Book 1 - Shadow Games Read Online Free PDF

resented our being so close to their mistress
after haying fought against her for so many years.
    “We ride out in the morning,” I said. “My
apologies. I was elected to lead the Company, not just Croaker.
Forgive me for losing sight of that.”
    Crafty old Croaker. One-Eye and Goblin looked properly abashed.
I grinned. “So go get packed. We’re gone with the
morning sun.”
    She wakened me in the night. For a moment I
thought . . . 
    I saw her face. She had heard.
    She begged me to stay just one more day. Or two, at the most.
She did not want to be here any more than we did, surrounded and
taunted by all that she had lost. She wanted to go away, to go with
us, to remain with me, the only friend she’d ever had—
    She broke my heart.
    It sounds sappy when you write it down in words, but a man has
to do what a man has to do. In a way I was proud of me. I did not
give an inch.
    “There is no end to it,” I told her.
“There’ll always be just one more thing that has to be
done. Khatovar gets no closer while I wait. Death does. I value
you, too. I don’t want to
leave . . . Death lurks in every shadow in this
place. It writhes in the heart of every man who resents my
influence.” It was that kind of empire too, and in the past
few days a lot of old imperials were given cause to resent me
deeply.
    “You promised me dinner at the Gardens in Opal.”
    I promised you a lot more than that, my heart said. Aloud, I
replied, “So I did. And the offer still stands. But I have to
get my men out of here.”
    I turned reflective while she turned uncharacteristically
nervous. I saw the fires of schemes flickering behind her eyes,
being rejected. There were ways she could manipulate me. We both
knew that. But she never used the personal to gain political ends.
Not with me, anyway.
    I guess each of us, at some time, finds one person with whom we
are compelled toward absolute honesty, one person whose good
opinion of us becomes a substitute for the broader opinion of the
world. And that opinion becomes more important than all our sneaky,
sleazy schemes of greed, lust, self-aggrandizement, whatever we are
up to while lying the world into believing we are just plain nice
folks. I was her truth object, and she was mine.
    There was only one thing we hid from one another, and that was
because we were afraid that if it came into the open it would
reshape everything else and maybe shatter that broader honesty.
    Are lovers ever honest?
    “I figure it’ll take us three weeks to reach Opal.
It’ll take another week to find a trustworthy shipmaster and
to work One-Eye up to crossing the Sea of Torments. So twenty-five
days from today I’ll go to the Gardens. I’ll have the
Camelia Grotto reserved for the evening.” I patted the lump
next to my heart. That lump was a beautifully tooled leather wallet
containing papers commissioning me a general in the imperial armed
forces and naming me a diplomatic legate answerable only to the
Lady herself.
    Precious, precious. And one good reason some longtime imperials
had a big hate on for me.
    I am not sure just how that came about. Some banter during one
of those rare hours when she was not issuing decrees or signing
proclamations. Next thing I knew I had been brought to bay by a
pack of tailors. They fitted me out with a complete imperial
wardrobe. Never will I unravel the significance of all the piping,
badges, buttons, medals, doodads, and gewgaws. I felt silly wearing
all that clutter.
    I didn’t need much time to see some possibilities, though,
in what at first I interpreted as an elaborate practical joke.
    She does have that kind of sense of humor, not always taking
this great dreadfully humorless empire of hers seriously.
    I am sure she saw the possibilities long before I did.
    Anyway, we were talking the Gardens in Opal, and the Camelia
Grotto there, the acme of that city’s society
see-and-be-seen. “I’ll take my evening meal
there,” I told her. “You’re welcome to