Into The Shattered City: The Farshore Chronicles, Book 2 by Justin Fike

Author:Justin Fike [Fike, Justin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-07-18T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

There's a story told around every seedy tavern fire and thieves' squat in Byzantium; the legend of a man named Altrin. The story goes that he was so handsome the emperor's favored wife took one look at him in the market square and fell head-over-stupid in love. She had him smuggled into her chambers where they remained for an entire week of passion. Finally, while the empress snored in her sleep and drooled on her pillow (that part is very important and must never be skipped over) Altrin looted her room of every last gemstone and gold-plated bauble he could squeeze into two sacks and escaped out the window with enough wealth to buy himself a minor dukedom on the river Nila and live out his days in fabulous luxury. "I made out like Altrin," is the ultimate boast among thieves to this day.

I had never believed in the tale. No one really did. It was just a nice story that lightfingers and alley bruisers told each other over a thin ale when they'd had a dry run and wanted to dream of something better. How much wealth could someone really scrounge from a bedroom, anyway? Now I knew for a fact that even if Altrin's tale wasn't true, it absolutely could have been.

I stood inside a piece of jewelry disguised as a room. A huge four-poster bed anchored the space, draped in blue silk, white linen, and strings of diamonds. A large vanity made of white birch stood beside the bed. The handle of every drawer was a sapphire the size of a swallow's egg, and the mirror itself was so perfectly clear that every noblewoman in Byzantium would have murdered her husband to possess it.

The ceiling was set with a mosaic of sapphire, green jade, opal, and topaz in intricate spiraling patterns. The carpet was a spotless white so rich and thick that I actually felt bad about walking on it with my road-worn boots. It was woven through with silver thread that traced out the same design of the great tree I'd seen on the door. I caught sight of a row of tall dressers made of dark ebony and diamond inlaid inside a closet to my left, although it felt strange to call it a closet when it was three times the size of my room in the temple.

Jewels, precious metals, and rich fabrics sparkled on every surface, and yet as much as I hated the very idea of a room like this existing anywhere in the world, I honestly couldn't call its design anything but perfect. The colors, angles, fabrics, and textures all complimented and contrasted one another so precisely that it might as well have been designed by Kressida Bright-Weaver herself. Even the candles burned merrily in wall sconces set with diamonds and sapphires that caught their warm glow and spread it to every corner of the room.

And that's when I got a grip and started feeling nervous. The room was lit by several dozen candles, none of which had begun to show so much as a single drip of wax.

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