Free Mistress of the Catacombs by Drake David Page B

stroke and—"
    "No, traitor," Garric said. The words came from his mouth, but they weren't in the voice of the brother Sharina had grown up with. Garric's right hand closed on the grip of his long sword. "I haven't lost my mind, despite your wizard tricks!"
    "Your majesty?" Attaper said. The guards holding Echeus stepped back instinctively. Echeus opened his mouth but he seemed to be too startled to speak further.
    Garric drew his sword with a smooth motion that continued as a long cut. Water danced from the shimmering edge.
    "No!" the Intercessor shouted, trying too late to leap back. The sharp steel caught him on the right side of the neck and continued through. Echeus' head spun away, wearing a startled expression; his body crumpled where it stood.
    Garric's powerful arm carried the blade on for another several feet of arc. Now it slung drops of bright blood.
    * * *
    Ilna watched Garric's arm and sword come around in a backhand stroke without a quiver or waste motion. The green-clad stranger's head leaped away; his vivid blood spurted higher than where his hair had been in the time his head was still attached.
    "Now there's a man who knows his work!" said Chalcus, voicing Ilna's thought as well. She was too much a craftsman not to focus first on the skill of what she'd just seen, regardless of the act itself.
    The act—the killing—didn't touch her. Ilna didn't know the man whose body sagged on the other side of the little stream, but she didn't worry that Garric would have killed someone who didn't need killing.
    Ilna herself, on the other hand.... Well, she hoped she'd learned from the mistakes she'd made in the past, but that didn't change the fact she'd made them.
    For a moment Ilna didn't understand Chalcus' posture. The sailor was poised in a near crouch, his hands slightly raised with the palms outward. He saw her glance and crooked a grin, still concentrating on the scene before him.
    Chalcus is showing that his hands are empty. That he's not the next threat the killer across the water should deal with. A sign of respect, from one craftsman to another....
    Garric knelt, his head raised and alert. He gripped the dead man's sleeve and jerked hard. Ilna knew Garric was strong, but not even he could tear silk brocade barehanded.
    The shoulder stitching popped. Garric rose, wiping his swordblade with the swatch of lustrous fabric. Ilna winced.
    The single swift blow had silenced the crowd, those on Garric's side of the stream as well as those near Ilna who'd gotten a better view of what had really happened. Garric looked around like a hawk on its kill, his eyes suddenly lighting on Ilna—across the channel but only a few paces away. For an instant her heart leapt at what she saw in his gaze—for an instant, no more.
    "Garric?" said Sharina, motionless where she'd been when her brother stepped forward into his cut. To move would have been to risk not only being maimed but also getting in the way. Ilna had seen only danger in the pattern she wove, not this quick slaughter. Sharina and the others here in the garden knew even less of what was going on.
    Tenoctris, healthy but hobbled by old age, made her way from the gazebo to where the others gathered about Garric and the corpse. The Blood Eagles of the wizard's escort had abandoned her at the threat to Garric; now, angrily abashed, they opened a path for her through the spectators. Garric saw her and nodded.
    "Princess Sharina," he said in a ringing voice. "Lady Liane—and you, Lady Tenoctris, you for I must have you. We'll meet now in the small council room, we alone. Attaper, keep all others out!"
    "Garric?" called Ilna.
    She lifted her inner tunic knee high to jump the artificial stream. Chalcus, seeing more or sensing more, put a hand of restraint on her shoulder.
    "Not her!" Garric snarled to his guard commander.
    He looked at Ilna again. His sword, so sure a moment before when it took off the stranger's head, began to tremble in his hand.
    "Mistress," Garric