Free The Dragon Heir by Cinda Williams Chima Page B

could, but I couldn't be connected with it in any way. Plus it
would have to be a completely…um…permanent accident. If you know what I
mean.”
    “Ah.” D'Orsay
smiled. “You might be able to provide an opportunity, yes?”
    “Maybe.”
    “And what would you want
in return?”
    That would be enough. Getting
free of Warren Barber. Getting free of this whole business. But it wouldn't be
wizardly to say so. “Oh, I don't know. Money is nice. Or maybe I'd like to
be written in myself,” she added. They'd expect that, of course.
    D'Orsay smiled back.
“Very well, then. I think we can come to an arrangement.” Meaning
they'd stab each other in the back as soon as they could. “But, tell me.
How did your employer come by the document? As a sometime buyer of antiquities
and art, I know that the provenance of a piece often speaks to its
authenticity.”
    Leesha rolled her eyes.
“Now that would be too much like a clue.”
    D'Orsay's smile disappeared.
“There can no deal between us without a name.”
    “And if he finds out I
told you?”
    “My dear young lady, he
won't find out from me. That would not be in my self-interest. I cannot go
after your partner if I don't know who it is. Hmm?”
    Leesha took a deep breath and
resisted the temptation to finger her neckline again. “It's Warren
Barber.”
    D'Orsay raised his eyebrows
skeptically. “Who?”
    “Warren Barber,” she
repeated.
    The eyebrows stayed up.
“And who, may I ask, is that?”
    Old Warren doesn't move in
your circles, I guess, Leesha thought. Mine either. She shivered, then turned
it into a shrug. “He was one of Leicester's students at the Havens.
Sometimes called the Spider.”
    “The…Spider.”
D'Orsay tapped his elegant forefinger against his chin, looking amused.
“You're saying this whole scheme's been organized by teenagers?”
    “Well. No offense, but
the old people don't seem to be doing so great.”
    “Perhaps not.”
D'Orsay inclined his head graciously. “But I've not heard of Barber.”
    “He does Weirwalls.
Supposedly he was the one that spun the wall around the inn at Second Sister to
keep the guilds from escaping the conference before the Covenant was
signed.” Leesha hadn't been there, thank god, but she'd heard all about
it.
    “I see.” D'Orsay's
eyes glittered. “Then he must have been the one who failed, who let
McCauley and Haley and the girl into the hall.”
    Barber hadn't mentioned that.
Ha. “Anyway, when he saw what was happening, when McCauley showed up and
Leicester got killed, Barber went and stole the document.”
    “How…resourceful.”
D'Orsay sighed, as if mourning the duplicity of man. “Now, then. What
manner of paperwork would satisfy young Mr. Barber?”
    “I have something with
me.” Leesha pulled a folder from her portfolio. “These attest that,
for purposes of the Covenant, my associate to be named later is the heir of
Gregory Leicester, and assumes all privileges and rights, blah, blah.” She
handed it across to D'Orsay. “Once these are signed and properly processed,
the … ah … revised Covenant will be made available for consecration in the
ghyll before the Weirstone.” Naturally, details of that were rather
sketchy.
    A peculiar expression flitted
across D'Orsay's face. Followed by a calculating one. “Ah. Well. The
Weirstone.”
    “Is there a
problem?”
    “Well, there may be.
There was an intruder in the ghyll a few nights ago.” D'Orsay smiled
thinly. “He attacked my son, and I believe he might have carried away
something important.”
    Leesha glanced over at
Devereaux's battered face. “What makes you think that?”
    “The Weirstone has
dimmed. In fact, it appears to be … extinguished.”
    Leesha shuddered, the reaction
of any reasonable wizard to a threat to their heritage of magic. “What do
you think that means?”
    “Difficult to say what it
means in terms of the consecration of the Covenant. The Roses and the rebels
assume we hold it. Perhaps that was the intent