The Fall of The Kings (Riverside) Read Online Free PDF Page A

traditional liveried swordsman, but not all. Times had changed, as times will. Like the swordsmen, the walls around the Hill’s great houses were chiefly decorative. But not all. The gates of Arlen House, in particular, were not easily breached. Behind them lived and worked the Serpent Chancellor of the Council of Lords, Geoffrey, Lord Arlen. Like the serpent, he was cunning and elusive and well-defended. No one entered Arlen House except by invitation. And even then, the Serpent Chancellor was not so easily seen.
    LORD NICHOLAS GALING LEANED HIS FOREHEAD against the window of Arlen House and watched the clouds rolling away over the river. It had rained all afternoon, and even now the occasional drop pocked the wet stone of the promenade outside. The room Galing was waiting in was warm and dry and furnished with a set of books on natural history. Still, he had been waiting there for three hours.
    He turned from the window and examined the tray his absent host had sent in some minutes earlier. Old cheese, new bread, a decanter of deep red wine, a silver pitcher of water. An apple and autumn pears, along with a pearl-handled knife to peel them with: enough food to acknowledge that he’d been kept waiting longer than expected; not enough to indicate that he would be kept waiting all the afternoon.
    He took the knife and an apple and peeled it in a thin, continuous spiral, which he arranged jauntily on the edge of the tray. Then he sat down with the cheese and the decanter by the excellent fire to refresh himself. When the summons came, it wouldn’t do to appear before Arlen hungry or—he replaced the decanter on the tray and filled his glass with water—inattentive in any way. This meeting could make or break him with the enigmatic Serpent Chancellor. Nicholas had spent the past year maneuvering his way into Lord Arlen’s sphere, and had obliged his mysterious lordship in one or two small matters of interest to the Council, matters in which discretion and the ability to ask innocent-sounding questions had proved useful.
    Nicholas smiled into the fire. He’d had no idea, going in, how exciting it was simply to have a secret. His new profession transmuted balls, picnics, card parties, even morning calls on ladies whose lowered lids and low-cut gowns held no allure for him into backdrops for a drama understood by only a select few. Everyone knew that Lady Talbot was enjoying a liaison with the Montrose heir, but only Nicholas—and Emil Montrose, and now the Council—knew that Emil was also enjoying the revenues of Lady Talbot’s farm in Stover, which he was plowing into his own exhausted estates. What Arlen and the Council would do with this information, Nicholas neither knew nor cared. The thing at the moment was to know it.
    The door opened, and the soft-footed servant who had brought the tray slipped inside and cleared his throat.
    “Lord Nicholas. Lord Arlen will see you now, if you would be so good as to follow me.”
    The servant showed Nicholas into a largish room lined with old books and panels of painted wood—portraits, Nicholas supposed, of Arlens dead and gone. He was about to take a closer look at one when a small noise froze him where he stood, breathing slowly to still the sudden pelting of his heart. When he was sure he had himself under control, he turned to face the shadowy corner of the room and bowed deeply.
    “Lord Arlen,” he said. “How delightful.”
    A deep chuckle came from the shadows, followed by the scrape and flare of a lucifer, which revealed a tall, white-haired man sitting behind a great carved desk. He put the flame to the wick of an ornate brass lamp and replaced the glass.
    “Do you mean my making you kick your heels for hours, or do you mean my trying to startle you out of your skin?”
    Nicholas reflected that it was more pleasant to play with tigers when you weren’t in the cage with them and said, “I mean, delightful to see you, sir, and your beautiful house.”
    “I