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

someone she loved. I don’t know. Then her eyes would close and she’d go to sleep.”
    “That’s what you like?”
    I nodded.
    “You don’t want to do anything … after I’m asleep?”
    I shook my head.
    “That’s …” she stopped herself.
    “Strange?”
    “Yes.”
    “But that’s what I like.” I handed her the coins.
    I got up, went to the nearby chair, sat down. She kept looking at me, waiting for me to take out a whip, no doubt, or something like that, then swung her legs up, and lay back.
    “Do you want me to play with myself?”
    “No.”
    Lynton lay there for a few moments.
    “Whatever happened to that girl?”
    “She ran away with a soldier,” I said. “When I was only ten.”
    “Are you married?”
    “Yes,” I said. “With three children, and a fourth coming.”
    “But you still like …”
    “Yes. With your eyes closed.”
    She was silent. I stayed motionless. Her eyes opened twice, looked at me, then closed once more. Her breathing grew regular, and still I waited. She began snoring. I covered her with a blanket, found what looked like a favorite doll, put it beside her.
    I drank my water, curled on the floor, and, after a time of itemizing how many kinds of fools I was, slept.
    I woke, as I’d always been able to, when I wished, about an hour before dawn. Lynton slept on, quite soundly, the doll now cuddled under the blanket.
    I made myself one more sort of fool, and left all the gold from Salop’s purse on the bed next to her, silently left the room, and went out into the slow drizzle of morning.
    • • •
    “And what’s your business, might I ask?” the slender, almost emaciated man wearing a pair of seeing-glasses perched precariously on his nose asked.
    “You buy gems?”
    “So my sign indicates.”
    “I’ve got some to sell,” I said. “From my uncle, who used to be a soldier, who died last week.”
    I took out the stub of Herne’s sword and his bejeweled dagger. It was a rotten story, but the best I’d been able to devise.
    The man looked at them carefully, then at me, then back at the weapons.
    “An officer, I take it?” he said dryly.
    “No, sir. But he fought against Kallio, and he told me this used to be some lord’s or other that he killed in a battle.”
    The man nodded, considered the weapons.
    “If,” he said carefully, “you are telling the truth, and of course I have no reason to doubt you, then these would be no doubt worth a great deal as collector’s items. More if you’d happen to remember the name of the nobleman your uncle took them from.”
    I shook my head. “Been years since I heard the stories. My uncle died a month ago, and I thought I’d make the best price bringing them to the city to sell.”
    “That’s correct, you’ll find more buyers in the city than in the country,” the man said. “The problem with selling them intact is that it will take longer to find the perfect customer, although there are three men I have in mind. There is a second option, which would be to remove the stones from their settings and melt down the gold and silver, which I would buy for its intrinsic value, no more.”
    “That’s what I want.”
    “It’s somewhat a pity to destroy works like these, even though they’re somewhat gaudy for my tastes,” the man went on, “but it also makes the gems exceedingly hard to identify.”
    I pretended puzzlement. “I don’t follow you.”
    “Of course you don’t. Now, if you’ll excuse me for a minute, I’d like to summon my partner.”
    He smiled faintly, started for the back of the store.
    “If your partner wears a gray uniform or looks like a warder,” I said, “you’ll not have the time to reap any reward.”
    The man smiled once more.
    “I have even less use for the agents of the law than you, if that’s imaginable,” and he disappeared behind the curtain.
    He was gone almost ten minutes, and I nearly bolted. I opened the door and leaned in the entryway, pretending casualness, scanning