Casket of Souls Read Online Free PDF Page B

a little fun.
    Touching Alec’s wrist, Seregil inclined his head toward the door and silently slipped into the darkened room. Alec followed close behind. The happy lover remained oblivious. There was no choice now but to use the study door. Seregil led the way into the dark corridor and into a bedchamber a few doors down, praying it was unoccupied. It was, and had a disused smell.
    They waited there, listening at the door until they heard the happy swain leave the study, then crept back inside. Alec kept watch while Seregil sat down at the desk to copy Princess Elani’s letter, using the duke’s fine parchment and expensive ink. With that done and the documents returned to their hiding places, they hurried down the steep servants’ stair at the end of the corridor, boots whispering on the worn wooden risers.
    There were watchmen at the front door and other main gates, but not in the well yard. In a spinning room they squeezed out through a tiny window that a larger man couldn’t have managed and dropped twice their height to the muddy ground below. After that it was a simple matter to scramble over the wall behind the well and make their way along a ditch to the highroad. They kept watch over their shoulders as they went, prepared for an outcry, but the villawas dark behind its ornate stone wall, the night still except for the raucous din of the crickets.
    Satisfied that they had gotten away clean, Seregil gave Alec’s braid a playful tug. “I’m glad you heard the lovers coming our way. It would have been a shame to spoil their evening.”
    “And ours. Home?”
    Seregil patted his shirt where he’d hidden the letters. “Home.”
    They took passage on the
Nimbus
, a small coastal trader, and reached Rhíminee just six days from when they’d left. The evening sun cast the ship’s rushing shadow ahead of them, flecking the surface of the busy harbor with touches of gilt and turning the towering cliffs above the Lower City pink. Joined by the crooked, climbing line of the walled Harbor Way, the Upper City, with its palaces and great markets, crowned the bluffs while the Lower City spread out around the head of the broad bay below—a jumble of warehouses, customhouses, tenements, guild houses, and countless taverns and cheap brothels catering to sailors and traders.
    Alec leaned on the rail beside Seregil, watching the city draw closer. They didn’t cut much of a figure today in their rough, well-worn traveling clothes—long linen shirts, stained leather breeches, and salt-stained shoes, with long knives hanging from their belts and hair hidden under their faded straw wayfarer’s hats.
    The stench of the Lower City rolled out to meet them on a hot land breeze as soon as they passed the inner moles. Alec scratched absently under one shoulder blade as the sailors furled the sails and the ship glided up to the stone quay. Even without their coats, they were soaked through down the backs of their shirts and under the arms. Thanks to the roles they’d had to play to get into Reltheus’s house, it had been nearly a week since they’d had a decent wash.
    “I’d give just about anything to be in the House baths right now,” Alec murmured.
    Seregil sniffed himself and grimaced. “We’ll need a wash first before they’ll let us in.”
    As soon as the ship docked, they shouldered their packs and slipped over the rail, anxious to lose themselves in the crowd. Here they might be recognized, if someone got a good look at their faces.
    The reek of spoiled fish and sour milk hung on the air as they hurried into the maze of stalls and booths in the harbor market.
    The beggars were thick as flies here now, many of them proud souls forced to it by rising prices caused by the interminable war. As they passed a bread stall a young boy dodged out with a loaf under his arm, the baker’s boys in hot pursuit. They soon caught the lad and had him down on the ground, kicking him as he cried out for mercy.
    It only took a moment