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"Go on," Dorian said

"I think you est you leave your guard here"

Is this the first attempt on my life? If so, it was rather clumsy That made it all the more ian, he had to defeat thenaled the guards to stay and diseneral

In the hall, they ilad to see you," she said, giving him a version of a Khalidoran bowde into the Khalidoran courtiers’ flourish while the left hand flared her skirt as she curtsied She raceful, too Obviously she’d practiced it It occurred to him then that there was no Khalidoran form of a woman’s salute to an equal male Khalidoran women ere equals would nod to each other, but were always inferior to men in the same social rank, and invisible to men of lower rank And all wo This was Jenine’s offering of a round He smiled, pleased with her solution

Dorian noddedbefore him would have "My lady, the pleasure isto spend the day with you I don’t want to be in your way I just want to learn"

Dorian glanced at Ashaiah Vul The man, of course, had his eyes averted He wouldn’t dare to disapprove of a Godking’s decisions, or to even look at a Godking’s wo remarkably unpleasant You don’t want to see it I don’t want to see it You should probably wait in the throne room I’ll be back shortly" Dorian turned

"I do want to see it," Jenine interjected Ashaiah Vul gasped at her audacity, then studied the floor oncered

"A thousand pardons, ive my rudeness," Jenine said She chewed her lip "I--My father never looked at things he didn’t want to see, and it got hi with things we don’t like is part of ruling My father refused to do it because he eak and venal How else a to see is beyond anything your father had to deal with, real or iined," Dorian said

"Even so" Jenine was unth, even as it surprised hioing to show , pretended to have no opinion--and ’s unwelcoht not like it, but you didn’t have any illusions that you could change it, either So Ashaiah took them deep into the bowels of the Citadel, and then into the tunnels of the h not much He was at best a meister of the third shu’ra

Finally, Ashaiah Vul stopped in front of a door that looked like any of the hundreds of others this deep in the Citadel The dust in this hall was so thick it was more like soil, and it was plain that this room hadn’t been visited any more recently than any of the others He unlocked the door and opened it

Dorian held his vir as he followed the Lodricari into the darkness His first sensation was that this rooe, cavernous The air was musty, thick, fetid

Ashaiah mumbled an incantation and Dorian snapped three shields into place around both hiht coursed up the arch where Ashaiah held his hand against the wall It spread fro over a hundred feet above In a few seconds, light bathed the chamber

This had been a library once, a place of beauty and light The walls and pillars were the color of ivory and lace The ht coave a sense of divinity and purpose Long cherry shelves had once held both scrolls and books and tables had been arranged with space for scholars to study

Now, it held clean, white bones The cha, and half as wide, and everywhere, the books and scrolls had been removed In their place, on every shelf, on every table, were bones Old, old bones Sos tied to their wrists Soed in inhu bones, with boxes for the ser bones Pelvises stacked Spines whole and in boxes for each vertebra And skulls in a large central area: mountains of skulls