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

already know you are a plausible rogue, Galing,” said Lord Arlen. “You needn’t keep trying to impress me. Sit down, do. And take a glass of wine. I’m going to ask you a favor.”
    Nicholas carefully poured himself two fingers of crimson liquid from a gold-chased decanter.
    “Very good,” said Arlen when Nicholas was settled. “Your hand didn’t shake and your face showed no more than polite interest. You handled the Montrose affair very well, did I tell you?”
    Nicholas made a gesture expressive of modesty and pleasure. “I am your lordship’s to command,” he said.
    “Yes,” Lord Arlen said. “I believe you are just the kind of man who will betray any confidence as long as he’s sure that it’s in the service of some greater good, preferably his own.”
    Nicholas was able to school his expression, but felt an angry flush rising up his cheeks. “I believe I serve your lordship,” he said stiffly.
    “Fifty years ago,” remarked Lord Arlen, “you could have cried challenge on me for that statement, hired a swordsman to do the deed for you, and the Court of Honor would have held you justified even as I wallowed in my gore. Times change. I have a swordsman in my employ for the look of the thing, and he’s very good. But I don’t expect I’ll ever need his services, not in the same way my father did.”
    “No,” said Nicholas evenly. “I don’t expect you will. I can’t afford a first-class swordsman, as you very well know, and I’m not really inclined to cry challenge on you for speaking the truth, particularly as there’s no one else present.”
    Lord Arlen smiled, his dark eyes bright in the lamplight. He was a handsome man, with the kind of long, lean face that ages well and beautifully curved lips, oddly sensual in his ascetic countenance. “It’s a pleasure to talk to a man who understands what he’s being told. It’s the only kind of fencing that custom allows us, eh?” He leaned forward, laid something on the desk in front of Nicholas, and sat back again. “Tell me what you make of that.”
    It looked like an oak leaf, leathery and dry, curled at one end. When Nicholas picked it up, it proved to be carved out of wood. The workmanship was competent but not fine. There was a pin affixed to the back so that the leaf might be worn as a brooch. Nicholas turned it over in his hand. “Not your usual taste, Lord Arlen,” he said.
    “Not my taste at all,” said Arlen shortly. “It belonged to a man from the North, from Hartsholt. I believe he carved it himself.”
    Nicholas set the trinket on the desk, where it lay as if blown in through the window, incongruous and faintly disturbing. “It means a great deal to him, then.”
    “He won’t be missing it,” Arlen said. “He bled himself to death by chafing in his chains. I wouldn’t have thought it possible myself, but the guards are sure no one entered his cell. The brooch was taken from him when he was arrested. What do you think of it?”
    Nicholas picked up the brooch again and examined it closely. If it had any secrets, they weren’t to be read in the tiny marks left by the dead man’s knife. It was the brooch itself that was important. “A badge,” said Nicholas thoughtfully. “You said the man was from Hartsholt. I seem to remember the Duke of Hartsholt at Lord Halliday’s, complaining about troublemakers over dinner. Now that I think about it, I do recall something about oak branches.”
    “Yes,” purred Lord Arlen. “Now, cast your mind even further back than Halliday’s dinner, to your schoolroom lessons. What was the most significant event in our history?”
    Nicholas thought for a moment. “The fall of the monarchy.”
    “Before that.”
    “I never cared much for history,” Galing said. “I don’t know. Unless”—he groped at a distant memory—“you mean the union of the kingdoms.”
    Arien smiled benignly. “Precisely,” he said. “And would you happen to remember where the old capital of the North