Gemworld by Jeremy Bullard Read Free Book Online

say... the target presented a conflict of interest.”
    “Reit?!?” Sal hissed incredulously, to which Retzu only cocked a crooked grin. “But why would they assign you your own brother?”
    “Oh, a number of reasons,” the rogue stated scholarly, and proceeded to tick them off on his fingers. “My rate of success, most notably. I’ve never lost a mark. Then there’s my willingness to take on the hard jobs. I’d never turned one down. I also don’t get personally involved. Well, normally, anyway. And there’s the fact that I hold a position of trust with my mark, making him an easy kill. Ball it all together, and you’ve got one dead resistance leader. Until I tell them ‘no’, that is.”
    “Resistance?”
    Retzu quirked a sidelong glance at Sal. “Either you really ain’t from around here, or you’re an exceptional liar.” With that, Retzu fell silent, and nothing Sal did rekindled the conversation. He passed the rest of the day that way, taking turns watching his brooding brother and staring at Sal, as if to puzzle him out, leaving Sal to do the same.
    ***
    Dirty bodies scattered as Reit stalked. Some did so out of self-preservation. Some did so out of deference to his station, as even foreign royalty is royalty all the same. Some did so for… other reasons.
    “Prophets keep you, el ’ Yatza ,” muttered one such dirty body, giving voice to that reason.
    Silently, he cursed Salvatori for his suggestion that the Highest ruled him, but then he swallowed the curse and rebuked himself for it. It wasn’t the man’s words that had set his ire ablaze, nor even stoked it. It was simply one more symptom of the overall problem. The Highest was the problem, as was el ’ Yatza .
    “They do adore you,” Jaren said as he sidled up next to Reit, joining him in his stalking.
    “Fool’s fortune,” Reit grumbled. “They adore the idiotic notion that I’m their savior. They practically see me as messac’el Himself, and all because I’m too stupid to sit down and play the good little peon for the Highest—who is a man just like any other, by the way, flawed, faulty, and dealing life and death with the whimsy of a three-year-old. These people see me as a hero for defying that wretch, as the Hand of the Crafter, when I am nothing of the sort. I’m simply my own man, nothing more.”
    “And yet, it is a rare thing for someone to be their own man,” Jaren argued, however casually. “Even those that follow you are not truly their own men. They are yours.”
    “But I don’t want that!” he hissed. “I didn’t want it in Aitaxen, I didn’t want it in the Mandible, and I don’t want it now! I want them to think for themselves, not to expect me or anybody else to think for them.”
    “I know, my friend, I know,” the emerald said sympathetically. “But you had an uncommon man to father you, as did I, and they kept uncommon allies. We were taught to think for ourselves. Most of these people were not. They’ve lived their entire lives under the tyrannical rule of the Highest. They know nothing more! He has commanded their loyalties, and those of their fathers, for countless millennia. The people of the Norwood Isles were spared that—not all if it, I grant you, but enough that we can understand the value of an opposing opinion. We can value the education that is denied most of the Mainland. We can understand the meaning of true sacrifice—that which is offered, rather than that which is required of us. Before these poor souls can think for themselves, they must have someone to show them how.”
    Reit harrumphed. He couldn’t dispute the truth of his friend’s words, but he had no intention of agreeing with him. “They could follow you, let you teach them,” he offered crossly.
    “Perhaps, but I’m not el ’ Yatza ,” the mage jibed gleefully, his mirth only fed by the curse it elicited.
    ***
    The distant clanking of metal on metal broke Sal from his thoughts. Dinner time already , he thought