Shrouded: Heartstone Book One by Frances Pauli Read Free Book Online

home. It probably wouldn’t matter, but the words, “Are you fertile?” were amazingly hard to shake off.

Chapter Five
    D olfan packed light . He tossed his duffle over one shoulder and slipped through the palace wing before dawn lit the Shroud. No flags flew over the plaza. He stepped into the blush morning without his breather, inhaling the pure tang of artificial air. The stones glowed pink as the gasses overhead brightened. He spared them a moment’s inspection before rounding the circle and taking the wide stairs down.
    The canyon walls cut deep into the Shrouded core, the stairs hewn from the natural stone curled against them, shadowed as they dove further from the glowing atmosphere. Dolfan shivered and pulled his wrap higher as he descended to the next level and into almost total night again. The hover pads waited.
    He stood on the lip outside the hangars and looked out across the rest of the crevice. The far end rose into a shallow cleft. There the pink light already reached bottom. Dolfan saw the glint of distant buildings touched by Shroud light. The road wound that direction, past the markets and through housing to the edge of the cleft. There he’d leave the shelter of the depression to travel over the core surface and directly in the lowest layer of the Shroud.
    He tucked his breather into his shirt. In the Shroud, he’d have to wear a full mask and filter. A supply of both hung inside the hangar. He turned his back on the dawn and entered the low building. A bank of screens registered the fluctuations in the core’s magnetic lanes. He paused long enough to reaffirm his route, one he had memorized for most conditions, before snatching his equipment from a slim locker.
    Declination and intensity hovered nicely within standard this morning. He glanced at the screens again on the way back to verify the last transmission. All data current, feed from Base 14 verified. It should be a nice, easy ride to the platform. No variance on the way, and he’d have a leisurely trip to look forward to.
    He unhooked the cables securing the nearest bike and performed a quick, routine inspection before sliding the vehicle along the rails out from under the hangar to the edge of the nearest pad. He hooked the mask onto a cargo fixture, strapped his duffle onto another and tested the weight distribution before keying in his access numbers.
    The pad flared to life, a ring of light indicating the invisible cushion was charged and ready. Dolfan threw one leg over the bike seat and steadied the vehicle with the other. He checked the load weight again and found it balanced, ready to go.
    A shadow stepped in front of him. Dolfan squinted at it for a second and then turned pointedly back to his bike. “Morning, Mofitan. Do you mind?” He flipped the bike’s switch and felt the surge of magnetism pull against the clamps.
    “Where are you going?” Mofitan stopped directly between the hover pad and the bike. The Shroud light cast him into a dark silhouette. “Rushing off so early.”
    “That’s pretty dangerous.” Dolfan raised his hand from the clamps. He’d been damn close to releasing the vehicle. Mofitan took too many risks. “I could have plowed you.”
    “That’s not an answer.”“I’m going back to work, Mof.”
    “To the base.”
    They stared for a moment. Dolfan could see the thoughts calculating in his rival’s head. It wouldn’t do any good to explain that he needed to get the hell away from this mess.
    “And I thought you didn’t want to be king,” Mofitan said. “Silly me.”
    “I don’t.”
    “No. Of course not. You’re just running off to work. You probably didn’t even consider that the brides will arrive at the base or that the Kingmaker is probably with them.”
    “I didn’t.”
    “What could it hurt to see them first?” Mofitan growled outright. “If you don’t want to be king anyway.”
    “Seeing them first hadn’t entered my mind, Mof. But now that you bring it up, what difference