The Heir To The North by Steven Poore

Author:Steven Poore [Poore, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grimbold Books, Kristell Ink
Published: 2015-10-22T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Hellea was a city without a soul, Cassia thought.

The days had followed the same pattern since they arrived. Each morning Baum and Meredith disappeared like morning mist into the mazed streets and left her to fend for herself. And each morning she wondered anew how she might be able to conduct her own search for Malessar, every plan collapsing half-built as she considered how little she knew about the warlock and the city. Most of the time she would drift down to the temple markets, careful to avoid the dingy taverns where the guilded storytellers would undoubtedly be looking out for her. Sometimes she would end up along the bustling docks, marvelling at the bright-coloured foreign ships and their outlandish crews.

Either way, she always wound up hungry and miserable, returning to the Old Soak for a bowl of the unlikeable stew that always simmered over the cookfire because she could not afford to buy her own food. Once or twice she considered stealing from one of the market stalls, but she had quickly discovered the city-dwellers were just as vigilant as those in the North, if not more so. She had not been caught yet, but the stallholders had clearly marked her out as trouble. The last one had glared menacingly at her, weighing a stone in his hand, and when she turned to keep out of his reach she heard him call out: “What, you think it grows on trees, boy?”

Cassia had left her robe at the Old Soak, but elected to maintain the rest of her disguise. She had bound her chest to flatten it, and her hair was tucked up under the storyteller’s cap, but without the robe she looked like any of Hellea’s scavenging urchins. She thought she might at least gain sympathy from that quarter, but a lack of trust must have been passed down from one generation to the next, and when she hung around the fringes of the gangs they cold-shouldered her, sneering with suspicion. It was worse than anywhere in the North had ever been.

The only people who had any time for her were Meredith and the drunkard, Arca. Her feelings for the Heir to the North unsettled her to the point of distraction, and she was sure Meredith could see that for himself – all hells, even a lump of rock would be able to see the effect he had upon her! Outside of their training bouts, she tried to avoid him as much as possible. That left only Arca who, she was certain, had latched onto her simply because she helped him stagger back to the Old Soak that one night.

But the old man was harmless enough, and over the course of a few days she grew used to his company, and then actually began to seek him out. Usually he would be on the temple steps where she first met him, content to watch the city’s routines play out before him. What manner of company he provided depended on how successful he had been during the early morning.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.