บททั้งหมดของ The King's Second Heart : บทที่ 41 - บทที่ 50

The Second visit

"He is in the corridor again, my lady."Ysolde said it from the chamber door at the first hour of dusk on the next evening in the careful, steady voice she had used the night before, and Elowen Vayne — who was sitting in the high-backed chair by the tall window of the blue chambers in a fresh dusk-blue velvet gown the seamstress of the king's wing had pressed and laid out for her in the late afternoon — did not jump.She had been expecting him.She had been expecting him in the patient way you expect a deliberate person who has told you he is going to come at a specific time, and the careful king of Velmoria had told her last night, in his low voice, that he would come back at dusk tonight if she would allow it, and Elowen had allowed it with a nod of her dark head, and tonight she had been ready for the soft three knocks at the chamber door for the past hour.The soft three knocks came.The same three knocks. The same low voice on the other side of the door. Ysolde opened it, and the

อ่านเพิ่มเติม

The Second Visit (2)

The king of Velmoria had not given her any difficult information tonight. He had given her, in his low voice and steady way, a gentle gift of an old story about an old colonnade in an old garden. The story was the kind of gentle offering a considerate man gives a recovering young woman in the soft yellow lamp-light when he has been thinking all day about what comforting thing he can bring into her chamber tonight.She said, very quietly:"Thank you, King Vaelor.""For what?""For the old story."The long, thin, pale scar along the left side of his jaw did the smallest possible movement at the corner of his mouth again."You are welcome, Lady Elowen."The first conversation of the second visit was the gentle conversation of the king's gardens. The king of Velmoria told her about the oldest fountain in the gardens, the rudest gardener, and the western window of his own study that gave him the best view of the western mountains at the la

อ่านเพิ่มเติม

Garrick's Questions

"You have been quiet for six days, my king."Garrick said it from the chair on the far side of the carved table by the fire in the king's private study, and he said it in the steady voice of a Beta who had decided that the steady voice was going to be the first word of a conversation he was no longer prepared to put off.It was the morning of the sixth day after the column had ridden in through the western gates of the palace.The king's private study was a room at the far end of the long corridor of the king's wing, with one tall narrow window that gave the western view of the mountains the king had told Elowen Vayne about on the second visit two evenings ago, and one hearth in the south wall, and one long table for papers, and two chairs by the fire that had been used by the king of Velmoria and his Beta for the late-night cups of wine of the past nineteen years.Garrick was forty years old.He had a long pale scar dow

อ่านเพิ่มเติม

Garrick's Questions (2)

The new thing was uncertainty.The king of Velmoria had not been an uncertain man for twenty years. The king of Velmoria had been the most certain man in any room in this palace for two decades, because the king of Velmoria had been the king of a kingdom for twenty years and the kingdom had needed a certain man at the head of it, and the king of Velmoria had been that certain man whether he had wanted to be or not.The uncertainty in the patient steady grey eyes this morning was the first uncertainty Garrick had seen in those eyes in two decades.The king of Velmoria spoke."Garrick. I am going to tell you the only thing I can tell you today. The thing is that the young woman in the blue chambers is under my protection. She is going to be under my protection for as long as it takes. She is going to be in this palace for as long as she wishes to stay in it. She is to be treated by every person in the king's wing as if she were the queen of Velmoria herself

อ่านเพิ่มเติม

Whispers in the West Wing

"You do not gossip about the lady in the blue chambers. Not to your sister. Not to your mother. Not to the boy you walk out with on your day off. Is that understood?"The senior household woman of the king's wing stood in the centre of the long stone kitchens at the first hour after dawn with her arms folded across her broad chest, and her face was the face of a sixty-one-year-old woman who had not lost an argument in her own kitchens in thirty years.The kitchen girls stood in a row against the long wooden table. Nine of them, and four laundresses, and two pantry boys, and the under-cook, and the boy who carried wood for the hearths. Hands at their sides. Eyes on the floor."I will not say it twice. Any servant of this household who is heard speaking of the lady in the blue chambers to any person outside the walls of this palace will be dismissed the same morning. Without reference. Without a final wage. You will walk o

อ่านเพิ่มเติม

Whispers in the West Wing(2)

This morning, in the private study of his tall narrow townhouse, Lord Marrec Thorne received Lord Hadric of Westmark with the warm courtesy of a host who had no more important business."Hadric. You are early. To what do I owe the pleasure?""Marrec. I have a piece of news from the breakfast table of Aldwin of Greysend that I thought you might want to hear.""From Aldwin? Aldwin does not usually have news.""This is a small piece. Perhaps it is nothing.""Tell me anyway."Lord Hadric of Westmark told him. The king dining privately in the west wing for two evenings running. The senior councillors not informed. The absence from the council suppers. He told it in the steady careful voice of a man placing a stone on a balance and not yet sure which way the balance was going to tip.Marrec Thorne listened to all of it without moving in his chair behind his desk.When Hadric had finished, Marrec thanked him in the warm voice of a sen

อ่านเพิ่มเติม

Lady Marielle's Request

"He will not see me, will he?"Lady Marielle of Highmere said it from the chair in the long marble antechamber outside the king's great study, in the steady tired voice of a woman who had been sitting in the same chair for four hours and was beginning to suspect she would be sitting in it until sundown.The king's senior secretary looked up from his writing table.He was a neat-faced man of perhaps fifty, with grey hair and the steady patient face of a man who had been the senior secretary to the king of Velmoria for fifteen years and had been the senior secretary to King Arden for the five years before that. He had known Lady Marielle of Highmere for the entire twenty years she had been a quiet shadow at this court. He had been the young secretary in this same antechamber on the morning of the spring after Castien's death when Lady Marielle had come to ask King Arden, very quietly, whether she might be permitted to keep

อ่านเพิ่มเติม

Lady Marielle's Request(2)

It was the chair of a sister-by-betrothal at the firelit hearth of the king of her dead beloved. Vaelor sat in the chair across from her. He folded his enormous hands on his own knees in the steady patient way he had been folding his hands at the firelit hearths of his own life for the past twenty years, and he looked at her across the low table between them, and he waited. She did not know how to ask the question. She had been rehearsing it in the long marble antechamber for four hours and she had not been able to find any first sentence for it, and she had not been able to find any first sentence for it because the question was the kind of question that did not have any sensible reason for being asked at all. She fumbled. "Vaelor — I have heard — they have been saying—" She stopped. She started again. "Vaelor. They say

อ่านเพิ่มเติม

Marrec Begins to Hunt

"Three days, Toren. You are early."Lord Marrec Thorne said it from behind his desk in his study at the first hour of the morning of the third day after his conversation with Lord Hadric of Westmark, and he said it in the warm voice of a master who was not surprised that his most trusted secretary had finished a job ahead of schedule.Toren the secretary stood at the door of the study with a thin folder in his clean hands."My lord.""Sit. Tell me what you have."Toren sat in the chair across the desk from his master and laid the thin folder on the surface of the desk between them, and he opened it without ceremony, and he gave his master the summary in the steady patient voice of a secretary who had been doing this work for fifteen years."My lord. I have made the list. There are exactly four noblewomen the king of Velmoria has interacted with in any capacity in the past two months. The first is the

อ่านเพิ่มเติม

Marrec Begins to Hunt(2)

Castien had been killed on the tenth day of the month of Last Snow. Last Snow was the last month of the winter, and the tenth day of Last Snow fell exactly four weeks after the winter solstice and exactly two weeks before the seventeenth day of First Thaw. Crown Prince Castien of Velmoria had been killed on the western road on the tenth day of the month of Last Snow in the winter of the year of his death, and the young woman now living in the blue chambers of the king's west wing of the royal palace had been born exactly fourteen days later, in the month of First Thaw, in the house of a minor border lord three days west of Ironbough Pack on the western edge of the kingdom. Fourteen days. The soul of a murdered prince, in the old texts of the soul-vessel binding that Marrec Thorne had read in the private library of his own house thirty years ago, took fourteen days to find a vessel.

อ่านเพิ่มเติม

1 2 3 4 5 6

สแกนรหัสเพื่ออ่านบนแอป