Prince Thief by David Tallerman Read Free Book Online Page A

voice had returned to something like normal – except that now it was almost too normal.
    “Do you really?” asked Ludovoco, without much curiosity.
    “Good family. Wealthy. Close to the royal court. Yes, I know your type,” Alvantes repeated. “We’re not so different, you and I.”
    “Hardly a compliment,” Ludovoco observed, “coming from a former provincial captain to a commander of the Crown Guard.”
    “Perhaps. But I did attend the Academy. I’m sure you did too. I was in a duelling circle; who wasn’t? You though, I think you were one of the serious ones. Those who were in it for the blood. Am I right?”
    “That I duelled at the Crown Academy?” said Ludovoco. “That I enjoyed it? Certainly.”
    “Then I challenge you, Commander Ludovoco,” said Alvantes. “By the bonds of the Academy and for the murder of guardsman Pietto Godares. If you have any spark of honour left in you, you’ll fight me now.” Alvantes looked around the room, his gaze taking in faces, weighing them. “Or shame yourself in front of these men.”
    Ludovoco’s lips curled in a tight smile. “I don’t know what you imagine you’ll achieve. Other than a swift and bloody death, that is.”
    “Justice,” said Alvantes. “For the good man you just killed.”
    “Really? If you say so.” Ludovoco reached one hand to his waist and, seemingly without conscious thought, loosened his sword in its scabbard. “And when I win, you’ll tell me what I want to know.”
    “ If you win.”
    Ludovoco stepped down to the lower level. “I’ll be careful to wound you. In the gut, perhaps. It will provide a focus for our conversation.”
    His tone was so casually sadistic that I couldn’t resist a shudder. How long before his attentions turned in my direction? Alvantes, however, seemed unconcerned. In fact, he was looking not at Ludovoco but at me – really looking at me, I realised, for the first time since I’d entered the room. As he saw that I’d caught his gaze, he let it drift to my left, and my own eyes followed automatically. Yet all I could see was an alcove carved into the wall beside the entrance. A fat vase sat there, glazed in yellow and umber, resting upon a pedestal at roughly waist height.
    It only occurred to me then that my guard was no longer holding my arm. He was hovering close, to be sure – but I had both my hands free. And that vase looked heavy.
    Alvantes drew his sword, tapped the flat to his forehead in salute.
    Ludovoco mimicked the gesture with his hand, but contemptuously – a parody. Then he dropped the hand to his waist and flicked his blade loose, raising it in one neat motion and at the same time relaxing into an on guard stance, as though it were all the most natural thing imaginable.
    Alvantes took a step back, squared up. He had none of Ludovoco’s grace. Before it, his one-handedness looked horribly disabling – more than I’d ever have thought it could. I’d seen him fight, seen how little he’d let his injury slow him. This was different, though. If what he’d said were true, Ludovoco was a stone cold killer, trained to hunt out any weakness and use it to demolish his opponent. And one hand against two was a very great weakness indeed.
    Alvantes was many things, but he wasn’t a fool – at least not the kind of fool who would jeopardise the lives of his remaining men to revenge the death of one. Which meant that whatever he had in mind, it was more than a simple duel.
    Or so I hoped. There was hatred enough in Alvantes’s eyes to make me think that he’d really convinced himself he could beat Ludovoco, and maybe his men as well. Ludovoco, meanwhile, was edging in a slow semicircle around the makeshift arena, the faintest of smiles on his lips, the rest of his face dreamily sedate. I thought of a cat toying with its prey – but this was something even worse than that. Ludovoco was taking pleasure in imagining just how he’d play, once the time came.
    It didn’t take long for his