Part 5 (2/2)
”But not his brother, the Earl? Not even then?”
Her fingers turned the fine dials.
”Oh him! That twisted grin. No, I knew what he was like straightaway. He cheated at chess and tipped the board over if he was losing. He screamed at the servants, and some of the other girls told me things. When my ... when the Warden came home and told me Giles had died so suddenly ... that all the plans would have to be changed, I was furious.”
She sat up and turned quickly.”What I swore to you then still goes. Master, I can't marry Caspar. I won't marry him. I detest him.”
”Calm down, Claudia.”
”How can I!” She was on her feet now, pacing.
”I feel as though everything's crashed in on me! I thought we'd have time, but a few days! We have to act, Jared. I have to get into the study, even if your machine is untested.”
He nodded. Then he lifted the cub off and dumped it on the floor, ignoring its snarl of dismay.
”Come and look at this.”
Beside the telescope the monitor nickered. He touched the control and the screen rippled with words in the Sapient tongue of which he had never, for all her pleading, taught her a word. As he scrolled through in a bat whipped through the opened room and vanished back into the night.
Claudia glanced around.”We should be careful.”
”I'll shut the windows in a moment.” Absently Jared stopped the text.
”Here.”
His delicate fingers touched a key and the translation appeared.
”Look. This is a fragment of a burned draft of a letter written by the Queen, retrieved and copied by a Sapient spy in the Palace, three years ago. You asked me to find anything that might support your absurd theory-”
”Its not absurd.”
”Well, your unlikely theory, then, that Giles's death was-”
”Murder.”
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