The Almighty Dominance novel Chapter 847

"Nina," said Mr. Wolfe weakly. "Give it to me."

"Not until it's tested, Grandpa." She would not look at Alex. "What if there is poison in it?"

"Listen to your granddaughter, old friend," said Master Gregory gently, from the long table in the bright room.

Alex stood up. He kept his voice low, for her alone.

"Nina. Last night you told me you'd kill me if he died. I believed you. Now believe me. Every day that box stays shut, he gets weaker."

For one second, her hand shook.

Then she turned away. "Everybody on this coast tells me something different. I don't know who to believe any more."

"Then at least hang the string in the doorway."

"Hang it, Nina," said the old man.

"Later." She put the lacquer box in a drawer of the long table and turned the key. The red string she dropped in beside it. The key went into her pocket.

Alex said nothing at all.

"Tomorrow night," said Master Gregory, rising, "the masters of the coast meet at the Hunt house. I have asked them there to settle, once and for all, who in Westmere is real and who is a fraud."

He smiled down at Mr. Wolfe. "You will come, old friend. And bring your grandmaster. When the masters have seen what he is, he can give back what he took from this house."

"He took nothing I did not give," said Mr. Wolfe.

"Then you have nothing to fear." The master turned to Alex. "Let the masters see what you are."

"He'll come," said Hector from the door, before anyone else could speak. "Won't you, Grandmaster?"

"I'll come," said Alex.

He turned to go. At the door he heard it behind him: the long, tearing cough, the worst yet, the old man bent double in his chair. When it stopped, there was red on the white handkerchief.

Nina's hand went to the key in her pocket.

And stopped there.

---

The Hunt house stood on the north shore with its face to the bay.

Down on the lawn, under paper lanterns, the long tables were laid for forty. The sea breathed against the rocks below like something asleep. The air smelled of salt and roast meat and money.

Forty masters of the coast had come to Master Gregory's banquet. Old men with beards. Young men with shaved heads. A grey-haired woman with a jade comb. A fat man tapping a little brass compass like a watch.

They sat stiffly, the way cats do when someone has shut them all in one kitchen.

Alex took the last empty seat, at the far end, beside the prawns.

"Those are for the guests," said Tyler Hunt, sliding into the chair opposite.

"I paid fifty million dollars for a shell," said Alex, and took two. "I think I'm owed a prawn."

Halfway down the table sat Mr. Wolfe, wrapped in a rug, grey-faced, between Nina and Hector. Round his neck, on its plain red string, hung Alex's pearl in its twist of bark.

Nina saw Alex looking.

"He made me give him the key before we left," she said stiffly. "He took the string out himself. The pill stays in the drawer until it's tested."

"Good," said Alex. "If he waited for you, he'd already be dead."

Her face went red. She looked away first.

---

When the plates were cleared, Master Gregory rose at the head of the lawn and tapped his glass.

"Friends. Every master on this coast guards his own little corner, while frauds walk in among us and spend old men's money." His eyes slid down to the far end of the table. "Tonight I propose an alliance of the coast's masters. With one head."

"And the head would be you," said the woman with the comb.

"If no one here is stronger."

The fat man pushed back his chair. "I've read the stars for this coast for thirty years. I won't bow to a man from the capital."

Master Gregory walked round to him and laid one ringed finger on his forehead.

The fat man's eyes went wide and empty. He sank down onto his hands and knees on the grass.

"You challenge me with your little tricks?" said the master softly. "Tell me how a dog barks."

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