The man was dying. He wiped his lips and saw with wide-eyed shock that the back of his hand was coated in blood.
“When?” he stuttered. “Who has done this to me?”
He sank to his knees, an invisible force draining him of his strength. Somewhere a door slammed.
“It will not be long now, my lord,” a woman’s voice murmured behind him. It was his mistress, a slave girl he had taken years before and for whom he had developed a true fondness.
“I am not ready…” he murmured through blood-stained lips, his hand outstretched in a plea for mercy he knew would not be granted.
“You were ready a long time ago!” a harsh voice snapped, rejoicing in the sight of a dying man. It was Sulla. He had orchestrated this man’s murder as only Sulla knew how-totally without pity, using a loved one as the instrument of death, corrupting someone who had been trusted.
The dying lord of the Kinshra noted Sulla gesture toward his mistress. She looked despairingly into the scarred man’s face, his grimace the closest thing to a smile that he could manage. His blank white eye shone with an inner delight. He was revelling at the spectacle.
“Do it!” he told the woman. “Kill him!”
“Is the poison not enough for you?” She bowed her head in fear, looking with genuine sympathy to her dying master. “He will be dead shortly as it is!” Her voice broke into a wail at the thought of what Sulla had made her do.
“Not soon enough!” Sulla growled. “And poison is too easy for him. I want him to know that I now possess everything he treasured in life!”
“Do as he says!” the dying man cried out. “Kill me, but only if it frees you after this day!”
Sulla nodded.
The woman stepped forward, a pillow grasped tightly in her hands, her knuckles white from the grip. With a cry she forced it over his face, holding it as tightly as she could, ignoring his muffled words. Her weeping grew louder in contrast to her lover’s efforts, which began to weaken and finally ceased altogether.
Her weeping was the only sound in the room.
Sulla regarded the woman coolly. He removed the curved knife from his belt and tossed it onto the floor beside her.
“I am offering you your freedom,” he hissed in anticipation. “Take it!”
She looked at him, her eyes uncomprehending.
“You die today, or I will keep you alive for months. I don’t need to tell you what that will mean for you. You are a murderess.”
Slowly it dawned on her what he meant, what he had planned from the very outset of his coup. She took the dagger gingerly in both hands and turned it slowly, fearfully, upon herself.
Sulla watched as she threw herself forward, thinking for a second that she would turn on him. But she fell next to her dead master, and Sulla’s eye shone as he watched her body contort itself in the agony of the wound, but she did not scream.
That was brave of her, he thought, nearly as brave as the girl who had ambushed him some days before, and whom he had shot from his horse. She hadn’t cried out as she had fallen from the cliff’s edge, although he remembered with a slight shudder that his men had not found any trace of her body.
Surely the wolves had taken her.
With a snarl he banished such thoughts. The girl would not spoil his triumph!
Sulla knelt next to the dead Kinshra lord. The signet ring sparkled on his limp hand, tempting him to take it.
“How long have I coveted you!” Sulla said, breaking the finger in order to force the ring from its former owner. Without any delay, he slipped it onto the finger of his right hand. Now he was the lord of the Kinshra.
After a moment more, alone with the two bodies, he called the guard.
“Take them outside for the beasts,” he instructed, “or give them to the starving miners, if necessary!”
The winter had been harder than they had expected, and their slaves would starve for lack of food. This year they needed slaves, for Sulla had grand ambitions, and the miners were worked to death, pulling as much coal from the mountain as they could. Coal, Sulla thought to himself, as he shouted to his men and called a council of senior Kinshra, coal to fuel my war machine.
My war machine! he suddenly thought. He was now the lord of the Kinshra, and he would make certain the world knew it.