These Fallen Swords by Ryan Kirk

Author:Ryan Kirk [Kirk, Ryan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781953692405
Publisher: Waterstone Media
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

15

Radyn stared at the tavern Aria’s address had led him to and cursed himself for his foolishness. Experience had already taught him that following Aria too closely would only get him in trouble, but it didn’t seem to stop him from making the same mistake over and over. Offhand, he could think of three or four better uses of his time, from reading some of the histories Elora had assigned to him to training some of her techniques he hadn’t yet mastered.

Somehow, they all became meaningless as soon as Aria requested that he do something for her.

He understood his reasons, but he didn’t like the fact that she held him in such effortless thrall. It spoke poorly of his own discipline. If he was going to become the strongest Sword Firestone had ever seen, he couldn’t afford to be so easily swayed.

The tavern was in a section of Firestone he rarely walked through. He wasn’t a complete stranger, of course. Part of Elora’s training demanded that he become exquisitely familiar with the city. Such study was an outgrowth of her belief that it was vitally important to be aware of one’s surroundings at all times, and that meant knowing the city he lived in as well as he knew the tenets of the clan. When he’d been an initiate, she’d ordered him to spend an hour every night wandering parts of the city he didn’t know.

So he’d been through here, though not for some time. Not because there was anything wrong with it but because his own haunts were closer to the academy and closer to the surface. All the taverns in Firestone served the same ale, so there wasn’t any point in wandering far beyond the steel doors of the academy. This market was nearly a perfect mirror of the market he frequented, at least in terms of design. It was a large open space, two levels high, with several buildings within. Most of the shops offered the necessities - clothes, soap, and the like. A small teahouse sat near the edge of the market, an island of calm in the otherwise active space.

Unfortunately, his destination was the tavern that sat at the very heart of the market. From the outside, it didn’t seem like anything special, but a steady flow of people went in and out the front door, far more than any other shop in the market. Far more than went in and out of the one closest to the academy, for that matter.

Radyn watched for a few minutes. Aria had said nothing about a specific time, and a glance through the windows revealed nothing out of the ordinary. He wandered around the building, noting the entrances, exits, and windows. After one slow circle around the building, he stopped and frowned. He walked around again, then nodded to himself.

The tavern had a back room, which wasn’t immediately obvious from his glance through the front windows. It had to be a decent-sized space, but there were no windows to give him a sense of what was within.

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