Book 5 - With Mercy Toward None Read Online Free PDF Page B

fools."
    "What happened, son?"
    The fat boy blubbered. He was very good at that. "Grandfather of self, only relative in whole world, just jumped from wall. Am idiot. Believed same only wanted to look on river by night for last time." He made a show of trying to control himself.
    "Only relative left. Was wasting sickness. Much pain. No more money for opium. Self, am stupidest of stupids. Should have known... "
    "There, there, son. It'll be all right. Maybe it was for the best, eh? If the pain was that bad?"
    That watchman had patrolled the same beat for years. He had seen all kinds go off the wall. Jilted lovers. Dishonored husbands. Guilty consciences. Just plain folks.
    Most of them did it by daylight, wanting an audience for their final world-diddling gesture. But a man with cancer would not be mad at the whole world, just its gods. And those little perverts could see just fine at night. His suspicions were not aroused.
    "Come on down to the barracks. We can put you up there tonight. Then we'll see what we can do for you in the morning."
    The fat boy did not know when to quit. He protested, wailed, made a show of trying to throw himself after his departed relative.
    The policeman, deciding he needed detention for his own safety, dragged him to the police barracks.
    A less enthusiastic despair would have allowed the boy to have gone his own way. The lawman would not have demurred. His world was filled with parentless, street-running children.
    The same watchman woke the boy from his first-ever sleep in a real bed. "Good morning, lad. Time to see the Captain."
    The fat boy had a premonition. How many guard captains could there be? Not many. He could not risk meeting this one. "Self, am famished. Dying by starvation."
    "I think we can arrange something." The policeman gave him an odd, calculating look.
    The boy decided he had better show more grief. He turned it on, as if suddenly realizing that he had not just awakened from a bad dream.
    The watchman seemed satisfied.
    He gorged himself at the mess hall. And filled his pockets while no one was watching. Then, when he could stall no more, he followed the watchman to the Captain's quarters.
    He got himself out a side door while the patrolman made his report. He had recognized the officer's voice. His premonition had been valid.
    They almost caught him in the stables. The donkey did not want to leave such rich fodder. But the fat boy got her moving in time to evade the Captain's notice.
    He decided to abandon Argon altogether. The Captain was bound to do his sums and order a general search. Sajac had taught him long ago that the best way to avoid police was to be out of town when they started looking.
    Could he bluff his way past the causeway guards? They might not let a kid leave by himself.
    He managed it. He was a crafty and confusing liar.
    The child-fugitive from Argon joined the ranks of the visibly unemployed who nevertheless survived. He did so by employing the dubious skills he had learned from Sajac, and others of the old man's ilk whom they had encountered in their journeys.
    For several years he wandered the route he had shared with Sajac, from Throyes to Necremnos, to Argon, and round again, with stops in most of the villages between. One summer he traveled to Matayanga and Escalon. Another, he journeyed down the western shore of the Sea of Kotstim, beneath the brooding scarps of Jebal al Alf Dhulquarneni, but that route showed no promise. The people were too savage and excitable.
    They used human skin, back in those dread mountains, to make the parchment on which they scribbled their grimoires.
    He picked up several more languages, none of which he learned well. He stayed nowhere long enough to become proficient. Or he simply did not care.
    He developed evil habits. Money fled through his fingers like grains of sand. There were girls, and wine...
    But gambling was his downfall. He could not resist a game of chance. He left a series of bad debts. The list of places