"Sire, in my helpless anger I underestimated your wisdom. Now I see that giving The Assassin sight, if you succeed, will surely cause him to give your wife a most painless death in his gratitude, and of course he will withhold his skars until the operation is—Look sire," Taen interrupted himself, "that man at the corner, he turns his face away, Konrad's spy. Shall I—"
But Jeff was gone to find his wife.
As he held her tightly so she would not see his face he told her the truth; she had the note in her hand; she had guessed it anyway, what little she had not already known. But she didn't begin to cry until he came to the eye operation.
"Don't do that, Jeff. Since I've known you you've never done any complicated eye operations. Even the man with the ripped cornea, you sent him on the rocket back to Earth. If that murderer doesn't see, he'll kill you too. You've got so much to live for."
"Not without you, dimples. Show me your smile. That's doctor's orders. There, that's the way." Jeff forced a grin across his face. "Your hubby's subtler than he looks. Taen's underestimated me and so have you. I may not have performed this operation, but when I was an intern at Johns Hopkins I witnessed several. We'll give The Assassin sight, but by a somewhat roundabout method with rather surprising consequences. Your hubby may look dumb, but he can think more than a couple of moves ahead."
"Taen," he called, then to Kit: "Now you take good care of that son of mine. We're going to have a lot of fun watching him grow into a man."
"Pardon me sire."
"Taen, have you anyone you can absolutely trust?"
"No sire."
"Garth?" The bulky jungle man who had been leaning quietly against the pillar nodded.