2: Servants of the Crossed Arrows by Ginn Hale Read Free Book Online Page A

wafer and the cheese tasted like thick slabs of unsalted butter.
    Once his stomach no longer hurt, John didn’t really feel the desire to eat more. Laurie and Bill seemed to be having the same problem. Bill chewed on a piece of bread with kind of expression that he normally reserved for tricky math problems. Laurie’s plate was only half empty, but she was already cutting pieces of her meal into smaller and smaller bits as if she hoped to reach the atomic level and render them invisible free-floating particles.
    Lady Bousim idly sipped from her bowl. Then she turned to the young woman on her right.
    “Inholima, my dear, I have just realized that we have no more daru’sira to offer to our guests. Won’t you go to my chambers and find my jars of tea so that we can make a little more?”
    There was a momentary pause before the girl responded and John thought that she might refuse. Then she nodded and stood.
    “Do be quick, my dear.” Lady Bousim smiled at her as she left the room. The moment the girl closed the door behind her, the smile evaporated from the lady’s face.
    “Ohbi.” She looked to the girl on her left but said nothing more. Instantly, the girl sprang to her feet and crept across the room to the door. She knelt down and, muting the slight creak of the doorknob with her hands, opened the door and peeked out.
    John, Laurie, and Bill all watched her in silence.
    She closed the door and rushed back to her seat beside Lady Bousim.
    “She’s out of hearing,” Ohbi whispered.
    “Very good,” the lady said. “You hid the teas?”
    “Yes, Gaunvur.” The girl beamed.
    The lady looked straight at John.
    “The girl, Inholima, is my husband’s spy. You must never trust her.”
    “All right.” John didn’t know what else to say. Whatever was going on in this household was already beyond him.
    “Tell your companions this,” the lady said to him.
    “What do you mean?”
    The lady leaned forward over the table, her dark eyes fixed upon John’s face.
    “I know what you are. I know that you speak the Hell-Tongue   of the Eastern Kingdom. I had my servant boy, Bati’kohl, listen to you when you thought that you were alone in the bath. Tell them in your own language that they must trust none of my servants but Ohbi and Bati’kohl. Any of the rest will see them burned at the hands of the Payshmura.” She all but spat the name of the priesthood.
    John hesitated, suspicious that this might be some kind of trick to uncover them. But he couldn’t see how he could make it worse since she already knew that they didn’t speak Basawar. The genuine intensity in Lady Bousim’s expression made him want to believe her.
    He turned to Bill and Laurie and explained what the lady had said.
    “We don’t have much time to talk,” Lady Bousim continued the moment John had finished, “but you must know that I am your friend.”
    “Thank you,” John replied, “but why would you want to help us?”
    “Because my great-grandmother was from the Kingdom of the East. She came here when she was just a child, before the Payshmura called down the Rifter from Nayeshi and had him tear that beautiful land to shreds.” Her small hands tapped nervously over the porcelain bowl, clicking the silver chains against its surface.
    John realized with some relief that the Lady Bousim did not, in fact, know who they were after all. He, Bill, and Laurie weren’t from a lost Kingdom of the East. They weren’t even from this planet. Ravishan had said that the Basawar name of their world was Nayeshi. Apparently, the Rifter was called from the same place.
    “My great-grandmother knew spells,” Lady Bousim went on in a quick whisper. “She could call fire and bind the waters. She was a proud, beautiful woman—a free woman. Her hair was golden like yours. Only a little of her blood flows in me. I don’t know her words of power. I speak only Basawar. I bow before the Basawar god in his temple and my hands are chained with Basawar wedding