Bonds of Vengeance by David B. Coe

have meant his death.
    Sertio seemed to see this as well, for he quickly placed himself between Diani and the killer. His soldiers followed him into the chamber, surrounding the yellow-haired man.
    “I don’t want him killed!” Diani said, her voice unsteady as she lowered her dagger. Her pulse raced and her hands were shaking so violently she could barely maintain her grip on the hilt of her blade.
    “Drop your weapon,” Sertio said, his dark eyes never leaving the man’s face.
    The assassin did nothing, but he continued to glance around the chamber, perhaps trying to decide who among his captors would be easiest to kill.
    “Drop your sword and you won’t be hurt,” the duke said again, his voice harder this time.
    Still the man did not move, though a slight smile touched his lips. “You’re lying,” he said softly. “You’ll torture me until I tell you whose gold paid for my blade.”
    Her father opened his mouth, perhaps to deny it, though everyone in the chamber knew it to be the truth. He never got the chance. The assassin raised his sword as to cleave the duke in two, roaring like a cornered beast.
    Sertio, stepped to the side to avoid the strike, aiming a thrust of his own at the man’s shoulder, to spare his life, but disarm him. Had it been just the two of them fighting it might have worked. But the other men, seeing their duke threatened, closed on the assassin as well,pounding at him with their blades. In a matter of seconds the man lay on the floor of Diani’s chamber, blood flowing from several deep wounds.
    Diani took a step forward. “Call for a healer! I want him alive!”
    “The Qirsi who healed you would never get here in time,” her father said, staring down at the man, his voice low.
    “One of the castle’s healers, then!”
    Sertio glanced at her, his face as grim as it had been the day her mother finally died. “They’re all in the prison tower.”
    She swallowed. “We could free one of them, just for this.”
    But a guard who had bent to feel the man’s pulse shook his head. “He dies as we speak, my lady. The tower is too far.”
    Diani dropped to her knees beside the man. “Who paid you? Was it the Qirsi? The Brugaosans? Who?”
    But he merely lay there, the same inscrutable smile on his lips, his eyes open but utterly lifeless.

Chapter
Five

    Dantrielle, Aneira, Elhir’s Moon waxing
    Most years, the beginning of Elhir’s turn brought warm days and clear nights to the southern Forelands. Usually the snows maintained their icy grip on the northern kingdoms through at least the waxing of the god’s turn, but in the south, frigid winds gave way to temperate breezes and the hard blizzards of the cold turns were replaced by gentle rains that presaged the coming of the planting.
    Not this year. There had been a pleasant day or two at the end of Eilidh’s turn, but with the first days of the new waxing, the snows returned like a vengeful army, battering at the castle gates and shuttered windows with howling winds, and burying the wards and surrounding city under mounds of drifting snow. Neither the tapestries that hungon Evanthya’s walls nor the bright blaze in her hearth that the servants fed constantly could keep the chill from her chamber. She had never paid much heed to the passing of the seasons. Living in Dantrielle, where the turns of the snows were mild and even the hottest days of the growing turns were cooled by the soft breezes that drifted among the shadows of Aneira’s Great Forest, she never had cause. This year, however, the snows had seemed interminable, the wait for a true thaw excruciating.
    Perhaps it had been too long since she last held Fetnalla. Perhaps she just longed to leave Dantrielle for a time, to escape the suspicions of her duke and the pall that had settled over the castle since the death of King Carden the Third and the selection of Numar of Renbrere as regent for the late king’s daughter. Or maybe, now that she had purchased the death of