Dragon in Exile - eARC by Steve Miller, Sharon Lee Read Free Book Online Page A

nothing much,” the commander pointed out. “Was he Liaden?”
    “Nah, no! Sleet! What do I gotta do with Liadens? Guy was as local as me.”
    “Now, there’s something useful already. If you cooperate with the Bosses, they might let you off light. Officer Jones?”
    “Commander Liz?”
    “Will you and your partner please escort Mr. Kipler to the Whosegow and see him signed in. Tell the watch officer that he’s in custody of the Council of Bosses.”
    “Yes ma’am,” Tolly said. “OK, Mr. Kipler, let’s go. Turn around.”
    The man in the orange coat hesitated, as if he would argue—or as if he had thought of something else useful to tell the commander. He turned at last, however, shoulders slumping.
    Hazenthull fell in behind, with Tolly ahead and slightly to the left, the prisoner between. And so they left the commander’s office in good order.
    * * *
    They were on the balcony. Neither had felt like moving chairs out, so they were sitting on the floor, companionably hip-to-hip, legs dangling over the inner garden, enjoying a soft breeze that was considerably warmer than the summer air outside the walls. Val Con’s theory was that the tree was influencing the garden temperature, as for years it had influenced its ecosystem. The tree, in Miri’s private opinion, was ’way too fond of meddling with stuff that ought to be outside of a tree’s natural concerns.
    “Commander ven’Rathan counsels us to end the prisoners’ suffering,” Val Con murmured.
    That meant, Miri translated, that Commander ven’Rathan had come down on the side of killing the six remaining prisoners. She had a point; they were dangerous; they were expensive; and their training gave them protection against much that Healers did. Anthora and Natesa had managed to break loose a name or two, and a couple of locations, but that was the extent of the information they’d been able to harvest.
    Though, as far as Val Con was concerned; it wasn’t about the information that could be gotten from the agents.
    It was about the agents, themselves.
    “What do the Healers think?” she asked.
    “They think that the prisoners cannot be restored to their former…selves. They think—because they have seen it happen—that any attempt to forcefully remove training…kills the agent. Horribly.”
    He sighed, and raised his glass for a sip of wine.
    Eventually, he spoke again, his voice expressionless, the way it was when he cared too much about something.
    “The Healers, in a word, believe that continuing to hold the prisoners under such conditions, knowing that they can never be cured, is a cruelty. Master Healer Mithin herself sends to me that she will undertake the…necessary releases. She waits upon the Delms’ Word.”
    Miri had been a soldier. She’d seen executions; she’d been, a couple times, part of a firing squad. There wasn’t much objective evidence supporting the supposition that the prisoners in hand was innocent of any particular crime that could be named. They were a drain on resources, and an unacceptable risk with every breath they drew.
    And, yet…
    If they killed—terminated, released —the prisoners, they weren’t any better than the DoI.
    And that small flaw in the pattern that was Val Con, inside of her head—that would never be mended.
    She sighed, like he’d done, and sipped her wine.
    “Let’s sleep on it,” she said.
    * * *
    “He said he was collectin’ insurance, Boss.”
    Vessa Quill had been among the first to move into Boss Conrad’s turf when the tollbooths were closed. She had immediately set up a bread bakery in a storefront half a block away from the Boss’ house, and proceeded to capture a respectable clientele. Conrad had spoken to her only a few week’s ago, during one of his walks through his turf, and her plans had all been for expansion; hiring another baker, and perhaps branching out into pastries.
    Now, she was angry, her arms crossed over her chest, and her pale face hard. Nor did the