the name implied, the Werlithaen were elves. Three generations back, they’d been elves who’d exchanged their kank herds for the tumult of Urik’s almost-legal Elven Market. About an age ago, a few of the tribe had abandoned the Market for the civilized ways of the merchant houses. A step down, no doubt, in the eyes of the Werlithaen kindred, and sufficient to account for Eden’s plain, diluted features.
The petition had mentioned trade, not a message, but knowledge was sometimes more valuable than water or gold and a sound basis for trade. Eden hadn’t yet deceived him.
“What manner of message?” the king continued, curious as to the sort of bargain this woman would offer.
Eden made what appeared to be another nervous gesture, fondling the large, pale-green ceramic beads of her bracelet. There was a click that earned Hamanu’s undivided attention, and when her hands separated, a coil of parchment bounced in her trembling fingers.