Iron and Blood by Auston Habershaw Read Free Book Online

too—­Myreon could tell just by looking at him. In her time, she’d seen a lot of bitter, desperate children gathered in the wretched alleys of Saldor and Galaspin, eyes dull and hard as shale. They were the progeny of ink-­thralls and prostitutes, raised with the lash and taught to expect nothing. Artus hadn’t been like them, though. He had an easy smile and an honest way about him. He spoke like a boy who had been loved once and perhaps still was somewhere. He could have made something of himself, if not for Reldamar’s meddling. The tragedy of it chilled her bones.
    Myreon wondered how many ­people like that—­good, innocent fools—­had their lives ruined by Tyvian Reldamar. She thought of a flower girl in Ihyn who Tyvian had employed as a lookout for his safe house, killed by accident when she threw herself in front of the Defenders advancing to capture him. She remembered a young Akrallian enchanter who had trusted Reldamar with sensitive documents and, as a result, was rotting in an Akrallian dungeon to this day. Everywhere the man went, ­people suffered.
    And yet . . . no . There was no “and yet.” Tyvian Reldamar was a spinefish—­colorful, interesting, even beautiful, but if you touched him you wound up dead or hurt. To him, there was nothing beyond himself. That ring could torture him all it wanted, but it couldn’t torture him into believing in something good or noble. It couldn’t force him to be selfless. Myreon suspected that Tyvian believed that Good and Evil were arbitrary distinctions made by those who wished to control other individuals through the creation of some kind of moral code. To him, they had no more true meaning than any other baseless superstition. He thought of them as the crutches leaned upon by the stupid, the ignorant, and the weak.
    He was wrong, though. She knew what true nobility and true selflessness was. She had seen it in her father. She had even seen it in Lyrelle, Tyvian’s mother—­a woman so selfless that, though she had it in her power to seize her son and bind him to her will, she did not do so. As Magus Lyrelle had often remarked, “Each of us must be allowed to make ourselves as we intend. For others to fashion you in their image—­even with the best of intentions—­is the commission of a grave violation.”
    Myreon dragged her thoughts away from the Reldamars and back to herself for a moment. Her room had no spirit clock, no way to judge time. It was late, at any rate. A storm was rolling in, blotting out the moonlight and dropping a pall of fog over the dirty Freegate streets. Assuming her message had been received, how soon could she expect a rescue attempt? She tried to estimate timetables—­how long it would take to verify the veracity of the rescue message, how long it would take to get a team together, how to sneak it into Freegate without the city watch noticing? “Gods,” she grumbled, “a long time.”
    The best she could hope for, she realized, was for a rescue party to be on the midday spirit engine tomorrow. If she had to do it, she would bring ten men disguised as guild apprentices and journeymen. Watchmen would be all over the spirit-­engine berth, tattlers and all, but if the Defenders scattered to various sections of town while disguised, no one would likely notice or care. Equipment would have to be shipped separately, as parcels—­crates to be delivered to whichever warehouse would serve as a rally point. The operation required to muster them all would take hours. Tomorrow night, then. She could be rescued from here as early as tomorrow night.
    She had the sinking feeling that wouldn’t be soon enough.
    Thump!
    A sound through the wall, muffled but clearly audible. Myreon bolted upright in bed and cocked an ear.
    It had come from Artus’s room. Gods, she thought, the specters are removing the body. She felt ill. Her