Beyond The Shadows by Brent Weeks Read Free Book Online

killed, he wouldn’t even see the Wolf for . . .  well, probably ten years. Then again, if
     Kylar died on this sword, he wouldn’t see the Wolf at all.
    Grimacing, Kylar said, “You tell me, if I promised you that I was going to get something for you, would you want it now or
     in ten years?”
    “If you try now, you’ll die. In ten years, you’ll have a chance.”
    A month ago, Kylar had one goal: to convince his girlfriend Elene that eighteen years as a virgin was quite enough. Then Jarl
     had been murdered while delivering the news that Logan Gyre was trapped in his own dungeon. Kylar’s loyalties to the living
     and the dead had given him two new goals that had cost him the first. He’d abandoned Elene as he’d sworn he wouldn’t in order
     to save Logan and avenge Jarl by killing the Godking. It had cost him an arm, a magical bond to the beautiful disaster named
     Vi Sovari, and an oath to steal Garuwashi’s blade.
    Now all Kylar wanted was to make sure his sacrifices hadn’t been for nothing, and then to go make things right with Elene.
    As if to punish him for his faithlessness, he now imagined her saying, “An oath you only keep when it’s convenient isn’t an
     oath at all.”
    “I can’t put it off,” Kylar said. “Sorry.”
    Garuwashi shrugged. “It is a matter of honor, yes? I understand. That is a—”
    “Pit wyrm!” Feir shouted, leaping to his feet.
    Kylar turned and all he could see was a hole tearing in space ten paces away, and through it, hell and rushing fire-cracked
     skin. In the forest, a big-nosed, big-eared Vürdmeister was laughing.
    8
    Piss. You’re different, Halfman,” Hopper said. He was a tall, lean, white-haired old eunuch who was training Dorian—Halfman, he reminded himself. Hopper handed him a pot.
    “What do you mean?” Halfman asked.
    “Two shits.” Hopper handed Halfman two more chamber pots. Halfman emptied half of the piss into each, swished it around, and
     emptied the pots into an enormous clay jar set in a wicker frame. “A piss for every two shits. The rest of the pisses go last.
     They’re easy. You get a puke or a slippery, you use two pisses on those. No one wants to smell that all day.”
    Halfman thought Hopper wasn’t going to answer him, but after they finished emptying the pots into the enormous clay jars—six
     of them today, it meant one more trip for Halfman than usual—Hopper paused. “I dunno. Look at how you sit all straight.”
    Cursing inwardly, Halfman slouched. He’d been forgetting. Thirty-two years of sitting up straight like a king’s son was dangerous.
     Of course, no one spent as much time with him as Hopper, but if the old eunuch had noticed, what would happen if Zurgah or
     an overseer or a meister or an aetheling did? His half-Feyuri appearance had already isolated him. He was regularly singled
     out for extra chores and beatings for imagined infractions. The nights he didn’t go to bed aching were rare.
    “Don’t forget yourself. Puke—how the girls manage to nick wine is beyond me—if you do, well . . .” Hopper lifted his sandal-clad
     feet one at a time and wiggled his big toes. Those two toes were all he had left. He’d been caught teaching the bored women
     of the harem a dance, he said, and the only reason he’d been let off so easily was because Zurgah liked him, and the dance
     hadn’t involved touching or speaking to the women. Other eunuchs, Hopper said, were killed for less. “Twenty-two years since
     my little dance. Twenty-two years I been with the chamber pots, and I’ll stay with ’em till I die. Now help me with the empties.
     You remember the process?”
    “One clean water rinses ten pisses or four shits.”
    “Bright one, you. Help me rinse the first forty, then you can take pots out.”
    They worked together in silence. Halfman had made no progress finding the woman who would be his wife. The Citadel held two
     separate harems, and several women were kept apart from either one.