Fool's Errand Read Free

the dog, horse and hawk who’d followed her so well and so far.
    With a snarl, the Regent gestured for the young soldier to haul Persephone to her feet. Plucking the dagger from the cooling hand of the murdered servant, Mordecai thrust it so close to Persephone’s face that she could smell the tang of fresh blood. “If you’d kept this blade to protect yourself instead of using it to save the life of the drab that now lies dead before you, you might yet have had a fighting chance,” he hissed. “But you did not, and so you and your so-called companions are doomed. Which is as it should be, Princess , for though I tried valiantly to make you see that servants are replaced as easily as smashed dinner plates, you are as stubborn as your peasant-hearted brother when it comes to understanding that there are those who matter and those who merely take up space. And that is why I know I will be doing the kingdom of Glyndoria a glorious service by sending you both onward into the afterlife.”
    â€œWait—what do you mean ‘both’?” gasped Persephone. “Do you mean that you intend to kill King Finnius as well?”
    â€œOf course,” said Mordecai silkily. “How else can I become king except by disposing of the one whose backside currently warms the throne?”
    â€œBut … but it would be a wasted effort!” she cried. “The Erok nobility would never accept you as king!”
    Mordecai smiled gloatingly. “You are wrong, Princess, for Lord Bartok has promised that once I announce his daughter’s betrothal to the king, he will force the king’s Council to name me heir apparent and to accept me as such. Thereafter, if the king should die—and I assure you that he will die, most agonizingly—I shall ascend to the throne.”
    Knowing from experience that those in positions of power rarely responded well to being spat upon, Persephone bit her lip to keep from doing so as she frantically searched her mind for some way to save the king—and the kingdom—even if she could not save herself and her companions. Before she could come up with any clever ideas, however, Azriel made the situation a thousand times worse by loudly declaring, “Even if all that you say is true, Your Grace, you still can’t be king. You’re a cripple!”

TWO

    A T AZRIEL’S WORDS , Persephone felt the blood drain from her face. There were easy ways to die and hard ways to die, and mocking the Regent for his terrible deformities must certainly guarantee the very hardest death of all.
    â€œAzriel,” she breathed, giving her head the tiniest of shakes.
    â€œBut he is a cripple, Princess,” insisted Azriel with a deliberately provocative roll of his own powerful shoulders. “Even if he had other than base blood running through his veins—which he does not—how could he ever be king? Look at him—he can hardly hold up his own head!”
    At this, the gore-splattered Regent lifted both his head and Persephone’s bloody knife as high as he was able. Slowly, he began lurching toward the kneeling Gypsy and the smash-nosed soldier who yet held him by the hair. Inwardly cursing Azriel for a reckless fool, Persephone hissed his name again but he took no notice.
    Instead, careless of the scalping knife that was now pressed against his throat, he absently ran his hand from the broad ridge of his chest to the hard flatness of his stomach—and kept talking.
    â€œHis Grace hasn’t the strength and vitality to set him above other men,” he explained as he gazed placidly up into the livid face of the madman who was advancing upon him. “He could never wield a sword in defence of the kingdom or ride a great hunter or even dance at his own banquet. And he most certainly could never get an heir upon a suitable wife, for there is not a noblewoman in the realm who would willingly lie with him looking the way he does