Thief's War: A Knight and Rogue Novel by Hilari Bell Read Free Book Online

weak leg, though even I could see that he was putting weight on it.
    The train boss turned to his drivers. Stopped, waiting drivers.
    “Show’s over,” he said. “Get moving.”
    Once they had, he turned back to Michael. “Your horse all right? Then you get moving too.”
    So we did.
    * * *
    It was more than three hours later when the potato bag tipped over and they realized their prisoner had escaped. Michael and I only heard about it that evening, and it wasn’t luck that we were both near the back of the train when the discovery was made—we’d been finding excuses to lurk there all day.
    No one seemed to connect us with the escape, but as we sat near the campfire eating dinner the train boss came over and gestured for us to follow him.
    Michael cast me a wary look and I shrugged—both perfectly natural reactions for men called aside by the boss.
    “Our prisoner escaped today,” he announced.
    “We heard,” I said. He’d started this dance, let him lead. But he stared at us, unspeaking, for a long moment.
    “We picked him up in Casfell. I checked the books to be sure. Where’d you two sign on?”
    “Ludder,” said Michael.
    He stared some more, but we managed to hold up under it. Then he drew in a breath and sighed.
    “I decided not to send anyone after him. No way to know, for certain, where he left the train. And he didn’t owe us a real debt, after all. Nothing on the books.”
    “Then why were you hold—”
    “That sounds sensible.” I interrupted before Michael, could give the game away.
    The boss snorted. “All right. But I expect the two of you to work all the way to the Port. And I don’t expect any more trouble, either. Right?”
    “Of course,” said Michael.
    The train boss walked away.
    “He knows it was us,” Michael said.
    “He suspects it. If he knew, he might not be so generous. If he could prove it, it would probably be us in the next town’s stocks. He’s not a nice man.”
    “Mayhap not, but he’s been generous to us. The least we can do is to go on to the city as he asks. Besides, I think he’s going to pay us. You don’t want to waste this last week’s work, do you?”
    So we came to it.
    “You just want to get to the city,” I said. “You’ve been pushing us in this direction for six months. You’re going after Jack.”
    “Not Master Bannister, so much,” Michael said, “but his employer. That man was responsible for three deaths that we know of, Fisk. Not to mention all those whom the wreckers killed.”
    “You can’t blame Jack, or even his employer, for the wreckers’ murders,” I said. “He was just fencing their goods.”
    “I still lay those deaths on them, at least in part. But even leaving the past aside, how many more will Jack’s employer kill if he isn’t stopped?”
    I had no answer, except that it wasn’t our business—which has never stopped Michael for a minute.
    “If we meddle with his affairs, Jack’s employer is going to kill the two of us. I know you don’t care about that, but I do. And it’s not our business! Crime on this scale is the Liege Guard’s job, not ours.”
    “They don’t seem to be doing it.” Michael was wearing his I’m-a-knight-errant-expression, which meant he was no longer susceptible to rational argument. But I still had to try.
    “I don’t want to go after Jack,” I said. “I won’t go after him.”
    Michael’s face sobered, but his accursed, stubborn, noble determination never wavered.
    “I can’t force you to come with me. You paid your debt, years ago. You’re free to do as you like.”
    But he was going after Jack, and his powerful, deadly boss, no matter what I said. And I wanted to see Michael die at their hands even less than I wanted to see Jack on the justice scaffold. Which meant that I’d have to find some way to help Michael, and pull Jack out of it—while keeping all three of us alive. There are limits to what’s possible, even for me. But…
    “You know I can’t let you go