Havenstar Read Online Free PDF Page B

of town society, most displayed the same
sort of quiet confidence this man had. He was dressed all in brown
and his clothes were of Trician quality, but they seemed to conform
to the dictates of the Rule only loosely. At a guess, she’d have
said he was dressed more for comfort than any desire to please
rule-chantors. His age she thought to be about thirty-five or
forty. When he swung himself out of the saddle with an easy animal
grace, she saw there was a long whip coiled at the side of his
saddle. She’d seen such before: the plaited hide of it would be
impregnated with slivers of glass. Not a weapon for the squeamish,
and her immediate thought was, A tough man . His eyes were
chips of black obsidian; the gaze he gave her as he crossed the
yard to the shop door was one of total disinterest. He had looked
and seen nothing that merited the slightest curiosity on his part
and his gaze ranged on to look past her into the shop.
    She turned
away, humbled and riled, and went to stand behind the counter
top.
    He stopped in
the doorway for a moment to look around. Even as he made the
greeting kinesis he scarcely seemed to notice her. When he spoke,
he was looking at the maps on the wall, not at her, and he had a
voice like a slide of gravel down a hillslope, all rough edges and
conflict. ‘Is Piers around?’ he asked. The tone was polite enough;
it was just the voice that was extraordinary. The cat backed up
against the wall in the far corner, its whole body shivering with
fear, all its fur on end, its teeth bared. She blinked in
astonishment. She’d never seen the animal in such a state before.
Whoever this man was, he’d reduced Yerrie to a mass of trembling
terror just by his presence.
    ‘I’m sorry,’
she said, eyes still on the cat. ‘He’s not here. How can I help
you?’ She wrenched her gaze away from Yerrie to look at the man. He
wore throwing knives. She’d never seen anyone but her father wear
those—to use them required a skill not many bothered to master.
    ‘I need to see
Piers. It is important. Where is he?’ He looked at her then, still
without much interest. He obviously did not intend to explain any
further.
    ‘He’s away on
a surveying trip. He’s expected back any day now.’
    ‘Ah. Then I
shall have to come again.’ He sketched a farewell kinesis and
swivelled on his heel.
    ‘Can I give
him a message?’ she asked, coldly polite. Some perverse part of her
wanted to detain him, wanted to have him really see her as a
person, instead of having his eyes flick over her as if she was
part of the furnishing, and a rather shabby part at that.
    He turned back
in the doorway. ‘It’s up-to-date maps I want, child, and you can
hardly supply those if Piers is still out on his surveying trip.’
The tone was still mild, but the ‘child’ rankled.
    Bastard, she
thought. In her mind she savoured the word forbidden by convention
to her tongue. In the corner, Yerrie spat.
    He heard and
turned his gaze on the cat, noticing it for the first time. The
animal’s back rose, fur hackled, and it snarled, a low growling in
the back of the throat.
    The effect on
the man was extraordinary. He stood stock still while a slow flush
spread from the back of his neck to his face, suffusing his
sun-tanned skin with colour. It wasn’t embarrassment, she realised,
it was shame. The man was ashamed, like a lad caught peeping in a
girl’s bedroom window as she undressed. For a moment he seemed at a
loss. Twice he made as if to speak, but closed his mouth each time
as if he could not trust himself. She gaped at him as he turned his
look back to her. A competent, whip-wielding, knife-throwing
Unstabler who blushed like a schoolboy? It was ridiculous. ‘Has
anyone else been asking for Piers lately?’ he asked finally. The
gravel-slide voice was explosively harsh and she almost jumped.
    ‘Everyone asks
for Piers,’ she replied tartly. ‘They don’t seem to think I know
enough about maps to sell one.’
    ‘I