Fires of the Desert (Children of the Desert Book 4) Read Online Free PDF Page B

I’ll take my leave now.”
    He stayed seated, regarding her without affection. “There’s quite a lot else,” he said in clipped tones, “but I suspect that’s all you’ll listen to at this point.”
    “Good day, Lord Oruen,” she said crisply, and strode from the room without looking back.
     

     
    The Palace took up as much room outdoors as in. There were the royal food gardens, flower gardens, and herb gardens, all interspersed with fruit and nut trees; the royal leisure-area; the lesser lounging spots, where benches and pavilions afforded shelter from sun and rain for courtiers and palace staff; even a small outdoor meditation spot, which for some reason had not been entirely destroyed during the Purge.
    Apparently even priests of the Northern Church had liked a quiet area in which to pray from time to time. All they had done was to remove all traces of the `pagan’ southern religion from the area. Even Alyea had to admit that the difference, in the end, was minimal.
    On sunny days, Alyea had often visited the meditation area herself; as it afforded no shelter from poor weather, she bypassed it today. She considered pausing to brood in one of the pavilions, but the grey of the day seemed to be creeping into her bones. She wanted to get out of the rain, out of the chill, into somewhere warm and comforting.
    Her thoughts turned to Deiq, waiting for her in what had once been the Northern Church tower. Ironic, that the place she had hated the most out of the entire city of Bright Bay was turning into her refuge.
    Oruen had been almost right, she mused: Deiq had a habit of bringing changes to any situation he became involved with. And those changes could be complicated.
    She passed through the outer palace gates with an absent-minded nod to the guards, barely noticing that they’d opened the gates for her and bowed. Normally she would have smiled at them, perhaps even paused to say hello if she knew one by name, but today such small courtesies seemed unimportant against the problem of what she was going to do about her mother.
    Pausing a few steps past and to one side of the gates, she admitted to herself that Oruen had been entirely right on one point: bringing Deiq to see her mother at the moment would be a bad idea. She’d have to handle the discussion alone, and she might as well do it now, while she stood within the Seventeen Gates.
    She turned left, deciding to pick up a bottle of Stecatr blue wine first. It was her mother’s favorite—and, of course, one of the most expensive wines sold in Bright Bay. Perhaps that would sweeten the discussion.
     

     
    Peysimun Mansion’s grounds boasted a tall fence and wide, sturdy gates that hadn’t been closed since the Purge; and even then, the gates hadn’t been guarded. But now they stood not only firmly shut, but attended by four burly guards in House livery of blue and green. Their expressions, under their rain hoods, ranged from surly to nervous.
    Alyea didn’t have to ask questions to understand the situation: her mother, in the face of the king’s refusal to help, had decided to set her own restraints and refuse her daughter entry altogether. As she’d never seen the men before, her mother must have gone to the unprecedented extent of hiring mercenaries.
    Idiot. She shouldn’t have allowed Deiq to distract her. This could have been avoided—probably.
    Two of the guards, older men with bristly, jowly faces and flat stares, moved two steps forward and a step closer together as Alyea stopped in front of the gates. The other two, both considerably younger, darted nervous glances at each other and actually backed up a step, provoking a snort of disgust from one of the older men.
    “Sorry, lady,” one of the older guards said, tone indifferent. “Peysimun Mansion is closed to visitors today.” His cold blue eyes watched her as though sizing up her desirability as a bed partner.
    “I’m not a visitor,” Alyea said cooly, crossing her arms, the neck of