The Watcher's Eyes (The Binders Game Book 2) by D.K. Holmberg Read Free Book Online

been one of the earliest lessons Isander had taught me.
    Up close, the house was shadowed and I slipped into the edge of darkness. My Sight allowed me to move easily, and I trailed along the edge of the house. At the first window, I paused and listened. I heard nothing.
    Standing on my toes, I tipped my head so that I could look inside. A fire glowed in the hearth. A pair of chairs sat in front of it. A circular table was nearest to me, with empty chairs all around it. No one moved.
    I slid beneath the window and continued on. Every so often, I glanced to the garden but saw no sign of anyone else. How many guards were stationed there? If only the one, I would count myself lucky, but I’d seen pairs of guards, so it made me wonder what I might have missed.
    As I reached the corner of the house and prepared to turn, I felt pressure in my back.
    Damn.
    “Who sent you?” a voice whispered.
    I jumped forward and twisted. The man had expected the movement and shoved the knife deep into my back. I bit back the grunt, knowing that any sound would only draw more attention. It wasn’t the first time I’d been stabbed—given the line of work I’d chosen, I doubted that it would be the last—and the way I’d shifted my body had caused the knife to run along the muscle rather than shoving deeply into me and risking more serious injury. Painful, but the knife wound itself wouldn’t be fatal.
    Knowing the pain I would experience, I twisted anyway. The knife tore through me, catching on the thick cloak I wore, but ripped free of his hand so that I could face him.
    He was compact and muscular, with flat gray eyes and short, dark hair. I hadn’t seen any guards like him in the garden or outside on the street. With as stealthy as he’d been to sneak up on me, I figured him for a sellsword. If he was Neelish, I needed to get to my pouch quickly or I’d be dead soon.
    I flipped a dart at him, but he ducked to the side, moving quickly. A dark smile twisted his face. The second dart didn’t miss and caught him in the cheek.
    He spasmed briefly and crumpled.
    That surprised me. The dart had only been tipped in coxberry. I hadn’t the chance to reach for anything more toxic. I checked my back. The wound was deep, but far enough to the side that it was mostly through the muscle. I didn’t have time to bind it.
    I checked the sellsword and noted the way blood burbled to his lips. That wasn’t coxberry either.
    Pulling his lip back, I saw the remains of a wax capsule in the back of his throat. Using the man’s sword, I dipped it into the capsule and pulled it forward. I felt weak, as if the evanshaff was hitting me again, and nearly dropped the knife.
    Neelish, then. The knife would be poisoned.
    I reached into my pouch, where I kept narcass leaves. After healing Carth’s friend, I had replaced them, but obtaining narcass from the local apothecary risked quality. They weren’t fresh, but dried at least gave me a chance at survival. My body began to tense, fighting the effect of whatever poison the Neelish blade carried. I couldn’t be certain, but I’d been exposed to Neelish blades before, and narcass worked as a general sort of curative.
    When I pressed the leaves to my lips, I began to convulse. I bit down and chewed, sucking on the dry leaf. My mouth puckered and the leaves scraped along the inside of my tongue, but if I did nothing, I likely wouldn’t survive.
    The convulsion passed. As it did, I heard voices coming at me from the garden.
    Damn. I was in no shape to fight, and might not be for some time. Natash had been smart to hire sellswords able to keep him safe. Combined with the protection offered by hiding with Benahg, there might not be a way to get to him.
    I dragged myself toward the house, needing to find somewhere better protected than lying out in the open. There wasn’t anything I could do for the fallen sellsword, not in my current state.
    I continued to work the narcass leaves, chewing them into something much