Honor's Paradox-ARC Read Online Free PDF

thing could happen to him.
    “Not until you make me master-ten of my barracks again and withdraw that bitch sister of yours. You must see that her presence here isn’t right!”
    Get out, get out, get out . . .
    “I suppose you know that your boots are smoking. I can’t be blackmailed, Vant. It would be a betrayal of my position.”
    The cadet beat at his smoldering clothes with a kind of exasperated irritation.
    “You’re Highlord, dammit!” The furnace breath of the pit made him increasingly hoarse as his throat closed. “You can do . . . what you please!”
    “Not so,” came the pitiless answer. “To lead is also to serve . . . something that you never seem to have grasped. What you ask would be a betrayal of responsibility. Come out, Vant. Now.”
    Fire flared under Vant’s hands.
    “I don’t believe this. I don’t accept it. It isn’t fair!”
    “Is the truth? Come out. Here, take my hand.”
    The flames rose, licking from pants to jacket, with a sudden rush to the hair. At last Vant believed the unthinkable.
    “I will . . . have justice,” he panted as the smoke gnawed at his throat, “or I will . . . have revenge.”
    Torisen/I/we reach for him, but Brier stops us.
    “He would have pulled you in, lord.”
    Tori didn’t deserve that. Did I? Did Vant?
    Pyre succeeded pyre, as if all the flames in the world roiled through her dreams:
    At the Haunted Lands keep, where her father Ganth presumably had burned.
    But I wasn’t there either. Kindrie told me.
    In Wilden’s forecourt.
    Ah, Rawneth. How much will your people endure when you put their children to the torch?
    At the Cataracts.
    Oh, Tirandys, Senethari, I will never forget.
    At the Cataracts again.
    This was confusing. Who had told her about the common pyre and why did she remember it now? A ring, a blackened finger, broken off, pocketed.
    I took both from my father to give to my brother, but who else would do such a thing, and why?
    She couldn’t see the faces of the living or of the dead. What she did see, abruptly, was a fair-haired young man with a swollen nose.
    “I think you’ve broken it,” he said in a nasal, petulant whine.
    He looked like Timmon. His eyes were Timmon’s, wide with surprise to hear his father’s voice issuing from his lips. Once again the Ardeth Lordan had invaded her dreams, damn him.
    “Why did you do it, Pereden?”
    That was her brother again, speaking to Timmon’s father. They were in the Highlord’s tent at the Cataracts. Torisen sounded exhausted, as well he might be, having fought and won such a battle. Worse, he had just come from culling the bloody field where he had granted so many of the fatally wounded the White Knife. The least they had deserved was an honorable death at the hands of their lord. In death as in life, they were his responsibility, at whatever cost to him. Yes, he was exhausted, but there was hurt in his voice too, and a desperate need to understand.
    “Why, Peri?”
    “What else had you left me to do? Damn.” His nose had started to bleed. Torisen gave him a handkerchief. Pereden began to pace, he and a bewildered Timmon both, overlapping, caught in the same dream of a memory that was Torisen’s. “Taking my rightful place as commander of the Southern Host, turning my father against me . . . You lied to him!”
    Behind Pereden’s fury, his son’s bafflement and interest grew. Jame knew from a previous dream where this conversation would end, if not what went before. Timmon mustn’t know, even if to stop now was to thwart her own curiosity. Why had Torisen broken not just Pereden’s nose but his neck, then sent his body to burn on the common pyre?
    No more of this. No more. Wake up, wake up, wake up—
    And she did, to find Rue hovering anxiously over her.
    “You were having a nightmare, lady.”
    “You’re telling me.”
    Jame threw back the furs. Her slim, naked body steamed with sweat while the cold air raised goosebumps down her arms.
    “Damn and blast that