Naked Empire

"Richard! The antidote worked! It worked, dear spirits, it worked!"

Richard rose up onto an elbow. "Antidote?" He frowned at the three women around him. "Antidote to what?"

"You were poisoned," Kahlan told him. She aimed a thumb back over her shoulder. "Owen. When he came to us the first time, you gave him a drink. In thanks, he put poison in your waterskin. He intended to poison me with it, too, but only you drank it."

Richard's glare settled on the men at Friedrich's feet, watching them.He nodded his confirmation that it was true, as if he should be commended for it.

"One of those little mistakes," Jennsen said.

Richard puzzled at her. "What?"

"You said that even you made mistakes, and even a little one could cause big trouble. Don't you remember? Cara said you were always making mistakes, especially simple ones, and that's why you need her around."

Jennsen flashed him a teasing smile. "I guess she was right."

Richard didn't correct the story, but said, as he stood, "It just goes to show how you can be taken by surprise by something as simple as that fellow over there."

Kahlan was watching Owen. "I have a suspicion he isn't so simple."

Cara put her arm out for Richard to grab hold of in order to steady himself.

"Cara," he said as he had to sit down on a nearby crate from the wagon, "bring him over here, would you?"

"Gladly," she said as she started across their camp. "Don't forget to tell him about Owen," Cara said to Kahlan.

"Tell me what?"

Kahlan leaned close as she watched Cara haul Owen to his feet. "Owen is pristinely ungifted-like Jennsen."

Richard raked his hair back, trying to make sense of it. "Are you saying that he's also my half brother?"

Kahlan shrugged. "We don't know that; we know only that he's pristinely ungifted." A wrinkle of puzzlement tightened on her brow. "By the way, back at the camp where those men attacked us, you were about to tell me something important you figured out when we were questioning the man that I touched, but you never got the chance."

"Yes"-Richard squinted, trying to recall what the man had told them-"it was about the one he said gave the orders sending him to capture us: Nicholas… Nicholas something."

"The Slide," Kahlan reminded him. "Nicholas the Slide."

"Right. Nicholas told him where to find us-at the eastern edge of the wasteland, heading north. How could he know?"

Kahlan mulled over the question. "Come to think of it, how could he know? We've seen no one, at least no one we were aware of, who could have reported where we were. Even if someone had seen us, by the time they reported our position and Nicholas sent the men, we would have been far from here. Unless Nicholas is close."

"The races," Richard said. "It has to be that he's the one watching us through the races. We've seen no one else. That's the only way anyone could have known where we were. This Nicholas the Slide had to have seen us, to have seen where we were, through those birds that have been shadowing us.

That's how he was able to give our location along with the orders."

Richard rose as the man approached.

"Lord Rahl," Owen said, arms spread in a gesture of relief as he scurried forward, Cara holding a fistful of his coat at his shoulder to keep him reined in. "I'm so relieved you're better. I never meant for the poison to hurt you as it did-and it never would have, had you had the antidote sooner. I tried to get to you sooner-I meant to-I swear I did, but all those men you slaughtered… it wasn't my fault." He added a small smile to the pleading expression he gave Kahlan. "The Mother Confessor knows, she understands."

Kahlan folded her arms as she looked up at Richard from under her frown. "It's our fault, you see, that Owen didn't make it to us sooner with the antidote to the poison. Owen got to our last camp, intending to hand over the antidote to cure you, only to find that we had murdered all those men and then up and left. So, it's not his fault-his intentions were good and he tried; we spoiled his effort. Very inconsiderate of us."

Richard stared, not sure if Kahlan was giving him a sarcastic summation of what Owen had told her, or an accurate portrayal of Owen's excuse, or if his head still wasn't clear.

Richard's mood turned as dark as the thick overcast.

"You poisoned me," he said to Owen, wanting to be sure he had the man's story straight, "and then you brought an antidote to where we were camped, but when you got to that camp, you came across the men who had attacked us and you found we had gone."

"Yes." His cheer that Richard had it right abruptly faded. "Such savagery from the unenlightened is to be expected, of course." Owen's blue eyes filled with tears. "But still, it was so…" He hugged himself and closed his eyes as he rocked his weight from side to side, from one foot to the other. "Nothing is real. Nothing is real. Nothing is real."

Richard seized the man's shirt at his throat and yanked him closer.

"What do you mean, nothing is real?"