Book 3 - Surrender to the Will of the Night Read Online Free PDF

the permanent ice.”
    “You think he told the truth?”
    “Bo? I don’t know. He’s a clever little weasel. He could be running a game suggested by Bronte Doneto. To see my reaction. Only, I’d be more inclined to suspect Ferris Renfrow.”
    “You’ve told the same tales so often you believe them yourself—unless you stop to think. You had Muno doubting facts about which there was no question, you lied with such conviction.”
    Piper Hecht was not one hundred percent convinced that his “true” origins had not been sold to him the same way.
    “True, I suppose. And Renfrow has spies everywhere.”
    “Or he’d like us to think he does.”
    “Maybe not so many as when Johannes was alive, but plenty. He’s thoroughly dedicated to the Grail Empire.”
    “I’ll try to see this Tindeman Hecht.”
    “I have to call somebody to help me with these last few laces. Some things I just can’t manage alone.”
    “I can take a hint.”
    *   *   *
    For the after-dark walk to Winterhall, the Ege manse in Alten Weinberg, Madouc insisted on a guard that included both Kait Rhuk’s falcon teams, their weapons charged with godshot. Every man carried a brace of primed hand falcons and a burning slow match. Madouc absolutely expected an attack. An enemy would get no better chance.
    Madouc thought not only about guarding his principal but about what potential assassins really hoped to accomplish.
    Assassinations, in Madouc’s estimation, were highly symbolic, meant to make a mighty declaration. If he could guess what that might be, he should be able to guess when and where a killer would strike.
    And he was not wrong. Though tonight’s would-be killer was but one starving, deranged spearman who charged out of the darkness, shrieking, intent on throwing his weapon.
    “What did he say?” Hecht asked after the man had been rendered unconscious, tied, and turned over to local troops drawn by the bark of a hasty hand falcon.
    “Something about Castreresone. We did something there that he didn’t like.”
    Winterhall resembled the va Still-Patter house, built larger. Why did the Empress want to meet away from her palace? The grandeur there would overawe a beetle like Piper Hecht.
    Madouc opined, “She knows you’ve seen Krois. You’ve seen the Chiaro Palace and the Castella dollas Pontellas. Her palace wouldn’t intimidate you. And she might want to be away from all the eyes and spies that go with a palace. Here she can talk with only a few noses poking in. Here she can get away from her fiancé.”
    Rumor had King Jaime making himself thoroughly unpopular by acting like he was in charge. Katrin supposedly would not admit his bad behavior but had taken steps to neutralize it.
    “Be interesting to see how much control she lets him have after the wedding,” Hecht said. Katrin Ege was used to having things her way. Often even over the objections of her Council Advisory.
    “Indeed,” Madouc replied.
    “What is that?” Hecht indicated construction they were passing. It could not be seen well by torchlight.
    “Something being built by bankers from the Imperial states in Firaldia. Their own private fortress. You see more and more of them in northern Firaldia. Just round stone towers with only a few windows up high and just one small entrance maybe fifteen feet above the street. Good enough in family and city politics, where you don’t see heavy weaponry or extended sieges.”
    Hecht recalled capturing a somewhat similar citadel in Clearenza, when Sublime V wanted to punish the local Duke. That place had had a ground-level entrance, though. And a larger footprint.
    The Captain-General had to shed most of his party outside the Ege palace. And all of his weapons. Unarmed, Madouc was allowed to accompany him as far as the doorway of the sizable room where the Empress had chosen to see Hecht. He remained outside with a brace of humorless Braunsknechts.
    The room was drawn from an eastern potentate’s fantasy, all silken