Captain Cosette Read Online Free PDF

her arms.  He was being pigheaded just like her step-brothers.  “May I ask why you aren’t wearing your clothes?”
    “ I don’t have any clothes.”
    “ Then what’s that pile sitting beside you?”
    “ Those aren’t my clothes.  I don’t own anything.”
    “ What do you mean, those aren’t your clothes?  They most certainly are.”
    “ Look.”  He started to turn his head, and she turned her back on him.  “Imsami is dead.  I will miss him forever.  But he’s dead because we thought possessions were everything.  Even bounty hunting, turning in unfortunate souls for the money, we thought that was fine because it made us wealthier.  But all it got us was Imsami dead, and we would have never been wealthy enough to satisfy us.”
    She heard his voice diminish, and she assumed he had turned back to looking over the city.  “The philosopher was right,” he continued.  “To not desire anything is to possess everything.  I have discarded everything I own, and I’m sitting here content.  There is nothing more I need to do.  If only we had known.”
    Then there would have been two naked men wandering around the countryside . 
    She ventured a glance back at him.  He was indeed looking back over the city.  “Could you at least put on your underclothes?”
    “ I don’t have any underclothes.”
    She lost her temper.  This goat-headed off-worlder was deliberately being difficult.  She stomped up to the pile and grabbed the gray underclothes lying on top.   “Fine!  I claim these as my own, then.”  Eww !  “Any problem with that?”
    He shrugged.  “They’re not mine.  Doesn’t matter to me.”
    She threw them at him.  “Then will you please at least put on my underclothes?”
    He didn’t answer. 
    She tapped her foot, determined to outwait him.
    Another rakina swooped through the clearing, yammering at them.  Down in Toulouse, a shot rang out.  Over the distant ocean, a brief flash of lightning flickered in a cloud bank but no sound reached them.
    “ Very well.  If you wish.”  He started to rise, and she turned her back again.
    As she heard cloth rustling, she asked, “What took you so long to decide?”
    “ I was just thinking,” he said.  “There are more possessions than just things.  Insisting on my own way, my own will, my own desires, that’s a form of possessiveness.  It’s not enough to give up gold; I have to give up wanting gold.  That was a new thought for me.  Remember, Imsami always complained that I thought too much.  It’s a flaw of mine.  Did you want me to do anything else?”
    “ Could you put on the rest of, um, my clothes?  Please?”
    “ If you wish.”
    With quiet efficiency he finished dressing, snapped his boots – her boots – and reached for the knives.  He stopped in mid-reach.
    “Yes,” she said.  “You may carry my knives.”
    “ Thank you.”  He picked them up and slipped them into their scabbards on his belt.  Her belt.
    “ Are you ready to eat something?” she asked.
    He shrugged.  “I have nothing to…”
    “ Here,” she snapped, pushing the last crust of bread at him.  “Eat some of my bread, drink some of my water, and then let’s get into my van and go wherever it was you were taking me.”
    He accepted the bread and ate it thoughtfully.  “You know,” he said between bites, “I don’t want to turn you in any more.  I don’t want the bounty.”
    “ Can you remove this bracelet?”  She held out her wrist, displaying the electronic device that had shocked her so painfully two evenings ago.
    He shook his head.  “No.”
    “ Can you disable the key?”
    He pulled the cylindrical key out of his pocket and examined it.  He struck it against the boulder where she had cut off his earrings, and she screamed and fell to the ground.
    “Don’t do that again!”  She cradled her numb hand with her good arm, tears of pain in her eyes.  “I guess you can’t.  Ow.  Okay.  You need to take me