Dragon Venom (Obsidian Chronicles Book 3) by Lawrence Watt-Evans Read Free Book Online Page A

would not ordinarily seek out his company, it would seem I find him less aggravating than do you," Black remarked, as the two men walked, hunched against the cold and damp, toward the now-badly-misnamed New Inn. Arlian had bought a new plume for his hat in Ethinior, but he had removed the feather before debarking and left it in the wagon rather than let the foul weather ruin it; with that gone, and his cloak pulled tightly about him, he was, like his companion, wrapped in black from head to toe.
    "When he is not trying to convince me to spare a few dragons, he talks of little but the foolish power games in Manfort!" Arlian protested.
    "I can think of nothing more wearisome."
    "Ah, he is obsessed," Black said, "just as you are. And the conflict lies in the simple fact that you are obsessed with different things."
    "And if this is true, and an unshared obsession is as wearisome for you as for me, then how can you tolerate either of us?"
    "Oh, easily—I am not obsessed, but I take an interest in both his obsession and your own. More importantly, though, I simply do not listen much of the time. I have learned to give the appearance of polite attention while in truth I'm remembering what I had for supper the night before, or what Brook told me on our wedding night, or some other unrelated matter."
    "You always listen," Arlian said. "You remember every word spoken within a hundred yards of your ears, I swear it!"
    "I hear every word, and I remember those I think might prove important, but I do not listen. It's a useful technique."
    "You must teach it to me someday."
    "Perhaps I will, when you are sufficiently free of your own obses-sions to learn it."
    And then they were at the door of the inn; Black swung open the unlocked door, and as Arlian stepped in his attention focused on business, and on getting warm and dry for a time.
    A Debatable Homecoming
    7
    A Debatable Homecoming
    They reached Manfort late the following morning, passing unnoticed through the city gates; Arlian observed that the iron-framed catapults on the city ramparts appeared fully crewed, and were loaded with obsidian-tipped missiles, despite the lingering chill in the air.
    The wagon rolled up the stone-paved, rain-drenched streets to the Upper City, where the city's nobility had built their mansions and palaces. The sun was peeking through thinning clouds, almost directly overhead, when Black and Arlian pulled up at the entrance to the Grey House.
    Most of the homes of the lords and ladies of Manfort were grand edifices of wood and stone and glass and plaster, with broad windows and tidy lawns; the Grey House, however, had been built eight centuries ago, in the days of the Man-Dragon Wars, and resembled a fortress more than a palace. Its windows were few and narrow, its yards and courts entirely paved with gray stone; its every exposed surface was smoke-blackened stone or dark, heavy tile. Wood and thatch and green-ery could burn when dragonfire splashed across the city, so the Grey House had none visible; even the exterior doors were sheathed in metal.
    Arlian would not have chosen so forbidding an edifice as his home, but he had inherited this one from the late Lord Enziet—his sworn enemy who had nonetheless left Arlian all his worldly possessions, apparently in the belief that his foe could make better use of them than any of his surviving allies.
    When he had first come to Manfort in his guise as the wealthy Lord Obsidian, Arlian had made a point of buying the most ostentatious housing available; he had lived for some time in the Old Palace, a former home of the Dukes of Manfort—but the Old Palace had been
    destroyed by fire, and Arlian had been left with the Grey House as his only residence in the city. He spent so little time in Manfort that he saw no point in replacing it with a more pleasant abode.
    Arlian swung himself down from the wagon on one side while Black dismounted from the other; together they marched up to the door, but then Arlian had to