The Kingless Warrior (The Tabard Cain Saga: Book 1) by Jeff Ambrose

Author:Jeff Ambrose
Language: eng
Format: epub

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The men didn’t know how to play Rogue’s Hand, but they knew how to keep him confined to the dining hall. When he tried to leave, they stood in front of him, their hands loose at their sides, blocking the door he wanted to open or the corridor he wanted to go down. They never told him where he could or couldn’t go. They never asked him to stop being so damn curious. They never uttered a word. They only blocked his way.

Accepting he was confined to the dining hall, Tabard didn’t force the issue. He found a round table near a window and began the long wait until midnight.

The window looked out over an empty courtyard. Tuffs of grass grew sporadically. Large blue-and-white pots sat against the far wall that formed the outer barricade between the Guild and the outside world. The pots were empty and caked with filth. The courtyard wasn’t much to look at. But he could feel the fresh air on his face and smell the nearby ocean. The hard, stiff-backed chair became uncomfortable as the shadows in the courtyard stretched and lengthened.

“Why has fate done this to me?” Tabard said.

A memory came to him, a memory of the training trials he went through under the instruction of Shara Kago. They were meant to test his resolve. Remember, the man had said, that there is a way out, that you are always free to end it, that at no time are you compelled to finish the trial you begin. Whatever crucible Tabard encountered during his time with Shara Kago—whether it was going days without sleep, weeks without food, or his hours of training against the phantom warriors the old man conjured—all were crucibles that had a way out. Tabard had both accepted and lived through these crucibles—in freedom.

Was it still true? Was he still acting in freedom?

At each moment since receiving the dream, every action he’d taken had been his own. He had decided to leave Aric Isenfeld and come to this city. When he heard Khari’s screams, he had decided to save her. He had searched for the hidden door. He had entered it. And even though it felt like he’d been held within the Dhandari Guild against his will, he had not tried to escape. And only two guarded him. What were two against him?

His thoughts changed. He pondered the story he’d heard so often from his grandmother. How his own mother had killed herself, sliced open her throat and let her blood spill upon him, covering him, staining him. He remembered his grandmother’s words. You are a curse, boy. A curse! You’re a walking disaster, a sin-child weighed down with the guilt of his parents. You are perverted. Sick. Diseased.

He wondered, could a cursed man have such freedom?

His thoughts changed yet again. He remembered his hands red from the blood of his wife. He remembered her torn stomach, her ripped-open womb. He remembered hearing the dying cries of the child—his child—who had killed his beloved Yoana.

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