Dragon-Ridden Read Online Free PDF Page A

again. She could be civil to him for that
length of time. It wasn’t as if he’d really done anything. He just made her
uneasy.
    “Isn’t that too bad, Tate?” Trent’s
innocent question cut off Tate’s inner lecture.
    “What is?” she asked blankly. She’d
lost track of the conversation while she’d been talking to herself.
    “Ryu is leaving the crew here.”
    Tate coughed as the beer she’d just
taken a sip of went down the wrong pipe. “What?” she croaked.
    Ryu thumped her on the back. She
shoved his arm away once she’d started breathing normally again.
    “Are you going to miss me?”
    “I thought you were remaining with
the crew until Brilady,” she blurted, ignoring his comment.
    “Now what would give you that
idea,” he asked, propping his head on his hand.
    To give herself time to think, she
took a long sip of beer. She’d overheard him and the captain talking about it.
She hadn’t set out to eavesdrop; it just kind of happened. She wasn’t sorry for
it either.
    She took a deep breath and found
herself on the verge of panicking. This wasn’t good. Aurelia was where she was
supposed to cut ties. It’d be much more difficult if there was another person
here who could exercise Jost’s will once he was gone.
    No. Maybe this wasn’t that bad. The
city was huge after all. Chances were she’d never see him once she made the
break. She’d just have to make sure she got away from Aurelia and further
inland quicker than she’d originally planned.
    She avoided his eyes and looked
down into her beer. What had spurred his change of heart?
    “Just thought that was what you
said,” she said nonchalantly.
    “Hmm.” His regard pinned her in
place a moment before he picked up his beer. It felt like she could breathe
again. “As it turns out, I have business in the city. Don’t worry, I’ll be
seeing you guys sooner than you think.”
    Tate stared down into her beer. She
doubted that. As soon as she left she had no plans to meet any of the
Marauder’s crew ever again. Doubly so for Ryu. 
    “What does everyone want to do
while we’re here?” Trent asked in the ensuing silence.
    Tate shrugged more than willing to
move away from talk of Ryu. “I’ve never been here before. I wouldn’t know where
to even begin.”
    “We should probably start with walking
around the city a little. There’s a lot of things to see during the day,” Danny
said. At night, everybody knew they’d find themselves in drinking in some bar
and having fun. It was such a given that Tate didn’t even try to beg off
anymore. Those nights had led to more than one man finding himself detained
until he sobered up. “I can show you some of my favorite spots in the city. I’d
stick to the lower city for today. We won’t really have time to walk all the
way to the Upper and look around before night fall.”
    “Upper?” Tate asked.
    Danny was the quietest of the
group. Mostly he let Riply and Trent do the talking for him, but when he spoke,
others listened. Tate had come to like the big guy over the last few months.
He’d grown up in the city before putting out to sea and still remembered how to
find his way in it.
    “The city’s divided into two
parts.” He smiled shyly at her. “The Upper is considered anything above the
cliff line and the Lower everything below it. We can try for the Upper later in
the week, but it’s considerably more expensive.”
    “I can’t wait to see everything,”
Trent said with wide eyes. His thin face was alight with curiosity. Like Tate,
he’d never been to Aurelia, but he had heard stories of its splendor and
opulence.
    Tate frowned thoughtfully but
didn’t comment, instead stealing a piece of bread from Trent’s plate.
    “Hey, I’m a growing boy. Get you
own food.”
    “Why? Yours is so tasty,” she said
stealing a vegetable.
    He scooted the plate closer to him
and guarded it with one arm while he shoveled food in his mouth.
    “Stop teasing the pipsqueak,” Ryu
said,