Drawn Blades Read Online Free PDF

these days.”
    Shang turned his other eye on me now. “The gentle assassin—now, there’s an interesting turn of thought. What do you think of that, Aral?”
    There was something about the dragon’s tone that didn’t brook dissembling. “Faran’s right that I prefer not to kill anyone I don’t have to,” I replied. “But I am not so gentle as I was when last Faran and I went a-hunting together. My definition of who needs killing has . . . widened a bit since our visit to the Magelands last year.”
    “Really?” Faran looked doubtful—she’d been all of nine when the fall of the temple had cast her out into the world alone. It had hardened her in ways I didn’t think were entirely healthy. She killed with a cheerful remorselessness that didn’t suit one who should have grown up to become a champion of Justice.
    But Triss nodded. “He’s coming around nicely, actually.” Like most Shades, Triss had never shied from killing anyone that he thought needed killing, and he had often chided me for letting loose ends keep breathing.
    “What changed?” asked Faran.
    “I remembered what I am,” I said. “When I was younger, I gave my conscience into the hands of Namara, and I killed who she told me to kill, knowing that I served justice as well as Justice. I was content with that. Then Namara died. And, for a very long time, I was lost. But I finally realized that the death of Justice the goddess didn’t free me from my obligation to do justice. There are many monsters in this world, and for some the only justice is death. It’s what I was born for and trained for, and ultimately death is what I am.”
    “Death,” said Faran, and I nodded. “That’s a little dark for you, but I think I like it.” She smiled. “If I take the house and you hit the fallback we can save an hour. Meet at the bridge where the Great West Road crosses the Zien?”
    “Done.”
    *   *   *
    Pick up my gear and head out. A simple task, but important. Many of the tools of my trade are things that you have to make for yourself. Cornerbrights, drum-ringers, opium-and-efik-packed eggs for knocking out watchdogs, the blanks for making wardblacks . . . The list is endless. Others are hard to come by or expensive, like eyespys, good silk rope, spare Blade grays, etc. And, while things like bedrolls and silk tents can be picked up at most of the larger markets, it’s infinitely quicker and easier if you already own such things to collect them from storage.
    Which is why I had come back to the long-forgotten warehouse that was my main fallback at the moment. At one point, the stone and timber building had probably fronted one of the many narrow lanes that spurred off the nearby canal road. But somewhere along the line someone had simply walled off the ends of the alley to make a new building, orphaning the small warehouse and cutting it off from the commercial lifeblood provided by the canal. That was likely when the main entrance got bricked over, though it could have been ten years before, or half a hundred.
    When and who had cut the door-sized hole into a sidewall that accessed a dead-end alley not much broader than my shoulders was an open question. Though it had to be noted that whoever had done it had almost certainly been planning on using the rotting old building as a tuckaside for smuggled or stolen goods. At least, that was the conclusion I’d reached given how carefully they’d concealed the door’s construction.
    Later still, the dead-end alley had been closed off, too—possibly by repairs made after one of the many fires that had burned through the area over the years. At that point, the only way in or out of the old warehouse involved either climbing down into the alley through a gap in the rooftops above, or heavy work with a saw and maul. Great for concealment, less so for quick entry and exit, and a major problem now that something had followed me to my hidey-hole.
    I first heard it come into the alley