The Misbegotten (An Assassin's Blade Book 1) by Justin DePaoli Read Free Book Online

skin of your throat and raw your voice with a single screech. It was, in fact, the sort of wail that you’d expect to make if Death jumped out of the bushes late at night.
    “Apologies,” I coughed, “wrong house.” I promptly turned, walked out and closed the door.
    If I didn’t have every bloody farmer looking at me before, I sure did now. Most had an angry look to them, the kind that foreigners often receive after accidentally eviscerating cultural morals when visiting another kingdom, and just before they get mauled to death by an angry mob.
    A younger man nearby, however, was grinning.
    “I’m looking for someone,” I told him. “Goes by Rivon. Rather short, whitish-gray hair. Has a great fondness for roosters.”
    The man flashed me a crooked grin. “Yeah, yeah, the rooster keeper.”
    The rooster keeper?
    “Up there on the Gleam,” he explained. “Can’t miss ’im, got a little home with some fencin’ around it and ’bout twenty roosters. Plenty of fat hens too. Lots of eggs.”
    I thanked the man and hurried off to the second plateau, which was affectionately known as the Gleam.
    The Gleam is where you went to get your fill of entertainment and cleanliness, but only if you were wealthy enough. Up here were enormous bathhouses with water that ranged from lukewarm to just a smidgen under a rolling boil. I used to anticipate relaxing in them before Braddock barred me from his kingdom. They shared the plateau with a theater, archery competitions, dirt rings for wrestling, horseshoe tracks, hammer-throwing events, and, apparently, a rooster coop.
    Something strange caught my eye as I climbed up to the Gleam. The third plateau of Erior, where the keep was situated, bled out in a mishmash of crimson tents. Faint outlines of soldiers — hundreds and perhaps thousands — crowded amongst the tents, like a platoon that’d been mobilized for war. I’d have to ask my brother about this.
    Near the far edge of the Gleam stood a triangular building with a roof that split into two sweeping panels anchored into the ground. As I approached, I was reprimanded by a symphony of angry crowing. In a wire pen that must’ve been thirty feet long, hens and roosters shuffled about, pushing their beaks up against the fence curiously. Or perhaps threateningly.
    I knocked on the peeling cedar door of the house and waited. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice.
    An urgent pitter-pattering of feet droned from inside.
    “One moment, please,” a breathless voice called out. “Just one moment.”
    “An old friend is here to see you,” I said.
    “Yes, yes,” he said automatically. “One moment, please. ”
    The door creaked open, and an arm swung through, followed by a shoulder, and then a leg. Rivon Eyrie squeezed the rest of his tall, unwieldy self through the tight space like a kitten beneath a door frame. He quickly shut the door behind him, heaved a heavy breath and smiled uneasily, like a murderer hoping a pair of inquisitive guards standing before him hadn’t seen the trail of blood leading into the kitchen.
    He scratched the salty bristles on his face and poked a headful of silver hair forward in surprise. “Astul?”
    His anxious smile twisted into one of joy, scrunching up all the wrinkles on his acorn face. He swung a birdlike arm behind my back and embraced me.
    “Six years!” he said, taking me by the shoulders and probing me from head to toe with his eyes. “I’d say they’d been kind to you, but you look worn, old boy.”
    “Hunting down a king slayer will do that to you.”
    “A king slayer?”
    “Let’s go inside and I’ll tell you all about it. And you can tell me how Rivon Eyrie went from a Rot to the rooster keeper of Erior.”
    His eyes swung side to side vigilantly, then he opened the door. “After you,” he said.
    He framed the doorway, forcing me to go around him. Soon as I stepped inside, he was at my heels.
    He kicked the door shut and slid a crateful of heavy-looking