Battle Magic Read Online Free PDF

determined to be good for once and not give Rosethorn anything to worry about. Instead she looked at the ceiling while the women tidied her robes and hair.
    There was a ceiling because they had been brought inside a huge stone building. The rafters were dark, gilded wood hung with huge paper lanterns. Evvy was grateful that the lanterns weren’t lit. It was fairly cool in here, except for the occasional drift of warm air from outside.
    An insistent thumb called her away from her thoughts on weather and rafters. A maid was pushing on her chin while another waited with a pot of red lip paint.
    “I’m too young for that,” Evvy said flatly in tiyon . What she wanted to say was that the court women with their single drop ofred on each upper and lower lip looked stupid, but Rosethorn wouldn’t like that. “Take that red stuff away.”
    “Evvy,” Rosethorn said, warning dripping from her voice.
    “I let them put the white stuff and the rouge on my face because you told me to,” Evvy said. If anyone within earshot speaks Chammuri, it serves them right for eavesdropping, she thought fiercely. “I look like a tumbler in a show. I will not let them give me the drop of blood.” The maids at their guest pavilion had told them that was the name for the current style in lip paint.
    Both she and Rosethorn turned when they heard the scrape of a chain on the floor. “But all the ladies who must make their kowtow to his imperial majesty wear the drop of blood and the lily face,” the stranger said. He had stopped next to the newly arrived Briar, as if for contrast.
    Briar was a slender youth, handsome and smiling in his own set of green, peach, and ivory-colored robes. He did not wear the stiffened black silk cap of a nanshur or a noble, leaving his short, glossy black hair uncovered. The newcomer also had very short black hair. He wore only a white garment like very loose, draped breeches that ended at his knees. He was a darker bronze than Briar, heavy with muscle, and scarred as a warrior was scarred. His wrists and ankles were secured by gold shackles and connected by lengths of heavy gold chain. His wrist shackles were chained to a throat collar, also gold.
    He saw the direction that Evvy’s eyes had taken and raised his wrists a little, tightening the chains that led from throat to arms to feet. “No, I’m the only one required to wear these,” he said, a wry twist on his mouth. “It makes it difficult for me to run away.”He bowed deeply and saluted first Rosethorn, then Evvy, then Briar by touching his fingers to his brawny chest, then to his lips, and last to his forehead. “I am Parahan, the latest imperial amusement. Just now I am ordered to bring you into the presence.”
    “I am —” Rosethorn began.
    “Rosethorn,” Parahan interrupted. “Though I have trouble believing that so beautiful a rose has any thorns at all.”
    “You have no idea,” Briar murmured as he fell in step with Evvy behind Parahan and Rosethorn as they walked out into the open.
    The big captive led them to a small cluster of three chairs at the foot of a stone dais. Evvy saw now that they stood at the top of a short pyramid. Its point had been lopped off to make a platform. Briar dug a sharp elbow into Evvy’s side and nodded in the direction of the throne. The emperor was looking at them. Hurriedly Evvy joined Briar and Rosethorn in a deep bow. Parahan managed to kneel without his chains getting in the way. Like the emperor’s messengers in Garmashing, he touched his hands and forehead to the stones.
    The emperor only nodded casually to them. Then he turned his attention to what lay before them all. They did the same as Parahan got to his feet.
    The view spread out below the pyramid left all three of the newcomers silent and staring. Before them horsemen rode in complex patterns, fighting mock combats with long spears and swords, shooting at targets, and racing down grassy strips set on either side of the sprawling field.