“I don’t know how you found out, little Dorrin. I suppose one of the others told you … you will tell me, you know, later. But for now … I see you are frightened, child, and that is well. I have had to be so meek with the others, to fool the maids. It’s been too long since I had the pleasure of seeing someone truly afraid … just sit there, Dorrin, and let me taste your fear … I could be in your body, you know, ugly as it is. Imagine that. Your soldiers obeying someone they thought was you. That foolish prince—”

Warmth caressed her mind, but it was not his magery. She was not the scared child she had been; she was Dorrin, shaped by the Company of Falk, by Falk himself, by near four hands of years as Kieri Phelan’s captain, veteran of more wars than Carraig had seen. She had known a paladin … at the memory of Paksenarrion, it was as if Paks were at her side. Her own magery leapt forth, and Restin/Carraig stopped, held motionless.

A dark mist gathered in the air; Dorrin thrust the dagger she’d prepared with deathwish powder into the child’s throat and wrenched it side to side. Blood spurted out; the dark mist thickened.

“Ward of Falk!” Dorrin said. The mist hung there, not quite touching her. “Begone,” she said. It writhed like a swarm of insects but did not dissipate at once. She drew her sword; it flared blue, as always in the presence of evil, and she pointed it at the thickest area of mist. “Go and never return. Go to the High Lord for judgment, and harm nothing on your way.” The words she had learned so many years before, training to be a Knight of Falk, came to her in the old language from no one knew where. “Adakvarteh preklurtz, preklurtz tavin vantish …”

By the end of the adjuration, the mist had gone, vanished. Dorrin looked at the child’s body, sprawled in its chair, blood still wet on the table, the chair, the floor.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “Ward of Falk for the soul you were born with, and the child who died, and may Falk and the High Lord forgive me this killing, that was not my desire.”

Nausea twisted her, two days’ worth of disgust and horror and shame; she made it out the front door and spewed on the steps, retching until she had nothing more to lose.

Fine figure of a Duke she made … and yet, what could be more appropriate to Verrakai House and its history than vomit on the entrance steps? She stood up, shaky but cleansed, fetched a lamp from the reception hall, and lit the torch that stood ready for her to signal Selfer and the others that she had prevailed.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

They had not gone as far as she advised; they were with her sooner than she hoped. “Ware the steps,” she said as Selfer neared them. “I … don’t like killing children.”