Read Online Shadow Knight's Mate by Jay Brandon - Free Book Online

mind.
    â€œThank you.”
    â€œStop that.” He had meant to finish his sentence, “is better.” But she had answered his thought.
    She put her arm through his. They could stroll out now. “In answer to your next question,” Arden said, “Granny sent me to take care of you.”
    â€œâ€˜Granny’?”
    â€œPlease don’t tell me you don’t know that my grandmother, who brought me into this group, is Gladys Leaphorn, the Chair. I will lose all faith in your info-gathering—”
    â€œAll right, yes, I knew that. Although there’s a lot I don’t know, and I don’t think anyone—”
    â€œWe have to go see her. Now.”
    â€œNow?”
    â€œThat was the second part of my assignment. I’m to bring you to her. Come.”
    â€œWhy? I’m not going anywhere until I get some answers.”
    Arden glanced back. “We’ll take my car.”
    They met Gladys Leaphorn in the painted desert, at the base of a mesa that protected their flank, a spot from which they could see miles in every other direction. Arden’s car, a baby blue Cadillac from the early 70s, looked anachronistic in that setting, but not as much as one might have expected. The Chair emerged from a small stone shelter, walking shakily on two arm-canes. There was no sign of another car, nor tracks of any kind other than Arden’s. Quite possibly Gladys Leaphorn had flown here under her own power. She had no entourage, not even one aide. The lines in her face looked as deeply etched as the cracks in this dry earth. But she seemed to draw strength from this landscape, standing straighter as Jack and Arden approached. One of her metal canes dropped to the ground as she hugged her granddaughter.
    â€œThank you, baby. Was he in trouble?”
    â€œJust like you thought, Granny. But we got by.”
    â€œI could have handled it,” Jack said.
    â€œThat is not the point,” the Chair said. “Who is trying to kill you, Jack, and why?”
    He looked her in the eyes and neither of them spoke for several seconds. Gladys Leaphorn’s dark eyes gave him nothingbut his own reflection. Of course Jack had been thinking of little else except the question she had asked. His suspicions ranged wide, and covered the Chair herself. She had saved him from this latest attack. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t plotted it herself, either for real or to take him into her confidence. Her mind was so twisty there was no way to follow its trails.
    The way Arden had rescued him—if in fact she had—had left Jack no chance of questioning his attackers. This had occurred to him some miles back.
    He turned to her. “When did you spot those two? If you had let me know you were there, we could have worked together, maybe gotten at least one of them alone and still capable of talking. Now—”
    â€œThat’s the way these assassins work, Jack.” Gladys answered the question. “Their attacks are in public or near-public. Either they succeed or they are taken into custody by authorities who don’t know the right questions to ask. That was true of the two who attacked you in Malaysia, too, wasn’t it?”
    Jack had to admit that was true.
    â€œWho are dead, by the way,” Gladys added. “We made inquiries. They were ‘arrested’ at the convention center, but somehow never made it to jail.”
    While Jack pondered that, the Chair continued to study him. Arden stood a couple of feet from each of them, forming the third point of a triangle. Her arms folded, she kept her eyes mostly on her grandmother. She was more subdued in her ancestor’s presence, but had an avid look on her face, studying all the time. “Tell him the rest of that story,” she said.
    â€œThey were already dead when they attacked you, Jack.”
    His eyebrows flew up. The Chair continued, “They had been poisoned. Whether they succeeded