3: Black Blades Read Online Free PDF Page B

chase some street girl.”
    “Street girl?”
    “You know what I mean.”
    “A prostitute?” An undignified image of the fifty-year-old Alidas working a street corner came to his mind and Kahlil almost laughed aloud.
    “Just because I’m a decent woman, it doesn’t mean I don’t know about the other kind.” Yu’mir crossed her arms over her chest. “Is she very pretty?”
    “No, not particularly,” Kahlil answered.
    “You’re supposed to say that she’s the most beautiful woman in the world,” Yu’mir told him. “You’re not going to get very far telling her she’s not particularly pretty.”
    “That’s not what’s important between us.” Kahlil pulled his coat from its wall peg.
    “Is she pregnant?”
    “Pregnant? No!” Kahlil gaped at her. He was always forgetting things like that. Wives, mistresses, children, all the domestic relations of other men’s lives fell outside his experience. Pregnancy had a kind of irrelevance to his existance that surpassed even that of abstract math.
    “You never know,” Yu’mir told him.
    “I know,” Kahlil insisted. “I have to go if I’m going to get back before Fensal does.”
    “Fine.” Yu’mir turned and started out of the room. “But if the baby’s a girl you better name her after me.”
    Kahlil waited for her to leave, then stepped into the Gray Space.
    A few moments later he let himself into Alidas’ rooms.
    Because of the weather, they were colder than before. The air felt crisp, despite the sun. He wondered if it would snow again.
    “Is anyone home?” Kahlil called out.
    No response. The rooms appeared to be the same as when he had left them yesterday, but the notes he had left were gone. He searched all three rooms but found nothing to tell him what response Alidas might have had.
    Kahlil knew he shouldn’t linger, but still he sat down on the corner of Alidas’ bed as he had done the day before. He lay back and stared up at the ceiling.
    What was he going to do when he returned to the Lisam palace? Still try to stop the assassination and save the Rifter?
    There was more than a little irony to that.
    Should he let Fikiri, Ourath, Nanvess and Esh’illan all try their best to kill the Rifter? Only the key could truly kill him and as far as Kahlil knew Jath’ibaye was the one who had it.
    They could all just go on without him while he lay on this soft bed.
    He heard the click and groan of the front door opening.
    Alidas stood in the doorway. The bright noon light at his back cast his features into deep shadow. Sweeping his eyes across the rooms, he caught sight of Kahlil. Brief surprise registered on his face as he stepped in and closed the door behind him.
    “It’s cold,” Alidas said from the front room. “You should have started a fire in the wood stove.”
    “I didn’t think I’d be here long.” Kahlil became suddenly self-conscious about being caught lying in another man’s bed. He sat up and joined Alidas in the front room.
    “I just came to see if you got my note.”
    Alidas bent over the wood stove, feeding scraps of paper into the dull, glowing embers.               
    “I got it last night.” He balled up a piece of paper from his pocket and tossed it into the growing flames. “There’s a bundle of wood on the step outside the door. Grab it, will you?”
    Kahlil found the scrap wood, untied the rope holding the bundle together, and handed Alidas a stick to add to the fire.
    Already the first wave of heat radiated out into the room.
    Alidas closed the grate and straightened up. “One of Nanvess’ men came to the barrack asking about you.”
    “What did you tell him?”
    “I told him that you left last month.” Alidas shrugged. “You did.”
    “Did he say what they wanted me for?”
    “To me?” Alidas asked. “They know I’m loyal to the gaunsho. They wouldn’t tell me anything, but it wasn’t hard to figure out.”
    “Nanvess wants me dead.”
    “I know.” Alidas glanced to him. “You