Company of Liars Read Online Free PDF

his eyes tightly closed.
    ‘But other minstrels will already have found such inns, no?’
    ‘I dare say they will, but he's a pretty lad. When he's washed and sober, that is,’ I added, for he looked anything but pretty just then with his puffy face and tightly clenched jaw. ‘If you can persuade him to flirt with the wealthy matrons instead of their daughters, you'll get your coins. You'll both stand out from the common rabble of minstrels. Merchants' wives fancy themselves as highborn ladies andthey'll pay handsomely anyone who knows how to treat them as such. And who can say, you might be lucky enough to find yourselves another livery. Even the highborn make pilgrimages. They more than most, for they have more money to do it and more sins to atone for.’
    ‘This shrine you are going to, you think we could get work there?’
    I had a sinking feeling that I knew where this was leading and I cursed myself for ever having mentioned it.
    ‘It's a good few weeks' walk from here. I'll have to work my way there via the fairs and markets along the way. You'll want to look for something closer.’
    ‘I can't walk. I'm ill,’ the boy whined.
    ‘I denti di Dio! Whose fault is that?’ Rodrigo snapped and Jofre looked as startled as if he'd been slapped.
    Rodrigo also seemed surprised at his own sharpness for his next words were spoken soothingly, like a mother trying to coax a fretful child. ‘You will feel better for walking and we cannot stay here. We need to earn money. Without food and shelter you will become ill.’ He turned back to me, anxiety etched on his face. ‘You know the way to this shrine? You could help us find work on the way?’
    What could I do? Though I'd little doubt that Rodrigo was capable of holding his own in the subtle intrigue and politics of a court, to send them out alone into the blood and guts of the market place would have been like sending toddlers into a battlefield.
    ‘You'd have to walk at my pace. I'm not as fast as I once was.’
    Rodrigo glanced over at the listless boy. ‘I think a slow pace would suit us well, Camelot.’
    And so it was that the first members of our little company were drawn together, the first but by no means the last. Onthat wet morning, I thought I was doing them a kindness, saving them from learning the hard way how to survive on the roads. I thought I was sparing them the days of hungry bellies and the nights sleeping cold and friendless; I'd been there myself when I first started out and I knew the misery of it. But now I know it would have been kinder to have passed them by on the road than draw them into what was to come.

3. Zophiel
    It's not every day you see a mermaid, though you hear tell of them often. Ask anyone in the fishing villages and they'll swear some old man in the village once caught a mermaid in his nets or fell overboard and was rescued by a maiden with hair that glistened like a shoal of silver fish in the moonlight and a tail that gleamed like opals under the stars. So when a magician says he has one in his tent, you can be sure there will be no shortage of people willing to hand over their pennies for a glimpse of a real live mermaid.
    Not live exactly, for this one was dead. Dead, because they do die if they cannot return to the sea. They are half fish after all, and how long can a fish live out of water? A mermaid can live longer, but not for ever, not on land, at least that's what the magician explained.
    The magician called himself Zophiel, ‘God's spy’. The name fitted him almost too well. Spies have to be on their guard and he was guarded all right, you could tell that from the first time you heard him speak, careful, clever, you might say. He made no promises the crowd could dispute afterwards. If you promise a living beast and it's dead then word soon gets round. At best no one else will part with their money to see it, and at worst, well, there are no limitsto what a drunken mob might do if they feel cheated. Afterwards I