The Assassin's Edge (Einarinn 5) by Juliet E. McKenna Read Free Book Online

accommodate growing families. There was plenty of room for such expansion and every plot had been liberally measured to allow for a pigsty and a hencoop as well as a sizeable kitchen garden. Not that such bounty was much use to me who’d grown up in a city where fruit and vegetables arrived on costermongers’ carts.
    “You want to be getting your plants in,” Halice observed. For all her years with a sword at her side, she’d grown up a smallholder’s daughter in that border district where the hilly land’s too poor for Lescar, Caladhria or Dalasor to be bothered who claims it.
    “Getting dirt under my fingernails?” I scoffed. “I’ll see who’s willing to wager some sweat. A day digging my vegetable patch should make a decent stake for someone.” Someone who’d want coin to spend when the first ships arrived.
    Goats were tethered on the common grazing cut by tracks already taking on the breadth and permanence of roads. We passed a lad struggling to get a peg in the ground while his beast prodded him with malevolent horns. “Peyt’s less use than that billy,” I observed, “and he smells worse. Can’t you just ship him back to Tormalin?”
    Halice laughed. “Peyt could have his uses. Getting between me and some Ice Islander for one.”
    The chill that made me shiver had nothing to do with the fluffy white clouds fleeting across the sun. “We’ve none too many decent fighters left, not since Arest took his troop to Lescar.” I wondered which of the continuously warring dukes had the gold and good fortune to secure his services.
    “We’ll see familiar faces back before the sailing season’s half done.” Halice was unconcerned. “Allin tells me there’s been camp fever all over Lescar through the latter half of winter.”
    “Lessay should be smart enough to get clear of that.” But Arest’s lieutenant had still opted to leave last summer. Land may be valuable, he’d said over a farewell flagon, and granted, it can’t be stolen or tarnished, but it’s cursed difficult to spend a field on drink or a willing whore. I couldn’t argue with that.
    Genial, Halice swapped pleasantries with toiling colonists busy in burgeoning gardens and met sundry acquaintances bustling about their errands. Village life was what she’d grown up with, everyone living in each other’s pockets. I picked pockets when pressed into a tight corner and moved on swiftly. I’d been raised as a Vanam servant’s daughter in the midst of that busiest of cities where my mother kept herself to herself and not just to avoid the pitying glances of those inclined to patronise an unwed woman with a minstrel’s by-blow at her skirts.
    I smiled and chatted but still found it unsettling to be so readily recognised by folk I barely considered neighbours. After half a lifetime making sure I went unremarked, I found this an unwelcome consequence of living with Ryshad. He’d helped half these people with something to do with their building and had dealings with the rest in his unofficial capacity as Temar D’Alsennin’s second in command. I’d yet to find a subtle way of letting these people know that gave them no claim on me.
    Eventually we reached the wide river curling through the broad fertile plain between the hills and the sea. Indistinct in the mouth of the spreading estuary, I saw the solid bulk of the Eryngo , Kellarin’s biggest ship, riding secure at anchor as the crew made ready for their first ocean voyage, just as soon as the holds were full with goods to raise Kellarin’s credit back home. Closer to, the bare ribs of half-built ships poked above tidal docks hacked out of the mud the year before.
    Halice’s gaze followed mine. “Our own caravels should be exploring the coasts before the last half of summer.”
    “Do you think the Elietimm will try their luck this year?” I didn’t mind letting her hear my apprehension. “They’re not dogs, to take a lesson from the whipping we gave them.”
    “We’ll be a