The Two of Swords: Part 15 Read online

  In the event that his nephew predeceased him, the throne would pass to the next closest relative. The candidates were listed, in order of priority of entitlement; the first sixteen names had been crossed out in red. The seventeenth―

  Myrtus let go of the paper; it rolled itself back into a scroll. “No,” he said. “That’s unthinkable.”

  “Agreed.”

  He scowled at her. “Oh, come on,” he said. “By your reasoning, he’s the perfect choice.”

  She shook her head slowly and solemnly. “Absolutely not,” she said. “You can’t have been listening. The empire’s got to go, remember? We need to start from scratch, a blank page. No, I agree with you entirely, it’d be a disaster. The worst possible outcome.”

  He took a deep breath. “All right,” he said. “I think I—”

  “Wait,” she said, “there’s more. Little bit of news just in. Three days ago, someone broke into Glauca’s tower in Choris, with a knife. Came this close to killing him, only a servant managed to stop him. The man who does his toenails, would you believe. And—” she went on, before he could speak, “on the same day, at almost exactly the same time, in the royal apartments at Iden Astea—”

  “Dear God.”

  She shook her head. “Also unsuccessful,” she said, “though they managed to stick one in him; nasty flesh wound but he’ll live.” She took the scroll away from him and locked it in a small boxwood chest. “You realise what this means.”

  “You don’t think he—?”

  “Oh, no.” She sounded quite definite. “He wouldn’t know what was in Glauca’s will. But someone does.” She poured cherry brandy into a small horn cup and handed it to him. He loved her for that. “Well? Made your mind up?”

  He swallowed the brandy and looked at her. “Do you seriously believe I’d last one minute against either of the Belot boys? With eight hundred men?”

  She sighed. “I told you. Won’t happen. It’s not that sort of war.”

  “In that case.” He paused. There was no turning back, but he wanted the moment before the world changed forever to last just a little longer. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll conquer the universe for you, if that’s what you want.”

  “Thank you,” she said, and kissed him on the cheek.

  When he came out again into the sunlight, he trod in a pool of what looked suspiciously like honey, glanced up and noticed that Major Genseric’s head was smirking down at him from the clock-tower arch. A cloud of flies obscured it, like a veil. He nodded to it; he felt sure it smiled at him. At any rate, they understood one another.

  K. J. Parker is the pseudonym of Tom Holt, a full-time writer living in the south-west of England. When not writing, Holt is a barely competent stockman, carpenter and metalworker, a two-left-footed fencer, an accomplished textile worker and a crack shot. He is married to a professional cake decorator and has one daughter.

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