The King’s Justice Read Online Free PDF Page B

returned the smile, golden-amber eyes meeting Haldane grey, exactly aware what Kelson meant.
    â€œThank you, Sire.”
    Though still not as tall as Kelson, he, too, had shot up over the winter—to the dismay of the castle armorers, who must even now rush to complete the season’s second alteration of his steel and leather brigandine, before he left on campaign on the morrow. He wore new boots and supple new leather britches of the same russet hue as his border braid, but the linen tunic was old, and pulled across the chest, the sleeve not bound with an armguard for archery hitting well above the wristbone. He had laid aside his plaid in the noonday sun, but no one would have mistaken his rank.
    No sword hung from the gilded earl’s belt circling his narrow waist, but he wore a border dirk at his left hip, with a water-pale amethyst set in the hilt. The three eagle feathers of a border chief bristled from behind a MacArdry badge on his leather border bonnet.
    Dhugal grinned as he dropped his arrows into a standing quiver, large, square front teeth flashing bright-white beneath the sparse, silky smudge of mustache that, at sixteen, was all the facial hair he could yet produce.
    â€œCare to shoot a round, Sire?” he asked impishly. “We missed you just now.”
    Smiling benignly, Kelson picked up Conall’s discarded bow and tested its pull, then nocked an arrow to string and casually drew.
    â€œConall didn’t miss me,” he said, letting fly and holding as he watched the arrow thump precisely into the center of the target. “And Conall hasn’t yet learned the graceful art of losing.”
    He ignored the flurry of applause and the sighs of appreciation from the watching ladies as he lowered the bow and took another arrow from the wistful Dhugal, laying the shaft across bow and string and carefully fitting nock to string again.
    â€œI see,” Dhugal said, not resentful, but curious. “So I get the job of humbling Conall.”
    Almost lethargically, Kelson raised the bow and began to draw again, closing his eyes and turning his face slightly away from the target as he locked into full-draw.
    â€œAt least it was an honest competition,” he said softly, releasing his second arrow after the final word.
    Eyes still closed, he held the position as the arrow made its flight, lowering the bow to look at Dhugal only when the arrow had thumped home precisely beside the first, the two shafts touching all along their length, the fletching on the two arrows indistinguishable from one another. The ladies applauded even more enthusiastically, and Kelson half-turned briefly to glance up at them and incline his head slightly in graceful acknowledgment as Dhugal gaped.
    â€œI’m afraid I must confess to taking what Conall could consider an unfair advantage on that one,” the king admitted with a droll smile and a wink in Dhugal’s direction. “Being Deryni does have its more mundane advantages.”
    He shifted his attention to Morgan. “And you will note, Alaric, that I am not totally insensitive to the interest of the ladies at my court,” he went on. “I am simply cultivating an aloofness in keeping with my eligible status—though I must confess that it seems somehow to have taken on some of the mystery that you yourself used to generate when you were in your darkling phase—and still do, I suspect, known Deryni sorcerer that you are. Perhaps it comes from wearing black.”
    Any determination on Morgan’s part to maintain decorum disintegrated into delighted laughter at that, for Morgan’s own former penchant for black attire was well known and of only recent abandonment—and affected, in the past, for reasons very similar to those Kelson had just cited. Nowadays, he wore black for practicality, or because nothing else was handy—which was precisely why he had donned it this morning: serviceable black leathers over mail, for