Spy's Honor Read Online Free PDF Page B

down until her ears hurt, all the way to the pool’s marble bottom. Cerinthus was a bootlicker. That he praised Augustan, a higher-ranking officer, didn’t mean a thing; he praised anyone who outranked him. While Rhianne hoped his excellent treatment of Marcella stemmed from a deep-seated love for her, her cynical side knew it was at least partly motivated by the fact that Marcella’s father was an influential legatus upon whom Cerinthus’s military career was entirely dependent. She hovered at the bottom of the pool for as long as she could stand it, bubbles streaming from her mouth. When her lungs cried out for air, she swam to the surface.
    Marcella took her hands and squeezed them. “I pray Augustan will be as wonderful for you as Cerinthus has been for me. And think of the things we could do, the four of us, when the war is over! We could go hunting together, hawking together. And our children, Rhianne! Our children will grow up as friends—”
    Rhianne ducked her head, suddenly sad. “It won’t be that way. Augustan is to have the governorship of Mosar, and I’m to accompany him.”
    Marcella’s face fell. “You’re leaving Kjall?”
    Rhianne nodded.
    â€œBut you’ll be all alone on Mosar!”
    â€œWell,” said Rhianne, trying not to sound bitter, “I’ll have Augustan.”
    Later that afternoon, dried off and dressed, she found her cousin Lucien on her fifth visit to his rooms. He was reclining on a couch in his sitting room, his nose deep in one of Cinna’s lengthy tomes. An elderly hound sprawled atop him.
    â€œYou’re impossible to find these days.” She gathered up the silk train of her syrtos and settled into a chair across from him.
    â€œWell, here I am.” He scanned a few more lines of Cinna and set the tome aside. “Florian’s always got me busy with something. War councils, meetings with his financial advisers, lunch with the governor of Worich. It never ends. And I’m not allowed to talk, by the way, unless I’m ‘enthusiastically agreeing’ with him.”
    Rhianne shook her head. “Sounds like a wonderful time.”
    â€œAsbolos is better company,” said Lucien, rubbing the hound’s ears. “It’s good training, at least. I’m learning a lot, and I
will
have to run this empire someday.”
    Looking at Lucien, Rhianne couldn’t help thinking how much he’d changed from the boy he had been, long ago, before the assassins had changed everything. As a child, he’d been superfluous like her, a spare family member to be married off someday. Ignored by Florian, the two of them had learned the ways of the hypocaust and sneaked out of the palace on a regular basis, exploring and getting into mischief and riding off into the woods to talk for hours on end. But no longer. Lucien was crippled and couldn’t go crawling around the hypocaust anymore, and now he was heir to the Imperial Throne. He barely had time for Rhianne in between all his responsibilities. He still cared for her; she didn’t doubt that. But it wasn’t the same, and even in his presence she felt the deep ache of loneliness. She was losing him, and she would lose Marcella, and she would lose Morgan too.
    Silence stretched uncomfortably between them. “Three gods, you spoil that dog,” she said, just to have something to say.
    â€œNo more than you spoil Morgan.”
    Rhianne shook her head. “Morgan’s earned what he gets.” It was a similar situation for the dog, however, an ancient animal the houndmaster had intended to drown for being too old to work anymore. Lucien, who’d hunted with Asbolos when the animal had been in his prime, had stepped in and adopted him, much to his father’s annoyance. “Does Florian still give you a hard time about Asbolos?”
    â€œI just shut him in a back room when I’m expecting His Royal