Crossed Blades Read Online Free PDF

exception of what happened with the Kothmerk, I’ve done all right for myself these last few years.” She sounded defiant, edging into angry. “Certainly better than you have, playing the jack here in Tien’s shadow world.”
    I sighed. The Kothmerk was a big exception and one that had led to three different governments all trying to kill Faran and Ssithra. But give Faran her due. “Yes, in many ways you have.” After the fall of the temple she’d become a freelance spy, selling other people’s secrets to the highest bidder. “Certainly you made more money in your years on your own than I have in my entire life.” Which was why Faran was the one paying the rent on the small house where we lived on the skirts of the Kanathean Hill.
    “Doesn’t that bother you?” For the first time that evening she sounded like she was asking a question she didn’t know the answer to.
    “Not really. Before the death of the goddess I never cared about money. It was simply a tool the priests supplied me with when I needed it for a mission. Afterward, I didn’t care about anything except for Triss and where my next drink was coming from.”
    I continued, “I don’t know what all you went through when the temple fell, or in the days immediately after.”
    Faran didn’t say anything. She’d been nine at the time, a child trained in the arts of killing and not much else. From the way that her eyes narrowed and she changed the subject every time it came up, I knew she’d suffered. But I hadn’t ever pressed, and I wouldn’t now. The world can be a very bad place for a lost child, especially a little girl. If she wanted to tell me about it she would.
    “I only know what I went through,” I said. “Almost everyone I’d ever cared about died that day along with my goddess and my faith. It hurt me that I wasn’t there to die with them, that I was spared when so many I loved had died. With my goddess dead I wanted to die, too.” Though he’d heard me talk about it before, I was still glad Triss was deep down in dream state for this conversation. It caused him a lot of pain when I spoke about it. “I’d probably have killed myself then if it wouldn’t have killed Triss, too.”
    “That’s why you started drinking, right? Because it eased the pain.”
    “That, and I rather hoped it would kill me, though I didn’t even admit that to myself until quite recently.”
    Faran took a deep breath. “I got drunk once, maybe three weeks after the Son of Heaven’s soldiers killed everyone. I knew the priests of Namara were against alcohol, but I’d run out of the efik I took with me when I ran away, and I didn’t have anything else to dull the pain. And it hurt so very much to be me right then. I was hiding out in a charcoal burners’ camp while I tried to figure out what I should do next. I stole a bottle of rum and I drank until I passed out.”
    Faran stopped speaking and there was a long silence, but I didn’t think she was done, so I let it run.
    “There was a man at the camp, older, kind. He’d been feeding me, though I had no way to pay for it. He found me there asleep and he touched me.”
    Faran made a tiny little choking noise, but then continued. “But not in a bad way, that would almost make what happened bearable. I was having a nightmare you see, about the soldiers at the temple and all the blood, and he was trying to wake me up. That’s what Ssithra thought anyway. He was just trying to wake me up. I seized control of Ssithra and I tore out his throat with claws of shadow. I didn’t mean to. I was still drunk and I was scared and . . . dammit!”
    I heard the dull thud of a fist hitting a thigh, then there was another long silence.
    “I’d never killed a man before,” she finally said. “I had the opportunity several times when I was escaping from the temple. I could have slaughtered half a dozen of the people who killed my friends. I wanted to, but I was too afraid. I was too afraid I’d get caught