• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

"A point of order, my Lord Guardian." Not changing his posture, Miles pitched his drawl to carry across the chamber. "I am not accused; I am slandered. There is an unsubtle legal distinction between the two."

"It will be an ironic day when you try to lay down a criminal accusation here," Richars parried, stung, Miles hoped, by the implied threat of countersuit.

Count Vorhalas called out from his place in the back row, "In the event, Sire, my Lord Guardian, my lords, having viewed the evidence and listened to the preliminary interrogations, I should be pleased to lay the charge against Lord Richars myself."

The Lord Guardian frowned, and tapped his spear suggestively. Historically, permitting men to start speaking out of turn had quickly led to shouting matches, fist fights, and, in prior eras when weapons scanners hadn't been available, famous melees and duels to the death. But Emperor Gregor, listening with very little expression himself, made no move to intervene.

Richars was growing yet more off balance; Miles could see it in his reddening face and heavy breathing. To Miles's shock, he gestured up at Ekaterin. "It's a bold villain who can stand unashamed while his victim's own wife looks down at him—though I suppose she could hardly look up at him, eh?"

Faces turned toward the pale black-clad woman in the gallery. She looked chilled and frightened, jerked out of her safe observer's invisibility by Richars's unwelcome attention. Beside her, Nikki stiffened. Miles sat upright; it was all he could do to keep himself from launching himself across the chamber at Richars's throat and attempting to throttle him on the spot. That wouldn't work anyway. He was compelled to other means of combat, slower, but, he swore, more effective in the end. How dare Richars turn on Ekaterin in this public venue, invade her most private concerns, attempt to manipulate her most intimate relationships just to serve his power-grab?

Miles's anticipated nightmare of defense was here, now. Already he would be forced to turn his attention not just to truth but to appearances, to check every word out his mouth for its effect on the listeners who could become his future judges. Richars had put himself one-down through his botched attack on Dono; could he scramble back up over Miles's and Ekaterin's bodies? It seemed he was about to try.

Ekaterin's face was utterly still, but white around the lips. Some prudent back part of Miles's brain couldn't help making a note of what she looked like when she was really angry, for future reference. "You are mistaken, Lord Richars," she snapped down at him. "Not your first mistake, apparently."

"Am I?" Richars shot back. "Why else, then, did you flee in horror from his public proposal, if not your belated realization of his hand in your late husband's death?"

"That's no business of yours!"

"One wonders what pressures he has brought to bear since to gain your compliance . . ." His smarmy sneer invited the listeners to imagine the worst.

"Only if one is a damned fool!"

"Proof is where you find it, madame."

"That's your idea of proof?" Ekaterin snarled. "Fine. Your legal theory is easily demolished—"

The Lord Guardian banged his spear. "Interjections from the gallery are not permitted," he began, staring up at her.

Behind Ekaterin, the Viceroy of Sergyar stared down at the Lord Guardian, tapped his index finger suggestively against the side of his nose, and made a small two-fingered sweeping gesture taking in Richars below: No; let him hang himself. Ivan, glancing over his shoulder, grinned abruptly and swiveled back. The Lord Guardian's eyes flicked to Gregor, whose face bore only the faintest smile and little other cue. The Lord Guardian continued more weakly, "But direct questions from the Speaker's Circle may be answered."

Richars's questions had been more rhetorical, for effect, than direct, Miles judged. Assuming Ekaterin would be safely silenced by her position in the gallery, he hadn't expected to have to deal