The Warrior King: Book Three of the Seer King Trilogy by Chris Bunch Read Free Book Online

the alcove.
    “Na like that, Lynton,” the one who’d laughed said. “ ‘Member what we taught you, an’ when th’ mot’s not pelf-lookin’, y’ check th’ color of his silver.”
    The girl, Lynton, stopped. “Can you pay?” she said, as coached.
    I dug into the inner pocket of my tunic, fumbled out a few coppers, then, reluctantly, like a wanderer showing his all, two silver coins.
    The two older streetwalkers looked surprised.
    “Y’know,” the first one said, “if y’ like, y’ can have two … mayhap all three of us. If y’ve got another coin t’ go with th’ others.”
    “Nah,” I said, “Ah’m not th’ lad for specials like that. All I need’s a bed, someone t’ keep it warm, and p’raps a bit of a meal.”
    “I have a place,” Lynton said, a bit eagerly. “And we can stop at a grocer’s if you want.” Unlike the others, she had a bit of culture to her voice.
    “I want,” I said.
    “Th’ younger’s lucky,” the second woman muttered. “Mebbe we’ll be the same, Jaen willing.”
    I put my arm around Lynton; she stiffened involuntarily, then forced herself to relax and lean against me. We walked on, toward the warders, who glanced at us, then away, uninterested, as we passed. Whoever they were looking for wasn’t a poorly dressed man with a local trollop.
    We went down two blocks, and she stopped outside a grocery. “This is the best one around,” she said. “Or would you like something not quite so dear?”
    “This is fine,” I said and purchased bread so fresh I could smell the oven that baked it, some smoked sausage, a couple different kinds of cheese, fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, and good olive oil, all the things that came but seldom to my island prison.
    “No wine?” the girl asked, startled.
    “I don’t drink,” I told her, which was the simple truth, spirits never having done anything but make me thick-brained and foolish and, in the morning, a potential suicide until I felt better.
    I added soap and a toothbrush to my pile, paid, not letting either Lynton or the shopkeeper see my gold, and we went on, turning, in a few blocks, into a rather imposing building, rather better kept than its neighbors. We went up three flights of stairs to a landing. There were only three doors off it, so the apartments inside would have belonged to rich tenants once. The girl tapped twice, then three times.
    “There’s thieves about,” she explained. The door opened, and an older man, with white brushes of moustaches, opened it. He looked at me, his lips tightened, and he looked quickly away.
    I was glad he did, for I recognized him. He was Domina Berda — I couldn’t remember his first name — and had commanded one of the infantry regiments during the Tovieti rising, a tough regular who gave little mercy but, unlike too many of the soldiers, was scrupulously fair in who he hanged from lampposts and who he freed.
    I stepped inside and was grateful the apartment, as large as I’d expected it to be, was sunk in gloom, making it even harder for me to be recognized. There was little furniture in the room, a couch, an end table, three lamps, a huge armoire holding only a few dishes, and a lovingly polished long banquet table that could’ve seated twenty. There were still a few pictures on the walls, but I noted the dark spaces where others had been taken down.
    Sitting on the couch was a slender woman, Berda’s wife, with great sad eyes and a worn face. She stared at me but said nothing.
    Behind her, on the wall, hung Berda’s old sword.
    There was no explanation needed — I’d heard on the island that any soldier who survived the emperor’s wars had been cast loose with no bonus or pension from the Council, left to survive as best he could. And what talents, beyond a willingness to endure and suffer, do most soldiers have, whether private or general? Little by little Domina Berda would have sold everything he owned as he slid further and further into poverty.
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