Valour and Victory Read Online Free PDF

Father’s last
letter by the way, apart from telling me to be a good and obedient
daughter and to apply myself to my studies, asked me to begin
thinking about my future. I’m beginning to wonder if he intends
that I remain here and join the Sisterhood. I don’t think I do. I’d
like to marry and get a nice handsome husband like you’ve got. Can
we talk about it when I am visiting? Some of the other girls in the
schoolroom are going to become nuns, they say that’s why they have
been sent here but I pray that Father does not intend it for me. I
don’t think I’d like it though I know that it is Father’s decision
in the end.
    You are always
in my thoughts and my prayers, now and always.
    Your devoted
sister, Jill
    xxx’
    “That’s it
then,” said Isobel to Katia once she had read the letter. “There’ll
be no going to the convent for a visit now that Aunt Anne has
invited Jill here. It’s a pity, not that I’m not pleased for you
both but I’d have liked to go and see them one last time before the
wedding.”
    “Perhaps there
will be time later in the summer,” comforted Katia.
    “Perhaps,” said
Isobel.
     
     
    * * * * *
     
     
    The
Prince-Duke
     
    Xavier,
Prince-Duke of the Duchy of South Baker knew changes were in the
air. He would have to tread carefully but there had to be some way
that he could take advantage of the situation.
    It was so
unfair; his previous plots had come to nothing. Three assassination
attempts had failed. Luckily for Xavier, assassination was not the
only weapon in his arsenal and it had never been his preferred
choice of method. There would always have been suspicion amongst
the dukes and other nobility that Xavier had had a part to play in
the deaths of his older brother and his family.
    The abdication
of the senior royal line had always been his preferred goal and if
that was impossible then Xavier had a back-up plan which would at
least give him part of what he wanted and in the long term, perhaps
more.
     
     
    * * * * *
     
     
    The Convent
     
    With a sigh
Mother Breguswið took a letter out of her desk drawer and looked at
it again. She began to read, trying to read between the lines to
ascertain what the words meant rather than what they
said.
    It looked as if
there was trouble afoot. This letter was from Baron Martin
Taviston, a distant relative of hers and who at present held the
position of Head of Protocols at Court.
    She read the
carefully worded letter a third time but she still couldn’t
understand what he was trying to tell her.
    It’s almost
time for Vespers , she thought with a perplexed frown, placing
the letter back in its drawer. I’ll read it again when I’m not
so tired.
    She glided out
of her office and made her way to chapel.
    As she led
evening prayers, for once Mother Breguswið’s mind was not
concentrating on the words of the liturgy. She was uneasy.
    As the days
passed and no further word came from the palace, her sense of
unease grew.
     
     
    * * * * *
     
     
    Julia and
Niaill
     
    Julia, Susa of
the Vada and Susyc of the Armies of the North held Gsendei’s gaze
with a firm stare of her own.
    “Now,” she
began, “you will tell me of the full extent of the
telepathic abilities of you and your kind. When Niaill here told me
what you have being doing, how you have been manipulating us over
the last six hundred years I was shocked. Don’t hold anything back.
If we are to have any chance at all against the Dglai we have to
use every means at our disposal. Niaill told me that you have been
using your abilities to, shall we say, discourage any signs of
human inventiveness that you, the Lai and the Avuzdel considered
might threaten the status quo. Is that right?”
    “True,”
admitted Gsendei, “with the best intentions. The Lai believed that
if you humans were permitted to learn of the technology that would
let you make weapons of power and that you would use them. At that
time Murdoch was a place full of dangerous men who were in