“How can I be blamed for that?” Zella whimpered. “Put me to any test! It will only prove my innocence.”

“I’ll see what I can do about that, my lady. I think you’d best keep to your rooms at the governor’s palace once we arrive.”

“Whatever you think best, my lord,” she replied, then buried her face in her hands again.

Seregil pulled out a clean handkerchief and handed it to her. She took it and her fingers brushed his in the exchange. They were dry though her face was tearstained.

“My lady, forgive me.”

She looked up from the handkerchief. “For what, my lord?”

“For this.” Reaching across, he wiped a thumb across her tearstained cheek. It came away dry. He pulled the poniard from his boot and leveled the needle-sharp tip at her heart. “Suppose you tell me just what you are and what you’re up to?”

“I don’t know what you mean!”

“What are you saying, Baron?” asked Kordira, putting a protective arm around Zella. The other woman shrank against her, pressing her face to the doctor’s shoulder.

“Tears that aren’t wet,” Seregil replied, rubbing his fingers together. “Things not as we’re meant to believe they are.” With that he grabbed Zella by the arm, pulled her forward, away from Kordira, and plunged his poniard into her shoulder. Both women shrieked, but then Zella lunged at him with incredible strength.

Only then did it occur to Seregil to wonder what would happen if you killed the body inhabited by a demon or dra’gorgos.

She tore at his face and clothing with fingers bent like claws, pulling off his headscarf and tearing his coat open. Sunlight flashed off the golden amulet around his neck just as her hand fell on it and she lurched back, uttering a cry that could have come from no human throat. As she slumped to the floor a dark miasma filled the carriage. It swirled around them for a moment, then disappeared. Seregil fell back on the seat, gasping in pain.

“By the Mother!” Kordira cried, kneeling beside Zella and wrapping her handkerchief around the wound.

“Is she alive?”

Kordira touched Zella’s throat, then shook her head. “No, though she shouldn’t have died from this wound.”

“Can you say how long she’s been dead?”

“She was as alive as you or I until just now. She was living with that thing in her. What was it?”

“A dra’gorgos. Apparently whoever put it in her made certain she wouldn’t survive it being found out.”

“Demons? Dra’gorgos? What is happening?”

“I’d say we’re under attack and Zella was set up to spy on us.”

“But she seemed perfectly herself!”

“She wouldn’t have been much good to whoever is doing this if she didn’t.”

The carriage driver had stopped sometime during the fight. “What is it, my lord?” he asked, appearing at the carriage window.