“Help me hold him!” he heard a familiar voice say. “He’s breaking free!”

Stoon! No!

Arodian hurried over, reaching out to seize hold of him as well, and now four hands were gripping him, hauling him right up against the railing, lifting him …

Then suddenly Stoon shifted his powerful hands to Arodian’s neck, cutting off his air and with it the cry he tried too late to give. Off balance and caught completely by surprise, Arodian went over the railing with a wild thrashing of arms and legs and disappeared into the darkness.

Stoon helped a shaken Drust Chazhul to his feet, straightened him up, and patted him on the back. “Are you all right?”

Drust shook his head, feeling anything but. “I thought you’d betrayed me!” he hissed in fury. “I thought you were really going to do it! Why didn’t you tell me what you were planning?”

He was so angry he was shaking. But Stoon only shrugged. “If it didn’t appear you believed I was betraying you, I wouldn’t have been able to get him to the railing without cutting his throat. His body might be found. We want this to appear to be an accident, don’t we?”

The Prime Minister rubbed his throat gingerly. “What was wrong with my plan? Just get his attention long enough for you to push him over! What was wrong with that?”

“It was weak. Transparent. A chance meeting at dawn on the fantail with no one else around and you come upon him without bad intentions? He would have seen through it right away. I had to convince him beforehand that he was in danger and that I, wishing to free myself of an indentured bargain, would willingly do to you what you expected me to do to him. He had to believe that his money and a promise of freedom would buy my services. He needed to think that with my help he could turn the tables on you, could make you the victim. It appealed to his sense of irony. He liked the idea.”

“I thought I was a dead man.”

Stoon laughed, infuriating Drust further. “You were never in any real danger. What would I gain by betraying you? You and I are built the same way, come from the same place. Don’t you see, Drust?”

He wasn’t at all sure he did. And he couldn’t stop thinking about how it had made him feel, to believe he was about to be killed by his supposed confidant and ally.

It would be a while, if ever, before he would put himself in another situation where his life depended on the assassin’s loyalty, he promised himself.

Then, his anger beginning to fade sufficiently that he could relish Arodian’s demise, he stood with Stoon by the fantail railing, composing himself as he stared east to watch the sunrise.

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