Watcher of the Dead by J. V. Jones Read Free Book Online Page B

and desperation were magic concealing him
from people’s eyes, and the more he gathered about him the less
detectable he became. He recognized this and used it. Above and
beyond that he did not care.
    He lived for one thing.
    Men and women in the culvert, the
beggars, the shit-eaters, the insane, did not question his right to
be among them. They recognized their own truth in his eyes. All here
were lost or losing something.
    No one challenged him to a fight.
    Angus lay in the collective warmth of
their bodies and did not rest. Dawn glowed in the eastern sky and the
city stirred. A street vendor rolled out his brazier and set it
upstreet and upwind of the culvert. Business had been good since the
flood. A group of maids in white caps and white aprons headed for the
markets, empty baskets in hand. They crossed the street well before
the culvert and averted their gazes as they passed.
    A runner boy came racing down the
street from the north and muscles in Angus’ belly tensed.
Runner boys meant messages. Messages could lead to calls.
    The surgeon’s rooms were located
in a house a third of a league down the street. Angus could not track
the boy to the address. To follow him down the street would leave
himself too exposed, so he waited. If the Phage knew what he knew and
wanted to assassinate him, they would watch the house.
    After a quarter hour the runner boy
returned, message delivered, and headed back north. Angus stayed in
position. Men in the culvert were rising, scratching their beards,
shaking themselves off, pissing downstream. Few spoke. The smell of
sausages grilling on the brazier was a shared torture. Not for the
first time Angus wondered why the men in the culvert didn’t
simply rise up and overpower the vendor.
    He decided they weren’t quite
desperate enough.
    Spying a tall figure moving east, Angus
stilled. It was Sarcosa in his black cloak, gloves on, boots
polished, slender leather satchel slung sideways across his chest
like an arrow case. He approached the crossroads and turned north.
Angus forced himself to wait.
    As he counted to twenty, he watched for
other watchers. He had been Phage himself once; he knew the deal.
Satisfied that all was normal, Angus rose and left the culvert. He
did not look back.
    Morning Star was still coming to life.
Geese on the riverbanks honked as a small and pale sun rose through
clouds. Delivery carts hurtled along the streets, draymen warning
bloody murder if the way ahead wasn’t cleared. Angus kept to
the walls. Sarcosa was a hundred feet ahead, walking briskly with a
sense of his own importance. He turned east, away from the river.
Angus turned along with him.
    The area here was comfortable; manses
and law courts, whitewashed taverns and stables, temples with
stonework carvings showing the sun and morning star in opposition.
Sarcosa stopped abruptly and rapped on the door of one of the manses.
He was granted swift entry and the painted white door closed behind
him. Angus glided past and kept going.
    Five minutes later he approached the
house from behind. The back door was swung open and the courtyard was
in use. A laundry girl was boiling blankets in a bath over a fire.
Angus continued moving along the lane. Sarcosa’s daylight
visits could be a problem.
    Two houses down he spotted a fat and
ancient maid sitting on a bench in her master’s courtyard,
doing little save looking exhausted. “Day, Mistress,â€

CHAPTER 35
    For All Bluddsmen
    VAYLO BLUDD GAVE the order to Odwin Two
Bear and Baldie Trangu. “Intercept them.â€

CHAPTER 36
    Schemes
    THEY TOOK HOARGATE into the city of
Spire Vanis. Mallin said the gate itself had been carved from the
largest tree in the world. “A bloodwood from the southern Storm
Margin. It took them ten days to chop it.â€

CHAPTER 37
    The Night River
    ASH MOUNTAIN BORN was beginning to
suspect something and as Zaya and the Trenchlander pushed off the
barge, she thought about what