Read The Usurper for Free Online Page B

added in only slightly accented Rolencian, 'Come stand behind my chair, lady Seela.'
    Palatyne gave Piro a nudge and she climbed the step onto the dais, going around the table.
    Isolt did not meet Piro's eyes or acknowledge her and Piro realised that, as a slave, she was invisible, yet right behind the throne. Dunstany was right, she could go anywhere in the palace and all she had to say was that she was on Isolt Kingsdaughter's business for the guards to let her pass.
    While Palatyne went on to boast of his success, Dunstany took his seat at the end of the high table. Between the Power-worker and the king were eleven nobles - men and women who had risen to power with the king, Piro suspected, usurping the nobles loyal to her mother's family. This was surprising, as she would have expected the noble scholar to have wormed his way closer into the king's inner circle of advisers.
    Palatyne came around to sit on the king's left hand. On his side were three young nobles she recognised from the voyage, and the Utlander. Here was another layer of new allegiances. Clearly, there was a struggle for power between the older nobles who supported King Merofyn and the ambitious young ones who were eager for power at Palatyne's side. And what did Dunstany do?
    She glanced his way, catching him watching her.
    He sat back and waited. He was a survivor.
    During the long meal Piro wriggled her toes in her fancy new shoes, while she observed the nobility and royalty of Merofynia. Now that she was bored, her stomach rumbled and she wished she had eaten earlier.
    The king, his daughter and Palatyne all had their own food tasters. They ate nothing that their tasters did not. If this was an elegant high court, then she was glad she had grown up in Rolenhold where King Rolen did not worry about poison and sometimes wandered into the kitchen to help himself to a slab of leftover apple pie.
    Sorrow stung Piro's eyes, but grief served no purpose. Revenge was better. She almost laughed. Here she stood, inside the palace, within a body's length of the men who had orchestrated the downfall of her father's kingdom, and no one knew who she was.
    Dunstany thought she was spying for him, but she had her own plans.
     
    Fyn studied the sky, hoping for clouds to obscure the betraying multitude of stars.
    'No such luck.' Bantam said, voicing his thoughts. 'Under starlight the ship stands out like a cockroach on a silver plate!'
    Fyn turned back to the approaching Utlanders. 'They're -'
    'Closer still,' Bantam agreed. 'They'll be on us by midnight.'
    Fyn swallowed. To die out here, when Byren needed him... 'We're tacking across the wind. Can't we ride before it like we were doing?'
    Bantam grinned. 'We'll make a sailor of you yet. We're tacking because the cap'n's changed course. We're heading towards the Skirling Stones.'
    He drew Fyn with him to a better vantage point and gestured by way of explanation.
    When Fyn stared in the direction he'd indicated, he was able to make out jagged black rocks, jutting out of the sea. 'What good's that? They'll just follow us.'
    'Into the Skirling Stones? Into a maelstrom of seething water, reefs of razor-sharp rocks and whirlpools?' Bantam mocked. 'No one in their right mind would venture into the Skirling Stones.'
    Fyn just stared at him. Why hadn't anyone warned him sea-hounds were mad?
    'You think we're crazy, don't you, little monk? And we would be, if the cap'n hadn't done this before. He's a true artist, able to feel his way through channels, against tides and over reefs. He knows his way through the Skirling Stones.'
    'Why? Why go there in the first place?'
    'We're sea-hounds, boy. Ostron Isle pays a bounty for every Utland raider we destroy. But it's hard to catch them unawares on the open sea.' He tilted his head. 'Back home where I grew up, there were spiders big as sparrows. They'd build a trap by digging into the soil and disguise it with bits of twig and bark, so that it looked like a bit of ordinary ground. When