The door opened; Orthallen stepped inside, his head turned back over his shoulder, dismissing the page before he closed the door behind himself. Only then did he turn to face the two that awaited him.

Talia had set her stage most carefully. She was propped up like an oversized doll, but to all appearances was sitting up in bed normally. She was a deathly white, but the relatively dim light of their single candle concealed that. Elspeth stood at her right hand. The room was entirely dark except for the candle that illuminated both their faces—concealing the fact that the door behind the two of them was propped open a tiny amount.

“Elspeth,” Orthallen began as he turned, “This is an odd place for a meet—”

Then he truly saw who was in the room besides the Heir.

The blood drained swiftly from his face, and the condescending smile he had worn faded.

As he noted their expressions, he grew even more agitated. His hands began trembling, and his complexion took on a grayish tinge. His eyes scanned the room, looking for anyone else who might be standing in the shadows behind them.

“I have met Ancar, my lord, and seen Hulda—” Talia began.

Then the staid, poised Lord Orthallen, who always preferred words over any other weapon, did the one thing none of them would ever have expected him to do.

He went berserk.

He snatched his ornamental dagger from its sheath at his side, and sprang for them, madness in his eyes, his mouth twisted into a wild rictus of fear.

For the men hidden behind the door, time suddenly slowed to an agonizing crawl. They burst through it, knowing as they did so that by the time they reached the two women, anything they did would be far too late to save them.

But before anyone else even had time to react, before Orthallen had even moved more than a single step, Elspeth’s right hand flickered out sideways, then snapped forward.

Halfway to them, Orthallen suddenly collapsed over Talia’s bed with an odd gurgle, then slid to the floor.

Time resumed its normal pace.

Elspeth, white-faced and shaking, reached out and rolled him over with her foot as the four men reached her side. There was a little throwing dagger winking in the candle-light that fell on Orthallen’s chest. Blood from the wound it had made stained his blue velvet robe black. It was, Dirk noted with an odd, detached corner of his mind, perfectly placed for a heart-shot.

“By my authority as Heir,” Elspeth said in a voice that quavered on the edge of hysterics, “I have judged this man guilty of high treason, and carried out his sentence with my own hand.”