Drake, David - Lord of the Isles 6 by Drake David

Author:Drake, David
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf

***

“You’ll be well paid for this,” Garric said to the pair of servants who’d just given him and Liane their outer clothes. He took the rear pair of handles of the handbarrow heaped with used bedding.

The young male servant blinked and swallowed, looking terrified. Garric didn’t suppose the fellow was afraid of anything in particular, but he was obviously concerned that anything so unusual meant some formless disaster was waiting to pounce. The middle-aged female sniffed and said, “I hope I know my duty well enough to do it without thinking your highness needs to pay me extra!”

“Even so,” said Liane, taking the front handles. She unlatched the door and stepped into the hallway, her head bowed.

It was drizzling outside, so the servants’d had an excuse to raise the hoods of their short gray capes. The guards had still checked them when they came down the hall with clean bedding—but they wouldn’t, Garric hoped, bother to do that again when the servants left.

Garric pulled the door to behind him as he followed Liane out. A three-wick lamp hung over the doorway. It was placed to illuminate the faces of people coming from either direction down the hallway, while those beneath it remained in shadow.

The guards were discussing the upcoming wrestling match between a Blood Eagle file closer and a Blaise armsman from Lord Rosen’s regiment. They didn’t pay any attention to the servants leaving the royal apartments and shuffling down the hall.

“What they oughta do,” one of the Blood Eagles said as Garric and Liane rounded the corner at the slow pace of tired servants, “is let us fight the local talent with training swords. That’d show’em what’s what!”

“That’d be the quickest way to start a for-real war, at any rate,” said the ghost of King Carus, shaking his head with a rueful smile. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if Gyganes—”

Carus knew all the Blood Eagles by name, as well as virtually every other soldier in the royal army whose name Garric had heard even once. It was an ability Garric doubted he’d have been able to equal if he’d made it his life’s work.

“— knew that just as well as I do. Of course, we can’t have common soldiers deciding policy for the kingdom, and it’s nice that the ruler isn’t spoiling for a fight either. The way I was when I was king.”

Grinning along with his ancestor, Garric said to Liane in a low voice, “It’s a pretty pass when the fellow who’s supposed to be running the kingdom has to sneak out of his room or he wouldn’t be allowed to go.”

They walked more briskly now that they were out of sight of the guards. These corridors made do with a lamp at each corner, and those would burn down by morning.

“I’m not sure you should go,” said Liane. “My agent certainly thinks the business is dangerous, and he’s

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

not easily alarmed.”

“If there’s wizardry involved...,” Garric said. “And there is, Dipsas is

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.