Geryn's head came up straight again. "A war," he said. "They made me start the—"
"No one made you do anything," Rara said. "And you didn't start the war."
"Are you sure?" he asked. "No. You can't be sure. No one can. Nobody...."
"Will you please try to relax," Rara repeated, tucking at the blanket.
Geryn relaxed. It went all through his body, starting at his hands. The stiff shoulders dropped a little, his head fell forward, the wall of muscle quivering across his stomach loosened, the back bent; and that frail fist of strength that had jarred life through his tautened body for seventy years, shaking inside his chest, it too relaxed. Then it stopped. Geryn crumpled onto the floor.
The shifting body pulled Rara down with him. Unaware that he was dead, she was trying to get him back into the chair, when the helicopter blades got very loud.
She looked up to see the window darken with a metal shadow. "Good lord," she breathed. Then the glass shattered.
She screamed, careened around the table, and fled through the door, slamming it behind her.
Over the flexible metal ramp that hooked onto the window sill two men entered the room. Fire-blades poised, they walked to the crumpled body, lifted it between them, and carried it back to the window. Their arm bands showed the royal insignia of the palace guards.