Bared Blade Read Online Free PDF Page B

Whichever happened, I needed to grab my stuff and get out of there before the guard returned in force. “The whole place is burned now. After this I’m not going to be able to come back here for quite a while, if ever. Not with three dead Elite and reports of a rogue Dyad heating the neighborhood up. Too many people saw me with you.”
    I’d been too busy staying alive and in one piece to think ahead, so that hadn’t occurred to me until that very moment, but it was true and it actually hurt me a little to realize it now. The Gryphon’s Head was the worst sort of dive and it lay in the heart of one of Tien’s most miserable slums. None of which changed the fact that it had been my home for more than six years—longer than any place other than the temple of Namara itself. I was going to miss it.
    I glanced around sadly as I ducked out the back door. In the earlier panicked stampede for the exits someone had knocked over one of the cheap oil lamps that normally lit the yard. It had landed in a filthy pile of used straw from the stable, and now the flames provided a bright if fitful light that made my shadow dance wildly on the wall behind me. I spared a surreptitious glance at the spectacle, hoping to see some visual evidence that Triss was back with me. Ididn’t get that, but I did get a brief reassuring squeeze on my shoulder, and it sure wasn’t from Vala or Stel.
    The Dyad was trailing along at a safe distance behind me. They had arranged themselves so that the Stel mote could lean heavily on her smaller counterpart. She’d put away her rods but now held one of Vala’s battle wands in her right hand while Vala held the other in her left. Both had reversed the short wands so that they lay mostly concealed against their wrists, but as I turned toward the stables, Vala flipped hers around again, pointing it loosely in my direction.
    “I don’t think I like the idea of letting you out of our sight,” she said.
    “Well, it’s that or use that thing,” I said over my shoulder as I kept walking. “My gear is in the hay loft and I’m going to go get it now.”
    “I could come with you.…”
    “But Stel couldn’t, not up the ladder. Besides, I don’t want you to. There are certain protections I have to disarm and I don’t want you watching.” More importantly, I wanted to talk to Triss, and for that I needed privacy.
    “But I don’t know what you are!” This time the voice came out of both throats and the second wand slid around to point at me. “You killed an Elite and that’s no mere jack’s work. You’re a mage at the least and much more than you seem. It makes you a serious potential threat.”
    “Or a potential ally. It’s your choice which you want to make me. But if you’re not going to try to kill me,
stay here
. I’ll be right back.”
    Since no blast of magic followed me through the door of the stable, I had to assume they’d opted to continue our protoalliance. I dashed to the ladder and hurried up the rungs—time was getting ever more precious, and I had things to do.
    “Triss?” I said as I got to the door to my little room.
    “Here.” In the darkness I couldn’t see my shadow-companion, but something about the tone of his voice told me he’d reassumed dragon shape.
    “What’s the plan with the Dyad?” I asked.
    “There isn’t one.” Triss sounded a little abashed.
    I groaned. “Why am I not surprised? Did you at least know what they were when you asked me to help them?”
    “No, only that they didn’t move like anything human and that they were in trouble. They were foreign and alone in Tien, as we were when we came here after the death of the goddess. They needed help. What more did I need to know?”
    I gently smacked my forehead against the door.
    Triss said, “You have said that Namara is dead and you are a man without a people or purpose, no longer a true Blade. But also that you hope you can still do some good in this world. Here was an opportunity to do just