Implied Spaces Read Online Free PDF Page A

priests.”
    “Monsters how?” asked Aristide.
    “They’re—” Grimacing. “Another species. Ones I’d never heard of, or seen. Blue skin, eyes like fire. And they sacrifice captives, and anyone else who disappoints them.”
    There were gasps from the listeners as this terrifying rumor was confirmed.
    “Your mission?” Grax asked in the sudden silence.
    “We knew the caravans were delayed here for fear of us. I was told to travel to the caravanserai and report on your plans—whether you’d come on, or try to retreat.”
    “Would you attack us either way?”
    “That wouldn’t be for me to decide.” Grax raised a foot. “ Probably!” Onos said quickly. “ Probably we’d attack!”
    The questions turned to the bandits’ strength, and where they would most likely strike at the caravan. The bandits were said to have two hundred riders, though not all of them would be available at any one time, since they raided not just the caravan routes but the plain of Gundapur, below the great desert plateau. The route down from the plateau, through the Vale of Cashdan, was the usual ambush site.
    Aristide stepped forward. “I would like to ask some questions of the prisoner, if I may.”
    Nadeer looked at him. “You may proceed.”
    Aristide looked at Onos. “How long have you been here at the caravanserai?”
    “Fifteen or twenty days.”
    “You have a mount?”
    “I have a horse, yes.”
    “And during that time,” Aristide said, “you could have left for Lake Toi whenever you desired. You could have abandoned your fellow bandits and those disagreeable priests and got away with your skin. And yet you remained…” He let this thought linger in the air for a moment.
    “ Why?” he asked finally.
    Onos swiped at his brow, leaving a dusty track on his skin. “I’m afraid of them. They’d come after me.”
    “You could have asked the seneschal, or some other official, for protection.”
    Onos looked at the seneschal. “He’d just hang me from the tower and announce a great success at suppressing the bandits.”
    Aristide’s brief acquaintance with the seneschal had not been such as to make this implausible. The seneschal himself, looking on, declined to be offended, and in fact seemedamused.
    “My point,” said Aristide, “is that you could have run, and you didn’t. Therefore you aren’t merely a thief whose gang was annexed by a more powerful outfit, but a willing member of the organization.”
    Onos looked at Aristide with a kind of sulky resentment. The others glared at Onos with increased malevolence.
    “How many caravans have you plundered?” Aristide asked.
    “Eleven, while I’ve been with the brotherhood.”
    “And the people in the caravans killed or sacrificed by the priests?”
    “All those we could catch,” Onos said. “Yes.”
    “What happened to the loot?”
    “It’s still there. At the Venger’s Temple.”
    There was a stir among the onlookers. A calculating look appeared on the faces of Grax, Nadeer, and the other caravan guards.
    “The Venger’s Temple is your headquarters, I take it?”
    An affirmative nod.
    “The spoil is there with the other loot, from the raids onto the plains?”
    “Except for that which was used to purchase supplies, yes.”
    Aristide looked at Nadeer. “I imagine that avarice is never far from our friend Onos’ mind,” he said. “A share of that loot would give him a comfortable life far from here, perhaps even make him rich. That is why he hasn’t fled from his monstrous priests.”
    Onos, defeated, slumped on the flagstones, did not bother to deny it.
    Grax turned to the seneschal. “He is convicted out of his own mouth. Shall we turn him over to you, to dispense the sultan’s justice?”
    The seneschal began to walk through the crowd to his office. He waved a hand in dismissal.
    “Why bother me with it?” he said. “Do what you will.”
    Grax looked at Nadeer, and they both shrugged. Nadeer’s shoulders had barely returned to their