The Game of Kings Read Online Free PDF Page A

the first cries of horror: from these rose a storm of exclamatory fright and abuse, and from that an orchestration of outraged feminine frenzy that tortured the very harp strings in the gallery. Someone, losing her head, plucked at the small, stately figure. “Sybilla! It’s Lymond!” And fell back, frozen, before the Dowager’s stony face.
    The room was lined with armed men. Some, working efficiently, stripped each woman of money and jewellery; others searched and denuded the room, and with cocked weapons encouraged resistance with a leer. There was none.
    On them all rested Lymond’s peaceful blue gaze, quite at random. But long ago instinct told Mariotta he was fully aware of one thing. Bent urgently on exposing some frail nerve, she spoke. “Why not look at her? Your drama wants dialogue.”
    He turned on her the vague survey. “Oak of linen and pole of jewels, I’ve decided on pantomime.”
    “What a shame, now. I was all ready for buskins, and it’s nothing but socks.”
    “Mime doesn’t always mean comedy, my dear; far from it.”
    An approaching voice, of the self-same timbre, answered him. “Farce, then,” said the Dowager composedly. “My son is not very complicated, Mariotta, although the artifice glitters. He’s afraid—”
    “Afraid!” Blue eyes, dead of feeling, looked into blue. “Afraid of what? Damned by the church and condemned by the law: what possible capacity for fear can heart and head still find? Oimè el cor, oimè la testa … After five years of villainy, I promise you, I have the refinement of a cow-cabbage.”
    “—Afraid I might puncture the cocoon of Attic detachment. What we see is acting, isn’t it, Francis?”
    “Is it?” he said derisively. “You won’t get your diamonds back, I fear, when the curtain comes down. And the name, please, is Lymond: a new medal: choose the trussell or the pile. My present face is the provident, forbearing one.” The smiling eyes turned on her were empty. “De los álamos vengo, madre. From the stews and alleyways of Europe with a taste for play acting—yes—and killing and treason and crimes, they say, nameless and enticingly erotic.Haven’t I been worth five years’ excellent gossip to you? Are you not all waiting agog to see me seize my sister-in-law by the hair? When I think of it, damn it, I’m a public benefactor.”
    “Chattering ape!” Lady Buccleuch took a hand in the game, full of rage and pity for Sybilla and hatred for the black-bearded ruffian who had just seized her emeralds. “What’s poor Richard ever done to you except get himself born first?”
    The blue eyes were speculative. “Ill-calculated,” he agreed. “But not necessarily final.”
    Strophe and counterstrophe reached their epode. The Master was out of her reach, but not the grinning thief at her side. “Final as far as I’m concerned, ye petty-souled slug, ye!” shrieked Dame Janet with ear-cracking clarity, and seized and hurled a cold pudding into Blackbeard’s face. As the big man, cursing, scraped at blancmange with both hands, Janet filched his own dagger and made for him.
    But not fast enough. Lymond, watching from the door, had no mind to lose one of his men. Good humour and indolence tittered into the shadows, and as Dame Janet began her lunge, Lymond drew back his own arm and threw.
    In the silence of the room Janet screamed, once; and her right arm dropped to her side, the knife slipping from big, relaxed fingers. Then slowly and disjointedly, Buccleuch’s wife fell, and Lymond’s dagger, thrown with accuracy across the width of the room, glittered in her gown, stained and sticky with blood.
    “Afraid?” said the yellow-haired man and laughed. “Forgive me, I should have warned you: I have a tendency to be bloody-minded. Bruslez, noyez, pendez, ompallez, descouppez, fricassez, crucifiez, bouillez, carbonnadez ces méchantes femmes. Matthew! When you have digested your windfall will you kindly report progress below? Now”—as