Read The Two of Swords: Part 9 for Free Online Page B

at the back so people wouldn’t notice you. It’ll be all right.”
    “I’m wanted for
murder
.”
    He shook his head. “Suspected of, not wanted for,” he said casually, “there’s a difference. Besides, the woman they thought might just possibly have had something to do with that business was a priestess in government service. You’re my niece. You’re a lady of leisure and you’ve never been to Blemya before in your life. Just remember that and everything will be fine, you’ll see.”
    “You must be out of your mind. Stop the coach, I’ll walk from here.”
    “Where to?”
    “I don’t care. I’ll find my own way home. I’ve got money, I can take care of myself. Whatever I do, it’s got to be safer than—”
    He shook his head. “Unfortunately, no,” he said. “Not possible. They’re expecting you now, and if you don’t show up I don’t think I’ll be able to think of a convincing reason for you not being there. If I say you wandered off or got kidnapped by bandits, they’d insist on sending a regiment to find you. It’s a nuisance,” he added, raising his voice over hers, “but so long as we’re sensible and we play it cool, there won’t be a problem, I promise you. Come on, you’re a professional. You can handle this.”
    There was something in the way he’d said it that made her skin tingle. Good reasons, she thought. “If I get caught, you’ll be in trouble, too,” she said. “You won’t be able to smarm your way out of it, they’ll know you knew and you lied. And then they’ll guess you were mixed up in it the last time. It’s your neck on the block as well as mine.”
    He looked at her, expressionless. “Yes,” he said. “I had actually thought of that for myself, thank you. I’m risking my life as well as my career and my professional standing. Don’t ask me why, because I’m not sure I know. But there it is.”
    She felt as if she’d been punched. Perfectly true; he had so much to lose, and he was risking it all, because of her, and it wasn’t even a paying job … It made her feel angry, but other things as well, things best ignored. “Fine,” she snapped. “This whole business has got completely out of control, so we’ll just have to make the best of it we can.”
    He grinned. “That’s the spirit,” he said. “I love it when you’re grateful.”
    “Oh, drop dead.”
    He thought of it at the last minute. She protested, told him it was a stupid idea and that it’d attract attention rather than deflecting it. He took out the book, found the place (bookmarked with a feather) and handed it to her without a word. She read it and handed it back.
    It worked. As he’d anticipated, the Chamberlain knew all about the ordinance in Sarpitus that decreed that women who had recently recovered from various specifically female ailments were required to be veiled in public; the ordinance wasn’t widely followed in Blemya, he said, because the rule was actually introduced sometime after the Blemyan code of etiquette crystallised into its present form … However, the Court was always happy to recognise the younger tradition, particularly where a close relative of a distinguished visitor was concerned.
    “You think you’re so clever,” she hissed at him, as the State coach drove them to the palace.
    “Well, I am,” he answered mildly.
    “The sooner you can get me out of this horrible country, the better for both of us. I really can’t face a whole week smothered in bloody cheesecloth. I can’t breathe.”
    “We’ll get you a proper veil,” he reassured her. “Silk or something.”
    Their apartments in the palace were amazing. Oida’s suite had been built as a council chamber, with seating for two hundred; they’d stripped out the benches and installed a bath, with hot water piped up from the huge thousand-gallon copper in the main kitchen, two floors below. The bath itself had once been the sarcophagus of a long-dead king; its sides were carved with