Читать книгу Clues of Chaos - Gary Caplan - Страница 4

Lady Seneca moved to her window in the upper balcony. In the dark, she couldn’t see what had made the sound. The breeze fluttered her nightgown partly open. She thought she saw movement but wasn’t sure.

Again, something scraped briefly along the outer wall of the villa estate where she lived. Moments later, several small thuds sounded, like an objects being dropped.

She opened the hardwood chamber doors leading to her suite’s entry chamber. Her serving girl stood, listening. She had recently brought Lady Seneca her night clothes after Seneca had left her bathing chamber minutes ago. Seneca motioned her over and whispered, “Go ask the guards to investigate what is making those scraping sounds.”

A short time ago, she had been preparing to go to sleep when she had become uneasy. She had inherited an ability a danger sense of sorts from her father. The uneasy feeling started first, followed by pressure on her head toward the direction the danger was strongest. To control the anxiety that usually occurred, she took deep breaths. The danger might be directed not at her, but at someone nearby. Her father, an alchemist who worked for the First Legion of the Praetor, had taught her how to be receptive to her senses. He said he learned it from one of the mystic knights.

Seneca sat on the bed briefly and recalled a short meditation her father taught her that helped her focus. Afterward she felt calmer, but the danger still seemed to be all around her and growing stronger.

Her family’s centurion, a capable old legionnaire named Nartis, knocked and then entered the waiting room area. As Lady Seneca went forward to greet him, a shadowy form on the other end of the waiting room moved behind him. Her danger sensation pulsed sharply, stronger than before.

Her husband had been the victim of an attack two years ago, and she was still sad about his loss. Sometimes she worried, as the circumstances of his death were unclear. He did not officially die in service to the legion, yet he was provided a proper military ceremony for a high-ranking officer. Those who investigated the prefect’s death said it was likely a military enemy.

As she looked at her centurion walk toward her, she saw a dark shadow and a pale hand grab Nartis’s shoulder from behind. She heard the sound of metal pushing through leather and a gasp escape her centurion’s mouth. Pain seared across his features and his greeting smile transformed into a grimace of pain as a dagger tip pushed through his shirt, welling blood. As he fell forward, eyes glowed in the hooded cowl of the attacker. She had a feminine face and visibly long incisor teeth. She swept across the intervening distance in a blur of speed, and Lady Seneca screamed.