Free Shadowforged (Light & Shadow) by Moira Katson Page A

antechamber, hung with velvets and silks and with a throne for the King to receive guests, through a reading room with brocade couches and hanging lamps, and into the King’s own privy chamber itself.
    I had never seen the King so distraught. When we entered the room, he was prowling around like a caged lion, and his eyes looked haunted. Miriel let her cloak slip off her shoulders, and as I caught it and looked for somewhere to hang it, she went to him at once, her hands held out.
    “Your Grace,” she said tenderly. “What can have happened?”
    “The worst thing,” he said. “I can’t think what to do.” He cast his eyes around the room, as if planning an escape, then sighed heavily and looked back to her. His shoulders slumped. “Kasimir was right. I cannot believe it, but it was so. Vaclav was assassinated, there was poison in his food.”
    “But by whom?” Miriel asked. I could hear worry in her voice. Had it been her uncle? The King dropped into a chair and sank his head into his hands. His voice was muffled, but we heard him clearly in the empty room.
    “Gerald Conradine.” In the stunned silence that followed, Miriel cast me a glance, and then, tentatively, reached out to touch the King’s shoulder.
    “Your Grace…”
    “It is the worst thing that could have happened,” he whispered. “The father of my friend. I had thought the problems behind us, that the bad blood between Conradine and Warden was gone. But what can I do, but bring him to justice?”
    I saw Miriel’s mind working furiously. “Do you believe, your Grace, truly, that it was him? To what purpose would he do such a thing?”
    I could see the path, circuitous and dark: Gerald Conradine, having disposed of the peaceful heir to Ismir, would wait for Heddred to go to war, the Duke and Guy de la Marque leading the charge while he waited behind. And then, with a scattering of bribes, the two leaders would fall, the army might turn against them. Old loyalties ran deep, who could say but that the soldiers might remember the last Conradine king? And with a few assassinations, it would be done, the kingdom back under the warlords.
    I had never trusted the man’s bland, smooth smile. And—I realized with a start—might he not have aimed to kill more than one person with poison? Few enough people knew who I was, but Wilhelm might have told his father of me. And Gerald fit with Donnett’s theory: he was a man many would never have suspected, had Miriel been killed.
    No, if she had been found murdered, Guy de la Marque would have borne the brunt of the suspicion, and Marie would be deemed unsuitable for marriage to the King. With Miriel gone, and Marie discredited, Gerald might well have a clearer path to the throne: Cintia. Cintia, well-placed to admit assassins to the King’s chambers; Cintia, who could be trusted to step aside for her father and mother when Garad was dead, or simply rule as a puppet queen.
    I did not like the fact that the list of our enemies only grew longer, the more I thought about it.
    “Yes, I can believe he would do it,” the King whispered. “He told me that the peace with Ismir would never hold. Before the assassination, he urged the Council to invade. He did not like that I would not do so. I only wanted peace…”
    “You cannot think of what could have been. There are only two paths to peace now,” Miriel said simply. “Your Grace, you must either prove that Gerald Conradine did not have Duke Vaclav assassinated, or you must hold him up to justice. If you admit it, but shelter him, there will be bad blood indeed—between Heddred and Ismir.”
    “How could I prove that he did not do it?” the King asked.
    “What is the evidence against him?” Miriel countered.
    “A man who came forward, saying he had information for the King. He said that he had been paid to bring poison to a man in the Duke’s household, but had not known why. The servant was long gone, but they found the man who paid him, and he