Kingmaker by Rob Preece Read Free Book Online Page B

behind.
    She was implementing her plan when a series of gunshots roared over the high-pitched clank go steel on steel. The bandit immediately in front of her went down, his face ruined by a Glock bullet, and the bandits wavered, then broke.
    Their leader, the man who had talked to them, turned last. The other bandits had used clubs, spears, and long knives. He, in contrast, held a heavy broadsword with fresh blood on it.
    Ellie sprang after him but Arnold beat her to it. He thrust his narrow sword through the man's back.
    "I was going to try to capture him,” Ellie protested. “He may have known something useful."
    "He was a bandit but even he doesn't deserve torture."
    Mark chose that moment to become violently sick and Ellie hurried over to check on him.
    "I killed them, Ellis."
    "They were trying to kill us,” she reminded him. “Your gunshots scared them away."
    "But I killed them."
    "No musket has ever been so small.” Arnold seized the Glock from Mark's shaking hand. “And it fired more than once without being reloaded. This is powerful magic.” He looked at Ellie. “And you are a woman. Which means everything you told my father is a lie."

Chapter 4
    People were trying to put a happy face on it but Moray, the capital of Lubica, was a wartime city. Too many of the beggars were prime-aged males, missing limbs or eyes. Too many of the shops were run by aging women or young children. Those men capable of walking were off at the wars—or hiding.
    The city stank of human excrement, rotten food, and burning wood. A few of the streets were paved with cobbles, but most were mud tracks.
    Behind stone walls that didn't look like they'd been maintained in decades, the town was a mass of closely packed two-story wooden buildings—a firestorm waiting to happen. Only at the very center of town did wood transform to stone. A second wall, older but with much better upkeep, and a wide green area separated the inner city of nobility and church from the common folk.
    Arnold led Ellie and Mark directly to the Bishop's palace near the center of the inner city and left them in the charge of an angry looking priest. Shalla and Jeneen seemed reluctant to see the last of Mark but Arnold had hardly spoken to Ellie since he'd spotted the female shape of her rear when she'd bent over to help Mark.
    The priest watched them for a couple of hours before abruptly, and with no signal that Ellie could detect, rising and demanding they follow him. He led them directly into what turned out to be the bishop's private office.
    The bishop was a lean man of middle years and a sharp nose that quivered when they approached. He didn't look like Ellie's idea of a holy man. He wore the same style of clothes as everyone else, and his bald spot looked to be the result of male hormones rather than a tonsure.
    He squinted at Ellie, then looked to Mark. “I was told one of them was female."
    "I am a woman,” Ellie admitted.
    He peered. “You're sure?"
    "Pretty sure."
    "The Rissel would never allow a woman to learn the way of the sword, or ally with one who had already learned. Thus, you can't be one of them, or in their hire. You can go.” He turned himself and headed toward the rear door.
    That was it? Maybe Ellie should have been relieved that they didn't turn her over to some sort of inquisition, but she wanted answers. Someone had sent her to Earth, presumably to protect her. And someone had sent killers after her parents despite the dimensions that separated this world from Earth.
    "Did Baron Ranolf write that we arrived in his fiefdom by magic?"
    The bishop froze. “By magic."
    "By these stones."
    She reached into her pocket and pulled out the sack of jewels that she'd used to bring herself and Mark across the dimensional gap that separated this world from Earth—and met the priest's staff as she started to yank them out.
    "Slowly,” he warned.
    "Right. Slowly.” If she was going to learn about her past, and her parents’ killers, she was going