Blood of Ambrose Read Online Free PDF

for him.
    “You've done well,” the Protector said.
    “Thank you, my lord.”
    “Arm him and bring him to the enclosure.”
    “His squire will arm him, my Lord Protector. There will be less talk that way.”
    The Protector nodded in agreement.
    They walked together into the corridor and, by some peculiar mischance, they encountered Ambrosia as she was being escorted up from the dungeon in the green robe of an appellant.
    “What's this? What's this?” cried Ambrosia, as genially as if she were still preeminent in the empire, as if the death-house watch were an honor guard. She carried the chains on her broken wrists like royal jewelry. “Protector, poisoner, and champion—celebrating your victory in advance, I take it. That's always safest, isn't it?”
    “Take the prisoner out to the field,” the Protector said, his voice as flat and expressionless as his face had become.
    But Ambrosia braced her feet and lifted her limp, swollen hands. “Urdhven, you don't look as triumphant as you did a moment ago. Perhaps it's come into your mind that if you hadn't had my hands broken, I'd be riding as my own champion today—and yours would be nothing but a breathing dead man.
    “Speaking of breathing,” she continued, “what's that reek I smell? Is it mud or blood—or is it both? It is both, isn't it, Steng, you dog? I see the clay under your fingernails.”
    Ambrosia laughed engagingly, as if they were all parties to some slightly disreputable secret. She leaned confidingly toward the poisoner, who was blushing a deep unpleasant shade of maroon. “But surely,” she remarked, in a low but audible tone, “surely, Steng, you must know that when we were young, my brother's and my favorite hobby was killing golems. We killed them with fire, we killed them with water. We killed them with words—an easy thing to do, Steng, for a golem's life is simply words, magical words inscribed on a name-scroll, which other words can interrupt and make meaningless. Did you think you could defeat Morlock Dragonkiller with a golem?”
    “ Take her away! ” the Protector said, white-lipped with anger or fear.
    “Better yet,” Ambrosia continued, as if Urdhven had not spoken, “suppose I simply pointed at this thing out on the field and cried: ‘Golem! The Protector's champion is a golem!' For it strikes me that the Protector is guilty of trying to harm my champion by magic—the legal definition of witchcraft. A capital offense, I believe. You might be burned at the stake, my Lord Protector.”
    “A witch's lies mean nothing,” the Protector said mechanically. “But she might utter spells to twist men's minds. Therefore—gag her, soldiers. Do it now. See that her mouth is bound throughout the ceremony.”
    “The trial , my Lord Protector,” Ambrosia said, as the guards tore away the hem of her robe.
    “The execution , my Lady Ambrosia,” the Protector retorted as they knotted the gag tight across her mouth. She made no attempt to reply, but her eyes were bright with vengeful triumph as she was led away.
    “If she had not spoken now, who knows what might have happened?” the Protector muttered to Steng. “Ambrosia's temper was always quicker than her wit.”
    Steng looked at him almost pityingly. “The chances that any would have heard her on the field were small, and who would have dared believe her?”
    “But—”
    “She spoke for the guards,” Steng said gently.
    “Ah. I see.”
    “They will remember. They will talk. They saw you were afraid to have the story spread—”
    “I said, ‘I see.’ Have your people take care of them, Steng. Make it look natural.”
    “Yes, my Lord Protector.”
    There was a brief silence. Then out of his own thoughts, the Protector said accusingly, “And you blushed.”
    “Ambrosia is my better, my lord.”
    “She is not mine,” Urdhven snarled. “I have beaten her, point by point, and today she dies.”
    “Let the fire of death cleanse the world of this witch's evil,” the