least visible rope Durzo owned. Fixing the harness he’d designed specifically for this mission, Durzo wrapped the rope through it and slid off the beam.
Steadying his swaying against the beam, Durzo looked down at his target. The king was directly below him. Durzo tucked in his knees and folded over. The harness bit into his shoulders, and he let out slack, slipping down toward the floor, head first.
Now timing was everything. In one hand, Durzo held the rope. By adjusting its position and tension against the harness, he could dive quickly toward the floor or stop easily. When he moved, he would need to move quickly: he was shrouded in shadows so that he was barely visible, but he couldn’t shroud the rope.
In a room this cavernous, a rope swaying above the king as if holding weight would be noticed. The king’s guards were good. Vin Arturian made sure of that.
With his other hand, Durzo pulled out two tiny pellets. Both were compounds from various mushrooms. Durzo had been able to make the pellets tiny, but they didn’t dissolve quickly and for this job he couldn’t use a powder.
The nobles were still silent. The king was barely crying now, but he noticed the nobles looking at him.
“What are you staring at?” he shouted. He cursed them roundly. “This is my daughter’s wedding feast! Drink, damn you! Talk!” The king drained his wine again.
The nobles pretended to be talking, and soon that pretense became a furor of speculation. Durzo imagined that they were wondering if the king had lost his mind. He wondered the same himself.
He wondered what they’d think after the king drank his next goblet of wine.
A servant came and filled the king’s goblet. The king’s cupbearer sipped the wine first and swished it around his mouth. Then he gave it to the king who set it down on the table with a thump.
“Your Majesty,” Lord General Agon said at the king’s left hand. “May I have a word with you?”
The king turned and Durzo pushed the rope forward. He dropped like a bolt. Ten feet above the table, he pulled the rope back and jerked to a stop. Ten feet was still a long way to drop something so light, but he’d been practicing. But as he tightened the rope, it twisted, and suddenly, he was spinning. Not fast, but spinning.
It didn’t matter. There was no time to try again.
The first pellet splashed solidly in the center of the king’s goblet. The second hit the edge and tinged off. The pellet rolled several inches across the table by the king’s plate.
Durzo coolly drew another pellet and dropped it in.
The king picked up the goblet and was about to drink when Lord General Agon said, “Your Majesty, perhaps you’ve had enough to drink.” He reached a hand to take the goblet from the king.
Durzo didn’t waste time seeing what the king would do. He drew a short tube from his back and looked beyond Agon to the king’s mage, Fergund Sa’fasti. He saw the man, but the rope spun him away before he could shoot the blow dart.
He was trying for a leg shot. His hope was that the hemlock would have deadened the mage’s legs enough that he wouldn’t even notice the sting. But on the next rotation, he didn’t have a clear shot because the king and the lord general were gesticulating wildly.
Damn robes! The mage’s robes left barely six inches of his calf visible. Durzo came around again and abandoned the calf shot. The mage had shifted his feet and Durzo only had one of the darts—whatever they were bated with, it was a Khalidoran secret that was supposed to disable the mage’s magical abilities.
Durzo puffed on the blowgun. The dart stuck into the mage’s thigh.
He saw a brief flash of irritation on the man’s face. The mage reached down toward his thigh—and was jostled by the Sa’kagé servant. “Sorry, sir. More wine?” the man asked the mage, snatching the dart. He was good. With hands like that, he must be one of the best cutpurses in the city. But of course, Roth would only use the best.
“Mine’s full, you idiot,” the mage said. “You’re supposed to serve the wine, not drink it.”
Durzo flipped over and scrambled up the rope, not an easy feat with silk. He rested when he got onto the beam. He had no idea if the king had drunk the wine or not. But his part was done. The only thing to