Ecko Burning Read Online Free PDF Page B

Saravin to frown and study his friend more closely, but the scribe shooed the warrior from the front of his stall, followed him out. He began to let down the flickering, shifting curtain.
    “And how did your heat go?”
    Saravin chuckled. “Was drawn against Lithian, first thing this morning.” Saravin cast his eyes above, then his grin broadened and he winked. “I’m through again. Next bout this afternoon.”
    “Interesting,” Mael said.
    A collection of young, off-duty soldiers knocked into them, spilling wine from skins and goblets. They caught Saravin’s eye and muttered an apology before moving off into the crowd once more, spluttering with laughter.
    “You think you’ll get it?” Mael said. Again, that hint of annoyance.
    With a quick, impish chuckle completely at odds with his size, Saravin shrugged.
    “Get what?” the warrior said, with a wink. “Foundersdaughter’s Champion? Rhan’s empty seat on the Council of Nine? Can’t think what you mean.”
    Mael hissed, and Saravin chuckled again, a brief, sweet sound, oddly boyish. Then he lowered his voice, and said, “Someone has to do something, Mael. If not me, then...” He shrugged, let it tail away.
    The curtain was stuck, and Mael tugged at it harder, speaking as he pulled.
    “This is all madness. Haven’t you heard? There’s something wrong with the harvest.” The old scribe glanced up at the garlands - a veneer of hope that concealed a leering, unspoken fear. How much grass had been wasted in their making - in the celebratory burning that would come? “The city’s still in shock from Rhan’s death, we should be in mourning.” His eyes flicked to the palace above them, back. “So much is happening around us...” For a second, he glanced about them at the revelry. When he spoke again his voice contained a knife. “I can’t find my feet, gather my thoughts.”
    Saravin chuckled again. “You? The young prodigy who’s unlawful learning once cured a warrior doomed?”
    Mael frowned at the memory, said nothing. He tugged harder and suddenly the curtain came free, closing off the tent with a sharp slide that nearly made the old scribe stumble. Saravin caught him easily, then indicated a long pennon that flew from one side of the plaza.
    “You need an ale.”
    “You’re fighting this afternoon - get drunk and you’ll be a warrior doomed all over again.”
    “I’ll stick to water. Save you saving me twice. You’re a bit long in the tooth to be remembering those forbidden books now, old friend.”
    “Don’t you ‘old friend’ me.”
    Saravin laughed.
    They wandered slowly in the direction of the pennon, pausing to admire the stalls they passed on their way. The stallholders nodded at them, knowing both of them well enough by sight.
    “Pure terhnwood resin, straight from the plantation itself. Craft with this, it’s smoother than a maiden’s...”
    “First round’s always a winner, seek your fortune...”
    “Paints and colours, inks and powders! Dyes all the way from Southern Padesh...”
    The scribe hesitated for a moment to look at the colours offered by the dyer’s stall.
    “This is all crazed,” he said, his attention on the display before him. “You mark my words.”
    “Prophesying doom again?” The stallholder, it seemed, knew Mael’s ways. “What ails you this time, Brother?”
    The scribe shot a glance at Saravin, but the warrior had moved to the next stall along the row, where he was chatting with another of the morning’s fighters. Saravin slapped the woman sympathetically on her tanned shoulder.
    Mael turned back to the dyer, picking up a fragment of coloured cloth.
    “I’m afraid,” he said. “Afraid of the future. And afraid of -” He caught himself, but his eyes must have flicked to the palace - or to the statue - because the stallholder leaned forwards.
    “Hush!” He grabbed Mael by the shoulder of his tunic and leaned to speak into his ear. “Your thoughts are well known, Brother, to many of us