A Dance of Cloaks by David Dalglish Read Free Book Online Page B

his traps are within its halls.”
    Haern leaned his head against a branch and closed his eyes.
    “Don’t let me fall,” he said. “Please?”
    “Sleep if you must,” she said, reattaching her belt. “I’ll keep us safe.”
    Several hours passed. If she had any doubt to the boy’s identity, the tenacity of the soldiers’ search erased them. Carefully she pushed the blonde hair off his face and looked at his soft features.
    There was no doubt he was Aaron Felhorn, and by his actions and his skill, he was most certainly his father’s son.
    When the sun finally began to creep above the city walls, Kayla nudged him awake. He snapped his eyes open and stared at her without a word. It was as if now the danger was passed, he had grown inward and shy.
    “Come, Aaron,” she said. “Let us get you home.”
    “Haern,” he said, his voice just above a whisper. “Call me Haern.”
    “Why?” Kayla asked. “I know who you are; there is no need for pretenses.”
    “Because when I am Haern…” He stopped and looked away. “When I am him, he is everything I am not.”
    She wasn’t sure she understood, but she had a lot more pressing things to worry about than what name the Felhorn whelp wanted to be called.
    “Should we head west?” she asked. He nodded. “I thought so, but we have a slight problem. How do we get over the gate?”
    He didn’t know. It seemed when the hounds were at his heel, he was a fountain of ideas, but when things quieted down, the fountain ran dry. She almost smacked him upside the head and threatened to cut his throat if he didn’t produce an idea, but the thought was so absurd she laughed.
    “I guess we wait,” Kayla said. Her stomach was rumbling, and she badly wanted someone to look at Aaron’s knee…Haern’s knee, she corrected. When she glanced about, she had little faith in the tree’s cover once the sun reached its fullest. If discovered, she would probably wish for the comfort of the noose. Keenan’s cruelty was legendary throughout not just Veldaren but all of Dezrel. Inside his compound, he ruled, not the king.
    “What if someone else opens the gate?” Haern whispered. “Maybe we can run through.”
    “Maybe,” she said absently. Maybe if whoever it was didn’t notice them hiding in the tree. Maybe if they weren’t stopped by guards on their frantic dash to the street. Maybe if archers located in windows didn’t feather them dead. If they were to do something, she realized, she needed to do it before the rest of the estate began their daily routines. If spotted, they didn’t have a beggar’s chance of convincing anyone they weren’t pawns of the thief guilds, sent to kill yet another lackey of the Trifect.
    Kayla looked to Haern and held in a smile. Maybe if they were found, the boy might reveal another amazing skill. The kid could pull out nails with a thin knife and vault over fences like a mummer’s monkey. Who knew what he could do when cornered behind a locked gate.
    Locked?
    “Haern, look at me,” she said. “Can you pick a lock? Not some apprentice’s creation, I mean a true smith’s lock. I’ve never had the fingers for it, but could you?”
    He looked away from her, angling his head so the sun no longer reached through the leaves to light his face. In the shadows, he seemed to grow more confident.
    “Your daggers are thin, and I could try. I’d need something else, though, something even thinner.”
    She handed him a dagger, then reached into her belt and pulled out a small spyglass. She used it when she needed to be absolutely certain who a person was, when guesswork and reliance on body structure, walk, and clothing would not be enough…or when naming the wrong name could get her killed by all parties involved.
    The spyglass wasn’t what she wanted, though. What she wanted was the cord of wire wrapped around the middle to reinforce the fragile creation. Haern saw and nodded happily. He snatched the spyglass from her hands, unwound the wire,