Free By Divine Right by Patrick W. Carr Page A

should let myself pass out to put my back out of reach.
    “Halt!” A voice from the dais demanded. I tried to turn to see the speaker, but tremors of pain deprived my muscles of the ability to obey. Obeisant mutters surrounded us as I fought to control my shaking and gasps. I gave up and rolled on the floor, striving to see my intercessor, but too many bodies blocked my vision.
    The duke’s man dropped the crop to the floor as an official in blue livery, the castellan, approached. A goblet dangled loosely within his left hand, his nose a copy of the duke’s. “No more than three stripes, cousin,” he said, his gaze cutting to the throne, “by order of the king.”
    Skerrit laughed. “He’ll remember those few, I warrant.”
    The chamberlain knelt by me and a hand that could have doubled as a vise hauled me to my feet and rushed me from the duke’s presence. “You’re lucky I don’t have you flogged myself.”
    “I don’t feel very lucky.” Blood had already started to glue the fabric of the servant’s tunic to my back. Whenever I worked up the courage to get undressed, I’d relive the beating.
    But I’d found the man responsible for Ian’s death. Beneath my bloody strokes, I exulted even as astonishment threaded its way through my realization.
    We departed the throne room by the servants’ entrance on the side, between two of the buttresses adorned with a pair of statues of long-dead kings on either side. In the servants’ hall just off the kitchens, the chamberlain spun me around, throwing me into a chair. My wounds hit the oak ladder backing and I gasped, my vision narrowing to a point.
    “You will present yourself to me at dawn tomorrow morning.” His tone matched his face, thunderous and on the edge of explosion. “By the time court reconvenes at nightfall you will be a model servant. If you thought the duke’s correction harsh, you’ve no idea what I can mete out.”
    He tugged at his own tunic and vest, embroidered in silver, a far richer version of what the servants wore. “Now, get out of here. And let those stripes remind you of the price of your stupidity.”
    I left by the opposite door from the one we’d entered. I had no desire to bring myself within reach of Duke Orlan or his men. I’d watched the flight of the flagon. Did he suspect I knew?
    A deep breath broke that train of thought as fire lanced across my back. It would probably take several feet of thread to sew the flesh together, and the nearest healer I knew lived close to Braben’s tavern. The thought of making the trek down the height of Laidir’s tor brought a groan to my lips, but it couldn’t be helped.
    After I got myself stitched together, I would have to figure out how to go about exposing the duke and be back at court so Orlan could continue my training. That I wouldn’t show for the chamberlain was a foregone conclusion. I tried not to think about the consequences of my disobedience.
    I stumbled into the hallway off the servant’s room and startled when two armed men stepped in place on either side of me. Both of them topped me by a hand, one with hair the color of fire and the other with a mane so blond it was almost white. They didn’t say anything until I came to the turn leading to the steps that descended to the lower levels of the tor.
    “The other way,” the red-haired guard said.
    A dagger against a pair of very big swords didn’t seem like a gamble I could win. “Where are we going?”
    The guards didn’t bother to answer. Instead they led me along a twisting series of turns that seemed designed to make me lose my sense of direction. I’d heard tales of the maze of Laidir’s tor my whole life, but only now did I appreciate them.
    We came to a pair of heavy double doors flanked by two more guards as big as the pair that escorted me. Without a word, the one on the right poked his head inside, then waved the three of us in.
    I blinked against sudden brightness, then gaped. Laidir stood on a shallow