The Mark of Ran by Paul Kearney Read Free Book Online

slime, and there was a ridged scar, but the wound had closed. He felt clear-headed, incredibly thirsty. The room was dark, save for the guttering stump of a single tallow candle by the bed.
    Rol sat up, and immediately a shadow came out of the corner and a cool hand shoved hard against his breastbone, pushing him supine once more. It was the girl, Rowen. He felt his heart thudding under her palm as she held him down. Her hair was hanging dark as a raven’s wing over one eye; the other seemed almost to take on the yellow hue of the candlelight. She was older than he had thought, not a girl but a full-grown woman, his senior by ten years at least. There were shadows under her eyes, fine lines running from the corners of her nose to her mouth. Her lips were dark as a bruise, and on the back of the hand that pinioned him, blue veins stood out stark against the pale skin. Rol was strong for his age, his muscles hardened by work at sea and on land, but he realized that the strength in her slim arm was greater than his own.
    All the same, she seemed to him one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen.
    She took her hand away slowly, as if expecting him to spring up again. Her eyes never left his face. She reached at the side of the bed without looking and took hold of a clay cup. This she put to his lips and tilted backwards. Rol drank cool water greedily, some of it trickling down his chin and neck.
    “Thank you,” he gasped.
    The girl said nothing, but laying aside the cup, she bent over his chest and examined the place where she had wounded him. Her hair brushed Rol’s ribs and stomach, glided across his navel. He felt the cool fingers on his belly for a moment, before she straightened again.
    “Get up,” she said, turning away. “Get dressed.”
    He had become erect while she had been examining him, but she had given no sign. He turned his back on her, cheeks burning, and pulled on his clothes. They lay over a stool by the bed, and had been washed and their rents mended. A needle and thread sat to one side. Rol wondered if the neat stitching was his companion’s work, but thought it better not to ask.
    Now that he could see the room upright, he saw that it was larger than he had supposed, with several doors and alcoves set about the walls. Many shelves and bookcases stood about, all heavy with manuscripts, jars, pots, and leather-bound grimoires as thick as a man’s bicep. A few small round tables sat here and there, and a yard-high brazier red with burning charcoal heated the place well enough to bring the sweat popping out on Rol’s forehead.
    On one empty part of the wall, heavy iron rings had been set into the stone, and from these shackles hung.
    The girl drew back a chair from one of the tables and gestured for him to sit. There was a full pitcher of water thereon, bread, apples, cold mutton, and pickles. Rol wolfed it down with a will. He could barely remember the last time he had eaten a decent meal. Ayd would have scolded him for his table manners, but Ayd was dead now—and what manner of thing had she been anyway?
    He looked at the girl, Rowen, with a new resolve. If there were princesses and queens in the world, he thought, they must look like her. But he had not forgotten the cold violence he had suffered at her hands.
    “Who are you?” he asked, emboldened by the good food in his stomach and the close intimacy of the chamber.
    “Who are you?” she asked in her turn, raising an eyebrow.
    “I …” He hesitated. “I suppose I don’t know, not anymore.”
    She shrugged as though that were answer enough, and taking a poniard from the scabbard at her waist began sharpening it deliberately with a small whetstone.
    “Why did you attack me?”
    She pointed the blade at his face. “You had a knife in your hand and were hammering at Psellos’s door. That is enough, usually. In Ascari the questions come afterward.”
    “Were you trying to kill me?”
    She paused in her work. “Yes.”
    “Psellos