Cursed by Fire Read Online Free PDF Page A

warm, laughing brown eyes. “And you have little to give, I think.”
    “Any other day that would be true, but today is the fair and I have been saving my silver to go. I think I might find me a wife today, if I can be so lucky.”
    “You intend to buy one?” Dethan asked.
    “Oh well … I suppose I could. From one of the slavers. But my money is so little that I wouldn’t be able to buy any woman of passing health. It takes a strong woman to be a mud farmer’s wife.”
    “You might be surprised,” Dethan said. “A sickly slave might be made well with good care. I’ve seen it done.”
    “It might be cheaper at that!” The man chuckled; it was a low raspy sound. He ran a hand back through his hair, obviously a habit because there were streaks of mud in various stages of wetness from the times before. “By the time the courting is done a man can be begging in the streets. Your idea has merit! To the fair, then? I’ll buy you a roasted gossel leg for your trouble, though I wish it was more.”
    “A gossel leg is more than fair and will be more than welcome.”
    “Very well, then.” The man pressed the backs of their hands together again. “My name’s Tonkin. You are new around here.”
    “Yes. Why does that matter?” Dethan said uneasily.
    “Well, no one who knows would step in to interfere with his lordship the high jenden’s business. He’s a cruel bastard, make no mistake about it. If I hadn’t fallen, Iwould never have come close to that vehicle of his. He rides it round here all fine and fierce-looking, making sure all us drudges know our place.”
    “Jenden?” Dethan asked cautiously. He didn’t want to seem too strange to this individual. But by the look the man sent him, he could tell he was very much so strange.
    “Advisor to the grand. You know, advisor to the
king
,” Tonkin stressed when Dethan’s expression remained blank. “And anyways, that was the grandina, the grand’s daughter, with him. I guarantee you had she not been with him the whole business would have gone much differently. It’s rumored that once the jenden killed someone right in the middle of the street. And the grand is so enamored with all the jenden says and does he can do no wrong. I suppose that’s why the grand has given his eldest daughter and heir to the jenden to marry. Though some say the jenden’s getting the raw deal, what with her being so ugly and all.”
    “Ugly? That’s ugly?” Dethan asked incredulously, cocking a thumb in the direction the coach had disappeared. “She’s nearly as beautiful as Kitari. And I do not make that case lightly, for I’ve seen Kitari with my own eyes!”
    He regretted it the minute Tonkin looked at him as though he’d grown boils all over his face. After all, what manner of man claimed to have seen the unattainable queen of the gods? But then Tonkin’s face relaxed and he chuckled.
    “Oh aye, she is a beauty at that.
I
agree with you. But round here that burn makes her ugly to most. Some say she will be unfit to rule after her father’s death … no doubt some like the jenden himself. Jenden Grannish wouldn’t be marrying her, you could wager, if he could think of any other way of becoming grand himself. As it is, the grand’s children have been cast a sad eye byHella. Misfortunes have fallen on the royal family in terrible ways. The grand’s sons dying like that. And his two youngest daughters taken by the plague just this past summer. That leaves only the grandina Selinda and grandino Drakin. But the boy prince is only two and of poor health.” Dethan’s companion tsked his tongue and shook his head gravely. As though to say that was the whole of it and there was nothing to be done about it. But surely anyone could see that there was something dark at play in the grand’s household.
    Of course Hella was as capricious a goddess as any and she had been known to toy with entire families, entire bloodlines, especially if she felt slighted in some way. It