Lady Therien arrived in the nursery with a cy jug in one hand and a wine gss in the other. If it was her purpose in life to see to it these Watchers were kept in hand, she would do it on her own terms. She did not much care to entertain them sober this night, and had polished off half the contents of this jug of Mirrhvalian wine before descending into the pace bowels to attend to her affairs.

  There was another affair she intended to entertain when this was over, and she quite liked the idea of handling that in a fitting state of inebriation, as well. Lord Tarkenta would mind little. He did not question her habits, and she did not question his. It was all just physical anyway, a temporary foray into the strange and new which would end when it ended, with her husband none the wiser.

  She twisted the knob on the door into Queen Anastasia’s old safe room, and hip checked it open. The door thumped against a poured stone wall as she passed it, and she kicked it shut again.

  The staff were mostly engrossed in preparing the younger children for a night’s sleep. Some fussed over bottles filled with tinctures to incapacitate the little cretins, and others fussed over bedsheets and coverlets or read stories out of books of myths to their stubby charges.

  She breezed past those chambers, left the women to their work. There was the bastard on her mind, and she wanted her taste of revenge. An hour or so, if she could be bothered to remain her so long, spent beating every inch of him into a bloody ruin would do her good. She would be over it then, might even spare him the remaining days of his miserable life spent eating less than might keep him alive until the moon rose full once more.

  “We must show them mercy on occasion, mustn’t we.” She mumbled. “Else we will never break—“

  The jug crashed against the tiles, and sobriety stole over her as shock abruptly dispced the middling drunk storming through her.

  The Watchers, all in their line, were slumped along the wall. All of them were, by every appearance, dead.

  Gingerly, she set her wine gss on the ground, ignoring the shattered ruin spread across the floor, and approached them. She tested the Jua man’s neck with trembling fingers.

  No pulse.

  She moved to the one next to him and repeated her analysis to find the same result. To another.

  Sky Lord’s mercy.

  She turned and ran out of the chamber, ran until she was well clear of the door and the silencing effect of the chunk of enchanted quartz in its corner. She drew on the Cosmic Orchestra and opened her shadow, flung herself into it and away.

  She thought of the queen as she ran through a sightless world in search of Lord Tarkenta, no longer intent on a foray into that so pleasing world of adultery, but in need of him in his official capacity. She’ll be furious! What are we to do without those blue eyed freaks? Start over?