The Broken Eye by Brent Weeks Read Free Book Online Page A

hide for so long. But he felt nothing. He should feel something, shouldn’t he?
    “The sea she sends me mysteries to invigorate,” Gunner said.
    Gavin was sure, this time, that Gunner had used the wrong word on purpose. “You’re quite an invigorator. No wonder you’re Ceres’s favorite.”
    Gunner spat into the water, but Gavin could tell he was pleased. “You’re Dazen ? Straight bullseye?”
    “I been shootin’ in the dark so long I ain’t sure what I am, now. I was Dazen, though. Straight shootin’.” Gavin wasn’t sure why he did that, dropping into patter when he spoke with others who did so. He’d always done it, though, copying accents and odd phrasing when he spent too long in any one place.
    “You say this because you know Gunner worked for Dazen,” Gunner said. “You’re lying. Hoping to edge with me.”
    Hoping to edge?—oh, hoping to gain an edge. “Sure. And before I killed my brother, he told me your birth name was Uluch Assan. You were so very important to him, those were his last words.”
    Gunner’s eyes glittered dangerously. “Not impossible for a Prism to learn an old name.”
    “Before you agreed to work for me—me Dazen—all those years ago, you told me lies about how you killed that sea demon as we sat in the slaves’ quarters drinking that foul peach liquor. And when you professed to believe that there was no such thing as superviolet luxin, we played a little game with a feather to quell your doubts.”
    A worried look crossed the pirate captain’s face. “Took Gunner three shots to hit that damned dancing feather. Was an eagle feather, though, not quail.”
    There was no point correcting him, so Gavin continued, “I feared I’d made you so furious that you wouldn’t work for me. I let you hit it … on the sixth shot, ya damned liar.”
    Gunner went rigid. Shit. The man told lies to aggrandize himself so often, he might think that his version was the truth. Not the battle to pick, Gavin. Gunner strode away suddenly, heading to midship.
    Gavin stayed where he was, on his aching knees. It was bad stretching now, he was certain of it. The two sailors who’d accompanied him looked confused as to what they were expected to do.
    “Free his grabbies!” Gunner shouted. He was rummaging in a barrel.
    The sailors unlocked the manacles, but kept Gavin on his knees.
    Gunner grabbed something from a barrel and threw it at Gavin. He bobbled it in his bandaged, stiff hands, and it bounced on the deck. A sailor fetched it and gave it back to him. A big, wrinkled apple.
    “Take him to the beakhead,” Gunner said. “Watch him close as Aborneans groats. A Guile in a corner is a sea demon in your washtub.”
    Here I didn’t think you bathed. Gavin didn’t say it, though. There was little to be gained by mocking his captor, his master, and much else to be retained. Teeth, for instance.
    The sailors pulled him to his feet and pulled to him to the prow. They turned him around, forced him to his knees again. Gunner was forty paces away, at the farthest point astern. He held a gleaming white musket. Or a musket-sword? It had a single blade with twin black whorls crisscrossing up the blade, bracketing shining jewels. The blade had a small musket inset in much of the spine except for the last hand’s breadth, which was pure blade.
    Gavin had a dim recollection of the thing, but it slipped away from him. Something about that night, and a clash with his father and Grinwoody and Kip. He had suffered great violence before and lost hours of time to it, and he’d certainly known men in the war who’d lost memories of injuries. But there was something about Gunner fishing him out of the waves, and then beating him with the flat of the blade? It could only be that. Gavin was still recovering from his bruises, but he didn’t have any stab wounds or he probably would be dead by now.
    Still, what a terrible idea. To make a musket barrel thick enough to deal with the power of exploding powder