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“What were you led to believe?” Ava asked, looking at him directly.

Before he could answer, as his mouth opened to speak, the young assistant pushed Furte to one side and raised her arm, aiming for Guran Hur.

Raun-Tu shoved her, hard, and she fell, landing badly on her side.

Ava heard the thump of her body connecting with the marble floor, the wheeze as she struggled for breath.

Ava rose to her feet, focusing on the object in the woman’s hand.

She had assumed it was a knife, but it looked like a tarnished silver spoon.

“Stay back.” The woman managed to draw breath to speak, and she waved the spoon at them, pain in her voice and on her face. She moved awkwardly, as if her arm was broken, and got her knees under her.

She looked as if she wanted to rise to her feet, but her skin had taken on a gray tinge and instead she bent her head down to her knees and concentrated on breathing. She slipped the spoon from the hand of her broken arm to the other.

“Is that a spoon?” General Ru asked, astonished.

“That’s what it looks like.” Renata Ewing glanced at Ava. “It is probably something more dangerous.”

Ava had already guessed that, but she saw Renata was making sure to be helpful and cooperative.

“Janice. What is this about?” Guran Hur’s voice was soft.

Instead of answering, her lip trembling, her eyes wild, Janice threw the spoon at him. Her aim was off, she was throwing with her non-dominant hand, and it missed Guran Hur and hit the third diplomat, the one who had yet to introduce himself.

He crumpled to the ground, his eyes bulging, his face twisted in fear. It seemed to Ava he tried to scream, but nothing came out of him but the rattle of constricted breath. He twitched, as if batting something away and then lay still, completely unmoving.

Raun-Tu had unsheathed his sword and he used it to flick the spoon away. It skittered across the slick marble and came to rest against a wall.

All eyes turned back to Janice, but she had lain down herself, Ava saw. Her eyes were closed, and she had curled up, in a foetal position. She seemed to no longer be a threat to anyone.

In the silence, Ava heard Janice’s breath rattle in her chest, and then a sigh.

She ran lightly down the stairs of the dais and approached.

Luc’s hand was suddenly on her shoulder. He said nothing, but she understood the warning clearly enough.

“I think she’s dead,” she said into the quiet. She crouched down, looking carefully at what Janice might have in her hands.

Nothing.

“She just laid down and died?” General Ru was disbelieving.

“Someone bespelled her.” Furte sounded angry. “Someone set her on a course of action and made sure she would die when it was done, so she couldn’t give them away.”

“What course of action, though?” General Ru’s voice was harsh in the quiet. “Stopping one of you answering a question was hardly a solution. She couldn’t have been sure she could kill all of you, and she must have known we would stop her.”

That was true.

Ava wondered why Janice would give herself away like that. She might have been able to silence Guran Hur before he spoke, but she surely understood killing the other three diplomats and her fellow assistant would have been nearly impossible under the circumstances.

“Was there something you know that the others don’t?” she asked the old Grimwaldian.

Guran Hur was looking at the spoon, and he turned to answer her. “Maybe I do.”

“Then maybe you need to start talking.”

Chapter 4