The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume III: Volume III

you bleed to death from the inside! Bessel watched his mother die of it. He reported dozens of deaths from the same cause. Didn’t you listen to him?”
    “Bessel is not a reliable witness.”
    More lies. What was he hiding?
    “Why isn’t Bessel reliable? He is your senior journeyman.” Quinnault stepped closer to Scarface, towering over him. He looked as if he wanted to beat some sense into the magician as well.
    “A familiar has sought out Bessel. Familiars fear dragons and will not come to a magician using dragon energies. Therefore Bessel obviously uses illegal rogue magic regularly. Besides, Bessel has never been my journeyman. He belongs to Nimbulan and always has. He defies me at every turn. He is a part of this conspiracy to put Nimbulan back into the Commune as Senior Magician even though he is now mundane. I trust no one who has served my predecessor. The mercenaries of Rossemeyer will serve us all well when they assassinate Bessel since you will not condemn him for the murder of Ambassador Jorghe-Rosse.”
    Katie and Quinnault looked to each other for explanation. Her husband’s thoughts, which she could never fully shut out, rolled in chaos as he sought some kind of logic in the last statement.
    Then his mind closed, as if he had slammed a door shut upon Katie’s link to him. She recoiled in surprise. Never in the year and a half of their marriage had he denied her access to his most intimate thoughts.
    Loneliness nearly overwhelmed her need to remain in this conversation.
    “I think you’d best retire to the privacy and security of your apartments in the Commune, Master Aaddler,” Quinnault said quietly—too calmly.
    Let me into your thoughts, Scarecrow! Katie pleaded with her husband. She tried to hold his hand. He jerked free of her tentative touch.
    This terrible aloneness frightened her. Without Quinnault, without her brothers, far from the home of her birth and nurturing, she was lost. She needed to become one with him again.
    She used to enjoy being alone when her large family became too intrusive, too boisterous. But she always had familiar surroundings and the knowledge that when she wanted she could reach out and touch one of them with her mind, or her hand.
    Her father had always respected her privacy when no one else did. And now her father had been exposed to the plague, possibly carried it to others.
    Which others? Lord Balthazaan’s province already reeled under the impact of the horrible disease. Lord Balthazaan. Something . . .
    “Is that a dismissal, Your Grace?” Scarface backed up a step. Surprise almost masked the new surge of anger in his expression and posture.
    “It is.” Quinnault remained closed to Katie. The easy-going diplomat, always ready to seek a compromise had disappeared inside his head and behind his clenched fists. “I have lost confidence in you as my chief adviser, Master Aaddler. I will ask the Commune to elect a new senior, one whom I can trust.”
    “Then think on this, King Quinnault Darville de Draconis, before you give your trust and confidence to Nimbulan, the man you call friend: The Rover woman, Maia, has escaped. The only way she could have broken through our wards is with help—the help of someone with Rover blood and therefore access to the mind-to-mind link of Rover magic. Nimbulan has Rovers in his ancestry. He has lied to you when he claims to have lost all of his magic. He still has Rover magic. He was also Maia’s lover. She bore him a child. Who else in your kingdom would want to help her escape?” Scarface turned on his heel and marched back the way he had come.
    “Lord Balthazaan is Nimbulan’s cousin, isn’t he?” Katie asked, thinking through the convoluted relationships among the nobility of Coronnan. “He would have Rover blood in his ancestry as well. Could an unscrupulous Rover magician manipulate him? We never found Piedro after he escaped, Scarecrow! A Rover helped him escape a magically sealed prison.”
    Lord Balthazaan has enjoyed new prosperity of late.” Quinnault clasped her hand tightly in his to dispel the lingering nightmare of the night Piedro tried to strangle Katie with the silken tie from Quinnault’s robe. “Despite the plague that decimates his population and threatens to close his mines for lack of workers, Lord Balthazaan rides new and expensive steeds. His wife wears the most costly SeLenese lace.”
    “And they both wear a great deal of jewelry,” Katie added, thinking again of the Rover