Honor Among Thieves Read Online Free PDF

jest. Clearly Malden had scored a point with her.
    Cythera didn’t seem to see it that way. “Be more kind,” she said to him, “please. Balint may be guilty of much, but she still deserves some respect.”
    “Ask the elves how much,” Malden said.
    “The elves,” Croy said, shaking his head. “That makes me think—when we meet the magistrate, what do we tell him of the elves?”
    “If he’s to know of her crimes,” Malden pointed out, “we’ll need to say something. After all, it was their city Balint toppled—nearly killing all of them in the process, not to mention us.”
    “Once the king knows the elves are at large in his kingdom, though,” Cythera said, “I shudder to think what he’ll do. Send his knights to round them up, surely, and then—no. No, I won’t even think of that.” She put her head in her hands. “Can we not just tell him that the elves all perished when Cloudblade fell?”
    “And get me cooked for mass murder?” Balint said, her eyes wide. “You know that’s a lie. The elves survived. Most of them, anyway.”
    “A blessing you had no hand in achieving,” Croy said. “You did not seem to care if they did all die, when you toppled Cloudblade.”
    Malden shook his head. “It matters little. Our king has no authority to have you hanged. The worst he can do is send you north,” he pointed out, “which he’s bound to do anyway, no matter how many of them you killed. So it doesn’t matter what crimes we heap upon you, since the punishment will be the same.”
    “I’ll take my lumps for what I did. I acted in the interest of my king, that’s all,” Balint insisted. When the humans didn’t relent and free her on the spot, she shrank within her ropes. “It’s been a long ride and I need to make water,” she said then, looking away from their faces. “Which of you brave young men wants to pull down my breeches for me?”
    Croy recoiled in disgust. That was what Balint had wanted, of course. She smiled broadly and tried to catch Malden’s eye.
    It was Cythera who responded, however. “I’ll take her to the privy,” she said, rising from her seat. Once standing, however, she let out a gasp.
    Malden spun around in his chair and saw a pair of men coming toward them, pushing their way through the common room. They were not dressed in the cloaks-of-eyes the city watch of Ness wore, but he knew immediately they were men of the law. Each wore a jerkin of leather jack with steel plates sewn to the elbows and shoulders, and each of them had a weapon in his hand. They had gold crowns painted on their cloaks as insignia of office.
    Even without their uniforms he would have recognized them as lawmen, just from the smug look on their faces. They were bigger than anyone else in the room, and that look said they knew it. Their rough features and tiny eyes marked them as men who wouldn’t back down from a fight as well. Malden had spent his whole life learning how to recognize such signs—and learning how to avoid the men who showed them.
    “Good sirs,” Croy said, rising and spreading his arms wide in welcome. “I thank you for coming. We’d planned on bringing her to the keep directly, but perhaps you can save us the journey.”
    One of the kingsmen—the one who still had most of his teeth—stared down at the dwarf and frowned. “What’s this?”
    “Nobody said nothin’ ’bout a dwarf girl,” the other one said, looking at his comrade. A bad scar crossed his neck, just one side of his windpipe.
    “This,” Croy said, “is Balint, late of the service of the dwarven envoy at Redweir. She’s broken her oath and—”
    “We didn’t come for a dwarf,” the first one, the toothy one, told Croy.
    Malden slowly pushed his chair back from the table. He tried not to make a sound as its legs dragged across the floorboards. So occupied, he failed to notice that he was backing up into a wall. When the back of his head struck the plaster, he looked to either side, searching