Free The Warlord's Domain by Peter Morwood

Voord snapped. “Come to the point of all this before I have you thrown out.” And what
was
the matter with… ? His accent, that was it. “You have a Jouvaine name. Why don’t you have a Jouvaine accent?”
    “My lord is wise—” Engeul Gernai began, prelude to some oily flattery, and was cut short when Voord interrupted with none of the studied courtesy he had been trying to maintain.
    “What goes on here?”
    “My lord sounds afraid.” The man calling himself by a false name made a forceful gesture with one hand and uttered a grunt of effort like someone lifting a heavy weight. Behind him the tall doors of the chamber quivered once from top to bottom and slammed shut with a heavy boom. The double clank as both bolts shot home into their reinforced slots was almost an afterthought in the wake of that huge noise. “My lord is well advised to fear.”
    “Your accent is Vreijek,” Voord said.
    “I never had the knack of simulating other voices, Lord-Commander Voord. How did you come by the new style and title anyway? Your usual method? Never mind. I didn’t come here to see the Warlord; I came to see the officer who was Imperial Military Adviser to Lord Geruath Segharlin—the man who was so friendly with my daughter…”
    “Ar Gethin.” The crows were coming home to roost with a vengeance.
    “Yakez Goadec ar Gethin. Her name was Sedna. She was beautiful…”
    “Who told you to ask for me?” There was threat here no matter what Hault had said—he would be dealt with later—but Voord was still little enough concerned to have some room for curiosity.
    “Another of your women, Voord Ebanesj. Another of the many, boys and men and girls and women, whom you used for your own purposes and twisted up and threw away. Kathur the Vixen sends you greetings, and says you should have killed her.”
    “So I should indeed.” Voord looked at the fat little Vreijek and stretched his mouth into a smile like a snarl. “That error can be remedied more easily than the slut will believe possible.”
    “Kill. That’s all you know, Voord—just as that was all you could think to do when my daughter found out the truth behind your scheming—”
    “Scheming?
Scheming
? Yak’ardec ar Gethin, you have a mind like a playwriter! Twisted enough to give challenge to Osmar himself, I think.” Voord had been sitting up very straight in the harsh Warlord’s chair; now he allowed himself to relax, unconcerned, innocent of whatever accusations this stupid old man was flinging about like seeds at planting-time. “Listen to me, merchant, father and”—a glance at the still shut and bolted doors— “passable sorcerer, I had nothing to do with your daughter.”
    “Had you not, then? So why is she dead and you alive and higher than you were?”
    “I am being patient with you… very patient. More patient than my custom with irritating provincials and far more patient than your manners deserve. Now shut your mouth and listen, because I’ll say this only once: I did not kill your daughter. I barely knew your daughter. She was the mistress of Crisen Geruath, son of the local Overlord, while I was no more than Imperial Adviser for the Segharlin and Jevaiden Military Districts. There was no love lost and almost no communication between—”
    “Liar.
Liar
! I had expected more courage from you, or at least more originality. If you were Imperial anything at all, then why do I find you in a position of such authority here in the
Woydek-Hlautan
, the Warlord’s Domain where the Emperor’s mandate is ignored? Answer me that!”
    “Ah.” Voord’s slouch of studied relaxation froze as if a poisonous reptile had appeared in the room—or one of those reptilian lesser demons of far-too-close acquain-tance. “You prepared your arguments quite well, ar Gethin, didn’t you?”
    “Yes, I did. It was stopping my ears to what I learned that I found hard. Your name appeared at every turn, and each time it appeared there was more blood on