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

match for anyone looking for trouble.” Halice sounded equal to the prospect. “Peyt and his mob will step up smart enough if it’s a choice between fighting back or having your skull split and I’ve told D’Alsennin I’ll be drilling any colony lads bright enough to swing a sword without braining themselves.”
    I knew for a fact Ryshad wasn’t keen on that idea, concerned that the lads would find their loyalties split between D’Alsennin and the mercenary life. Well, that wasn’t my problem, and anyway, I had more serious concerns. “What about Elietimm magic? Swords don’t do so well against that.”
    “Arrows and crossbow bolts kill an enchanter just as dead as anyone else.” Halice looked out towards the distant ocean. “I can’t see Guinalle and young Allin letting their black ships sneak up unnoticed. Let’s hope for the best while we plan for the worst. With Saedrin’s grace, all those ships will have to do is surveying.”
    Halice turned to follow the track leading upstream towards Temar’s newly finished residence. A woman passed us, full skirts sweeping the grass, decorous kerchief around her head.
    I looked after her. “That’s Catrice’s mother.” The woman hailed one of the boats busy about the placid waters of the river.
    “Off to see Guinalle, I’d say. Let’s see what the demoiselle reckons to all this before we corner D’Alsennin.” Halice used her fingers to blow a piercing whistle and a mercenary called Larn promptly turned his boat towards us. A native of Ensaimin’s lakeland, he was currently earning his bread ferrying up and down the river.
    “Want me to wait?” He showed Halice the deference of all sensible mercenaries.
    She shook her head. “We’ll see ourselves back.”
    I got carefully into the boat, bigger than the cockleshell skittering across the estuary with Catrice’s mother but still none too secure to my mind.
    “You really should learn to swim,” commented Halice.
    I stuck my tongue out at her. “It’s hardly a necessary skill for a travelling gambler.” Vanam is as far away from any ocean as it’s possible to get in the erstwhile provinces of the Tormalin Empire.
    Sitting, I took an unobtrusive grip on the thwart. As Larn leaned into his oars I studied the far bank of the river. The all-entangling vegetation had died back from the stone ruins over the winter and had yet to reclaim them. That laid all the more starkly bare the decay of Kellarin’s first colony, founded generations before Vithrancel was even thought of.
    More than attitudes and priorities separated the colonists and the mercenaries. Temar D’Alsennin and his hopeful followers had crossed the ocean an astonishing thirty generations ago, turning their backs on the dying days of Tormalin’s Old Empire. From their wistful recollections, all had seemed paradise for the first couple of years but then they’d suffered the first fatal onslaught of the Elietimm, ancestors of those same Ice Islanders who’d plagued both sides of the ocean for the past few years. Those early settlers who hadn’t been slaughtered fled upriver, hiding themselves in caves discovered while prospecting for metals. Ancient magic had hidden them all in a deathless sleep until the curiosity and connivance of the Archmage had unearthed the incredible truth, lost for so many years thanks to the Chaos that followed the death of Nemith the Last.
    I’d enjoyed witnessing the discomfiture of Hadrumal’s conceited wizards when the ancient magic of Tormalin had proved to be nothing to do with their own mastery of air, earth, fire and water. I’d been intrigued to discover the same aetheric enchantments could be worked through those ancient songs of the Forest Folk, whose blood ran in my veins thanks to my wandering father’s fancy alighting on my maidservant mother. On the other side of the coin, that Artifice had been able to lock those colonists helpless and deathless in the shades between this world and the next still