Fate's Edge Read Online Free PDF Page B

to stand and watch the blood spread. He was too busy cutting into the creature that killed her. This memory was false. It came from his nightmares.
    “What are you thinking of?” Lady Virai asked.
    “I’m remembering my family dying.”
    “How did you feel when they were killed?”
    “Helpless.”
    There. She had pulled it out of him. It hurt. He didn’t expect it to, but it did.
    Lady Virai nodded. “How well can you handle the Broken?”
    “I swim through it like a fish through clear water.”
    She gave him a flat look.
    “The Edge is very long but narrow,” he told her. “The Mire, where my family lived, is boxed on two sides by impassable terrain. There are only two ways out: to the Weird and the Dukedom of Louisiana, or to the Broken and the State of Louisiana. The Dukedom uses the Mire as a dumping ground for its exiles. They murder any Edger who approaches that boundary. So that border is closed, which leaves only one avenue of escape, to the Broken. Most of my family had too much magic to survive that crossing, so it fell to me to procure supplies and other things we needed. I’ve traveled through the Broken since I was a child. I have contacts there, and I’ve taken care to maintain them.”
    Lady Virai pondered his face.
    Here it comes.
    “So happens that I can use you.”
    Aha!
    “A few hours ago a group of thieves broke into the Pyramid of Ptah in West Egypt.” Lady Virai nodded at the map, where the peninsula that was Florida in the Broken thrust into the ocean. “The thieves stole a device of great military importance to the Egyptians. The Hand likely commissioned this theft. To make matters worse, the thieves were supposed to hand off their merchandise to the Louisianans, and they chose to do it in Adrianglian territory. Their meeting didn’t go as planned, and now Adrianglia is involved, and the Egyptians are threatening to send the Claws of Bast into our lands to retrieve the object.”
    Kaldar frowned. The Hand was bad, the Mirror was dangerous, but the Claws of Bast were in a league of their own. There was a reason why their patron goddess was called the Devouring Lady.
    “Can you handle a wyvern?” Lady Virai asked.
    “Of course, my lady.” Not much difference between an enormous flying reptile and a horse, really.
    “Good. You will be issued one, together with funds, equipment, and other things you may require. I want you to use it to fly to the south, find this device, and bring it to me. Find the object, Kaldar. I don’t care if you have to chase it to the moon; I want it in my hands, and I want it yesterday. Do I make myself clear?”
    “Yes. One question?”
    Lady Virai raised her eyebrows a quarter of an inch.
    “Why me?”
    “Because the West Egyptians tells me the thieves are Edgers,” she said.
    “How do they know?”
    Her eyes flashed with annoyance. “They didn’t specify. But it’s hardly in their best interests to lie. The Hand hired the Edgers to do their dirty work, and now they have vanished into the Broken. They think they are beyond my reach. Your job is to prove them wrong. You may go now. Erwin will brief you and see to the details.”
    Kaldar ducked his head and headed for the door. Fate finally smiled at him.
    “Kaldar.”
    He turned and looked at her.
    “I’m taking a gamble,” she said. “I’m gambling that you are smart as well as pretty, and those smarts will keep you following my orders. Don’t disappoint me, Kaldar. If you fail because of lack of ability, I will simply discard you. But if you betray me, I will retire you. Permanently.”
    He grinned at her. “Understood, my lady.”
     
    THE briefing room lay just a short walk from the conference room. Kaldar rapped his knuckles on the door and swung it open. Erwin rose from a chair with a neutral smile.
    Lady Virai’s pet flash sniper had a pleasant face, neither handsome nor unattractive. His short hair, halfway between dark blond and light brown, didn’t attract the eye. Of average