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It was late in the night by the time they returned to the Confessors’ Palace. Soldiers there were already on high alert. Men stood with swords and battle-axes to hand, arrows nocked, and spears leveled. Others patrolled the expansive grounds. A mouse wouldn’t have escaped their intense scrutiny.
As Kahlan, Berdine, Raina, Drefan, and Nadine accompanied him into the gathering hall inside, Richard saw Tristan Bashkar waiting there, hands clasped behind his back as he paced. He halted and looked up when he heard them coming.
Richard drifted to a stop as the contrite-looking ambassador approached. Those escorting Richard gathered in a knot behind him, except Kahlan, who stood close at his side. With a hand in the air, Tristan hailed them.
“Lord Rahl, may I have a word with you, please?”
Richard swept his gaze over the man, noticing that he didn’t rest his hand on a hip so as to show off his fancy knife.
Richard held up a finger. “One moment, please.”
Richard turned a little to the rest of them. “It’s late. We have a lot of work to do, so I want you to get some rest. Berdine, I want you to go up to the Keep and stand guard with Cara tonight.”
Berdine frowned. “Both of us?”
Richard scowled. “Isn’t that what I said? Yes, both of you. With this trouble, I don’t want to take any chances.”
“I will guard the Mother Confessor’s room, then,” Raina said.
“No,” Richard lifted a thumb. “I want you guarding Nadine’s room. She was the one who was attacked.”
“Yes, Lord Rahl,” Raina stammered. “I’ll see to setting up a guard of soldiers outside the Mother Confessor’s room, then.”
“If I wanted soldiers around Kahlan’s room, I’d have told you so, now wouldn’t I?” Raina’s face reddened. “I want all the soldiers doing their jobs patrolling the entrances, the palace grounds, and a perimeter around the grounds. Every one of them! The danger is from out there, not in here. Kahlan is perfectly safe inside the palace. I don’t want men who should be guarding outside instead sitting on their bottoms around Kahlan’s room inside. I’ll not have it, do you hear me?”
“But, Lord Rahl—”
“Don’t question me. I’m not in the mood.”
Kahlan touched his arm. “Richard,” she whispered, “are you sure that—”
“Someone tired to kill Nadine. They nearly succeeded. Or did some of you miss the significance of that? I’ll not take any more chances. I want her protected, and I don’t want to hear any more arguments. Drefan, I want you to start carrying a sword at once. Healers are a target.”
Everyone stared at the floor in silence.
“Good.” Richard turned his glare on Tristan. “What is it?”
Tristan spread his hands. “Lord Rahl, I just wanted to say that I’m sorry. I realize I seemed insensitive, but I’ve been worried about the people here who are sick and dying. It set my nerves on edge. I meant to cause no ill will between us. I hope you will accept my apology.”
Richard studied Tristan’s eyes. “Yes, of course. Apology accepted, and I’m sorry that I lost my temper. I, too, have been out of sorts.” Richard put a hand on Nadine’s shoulder. “Someone tried to kill one of my healers—a person devoted to helping others. People are beginning to blame healers because the plague continues to spread. I can’t allow harm to come to people who are only trying their best to help.”
“Yes, of course. You are most kind to accept my apology. Thank you, Lord Rahl.”
“Just don’t forget, ambassador, that your time runs out tomorrow.”
Tristan bowed. “I realize that, and you will know my stand by tomorrow, Lord Rahl. You have my word. Good night, then.”
Richard rounded on the rest of them. “We have a lot of work to do tomorrow. It’s very late. As Drefan is constantly reminding me, we need to get some sleep. You all have your orders. Any questions?”
Each answered with a silent shake of the head.
Two hours after they had returned to the palace, and Richard had sent them all to bed, Kahlan thought she saw something move in her room.
The lamp on the far wall was turned down low. The clouds hid the moon, so there was no light coming in the glassed doors to the balcony. The thick carpets silenced the sound of footsteps, if there were any. The weak flame from the lamp was all that betrayed the shape she thought she saw.
Another motion came from across the room—a hint of shadowed movement. She hadn’t seen a person enter her rooms; it could be nothing other than her imagination. The day had left her in an edgy state.
With the next silent step, there was no doubt: there was someone in her room. Someone slipped ever closer to her bed. As furtive as the movements were, he had closed the distance in remarkably short order.
Kahlan didn’t move a muscle as she saw the knife glint in the dim lamplight. She held her breath.
A powerful arm stabbed hatefully into her bed. The arm rose and fell, stabbing in quick succession.
With a finger, Richard pushed on the balcony door. It swung open on silent hinges. Berdine glided across the room the instant Richard gave her a hand signal. When she was in place, he tapped the glass once. Berdine turned up the wick on the lamp.
Tristan Bashkar straightened beside Kahlan’s bed, knife in hand, panting with the effort of what he had just been doing.
“Toss down the knife, ambassador,” Richard said in a quiet tone.
Tristan spun the knife in his fingers, seizing the blade in preparation to throw it.
Berdine’s Agiel to the back of his neck dropped him instantly. She pressed the Agiel down on his shoulder to support herself as she bent and picked up the knife. Tristan howled in pain.
Berdine straightened, coming up with three knives.
“You were right, Richard,” Drefan said from behind.
“I can’t believe it,” Nadine said as she stepped up into the lamplight.
“Believe it,” General Kerson said as he, too, came in from the balcony. “I’d say Tristan Bashkar has nullified his immunity as a diplomat.”
Richard put two fingers between his lips and whistled. Raina charged through the door ahead of a large contingent of D’Haran soldiers bristling steel. Two of them lit more lamps.
Richard hooked his thumbs behind his belt as he stood beside Kahlan, a towering black form defined with gold trim on his tunic and silver ornaments, buckles, and wristbands, watching the soldiers haul Tristan to his feet.
“You were right, Richard,” she said. “He attacked Nadine to draw the guard off me. It was me he was after all along.”
For a while, she had thought he had lost his mind. His performance had convinced everyone, including Tristan.
“Thanks for believing me,” Richard whispered.
When he had first told her what he was doing, Kahlan had suspected that Richard had accused Tristan because of the incident earlier. Kahlan had not put words to it, but she had wondered if Richard was simply acting out of jealousy.
Since she had told him what Shota said, he had now twice displayed jealousy, something she had never before seen from him. He didn’t have any reason to be jealous, but Shota’s words played on his mind, casting in doubt.
Whenever she looked at Nadine, Kahlan understood his feelings. Whenever she saw Nadine so much as standing near him, Kahlan felt the hot claws of jealousy rake through her insides.
She knew what Shota and the spirit had told her the truth. She knew that she would not have Richard. Her mind tried to put rational thought to it, to tell her that it would work out, that they would be together, but her heart knew better. Richard would marry Nadine. Kahlan would marry another man.
Richard refused to believe it. At least, he said he refused to believe it. She wondered.
In her mind’s eye, Kahlan saw Clive Anderson, sitting dead in his chair, holding his dead wife. In comparison to the tragedy that had befallen the Anderson family and so many others, what price was an unhappy marriage? Wouldn’t it be worth that price, if it wou
ld stop the appalling suffering and death?
Nadine slipped up next to Richard on the other side. “Drawing the guard off Kahlan or not, I’d have been dead. Thank you, Richard. I’ve never seen anything like the way you caught that arrow right in front of my face.”
Richard gave her a quick, one-armed hug. “Nadine, you’ve said thank you enough times. You’d have done the same for me.”
Kahlan felt those hot claws again. She suppressed the feeling. As Shota had said, if she loved him, she would want him to have at least the small comfort of it being someone he knew.
“But what if he had killed me? I mean, if he just wanted to draw the guard away from Kahlan, what if he had killed me? What good would that have that done him?”
“He knows I have the gift, and counted on that. If he had happened to kill you, it might still have worked, or he could have faked something similar with Drefan, reinforcing our belief that the target was healers and not Kahlan.”
“Why didn’t he just shoot Kahlan with the arrow?”
Richard watched the one-sided struggle on the other side of Kahlan’s bed. “Because he likes to use that knife of his. He wanted to feel it when he killed her.”
His words gave Kahlan a chill. She knew Tristan; Richard might be right. Tristan would have gotten pleasure from it.
The soldiers wrestled Tristan’s arms behind his back as they hauled him to his feet. He was still full of fight, but he was grossly overpowered. More lamps were lit as the room filled with soldiers.
Kahlan felt embarrassed to have all those people in her bedroom. She guessed it was because the Mother Confessor’s rooms had always been a private sanctuary. A safe place.
A man had invaded that sanctuary. A man intent on stabbing her to death.
“What’s this all about?” Tristan shouted.
