In Heaven and Earth Read Online Free PDF

“Nonetheless, I swore an oath. Let me in so I can
treat you.”
    “ What of your
fierce warriors? Are they your bodyguards, good knight?”
    Vairya was laughing at
him. Irritated, Reuben dug out a smirk of his own. “You mean my
orderlies? Absolutely essential to the healing process.” He was
starting to enjoy this.
    “ Orderlies in
armour? How original.”
    Reuben shrugged one
shoulder. “Believe me, the first time you get punched by some
convulsing idiot, you see the need.”
    “ Invalids,”
Vairya said, his voice dripping sarcasm. “Such a
nuisance.”
    “ Damn right.
Some won’t even let me in their gates.”
    Vairya raised his brows.
“Gracious me, Sir Reuben, I begin to see why someone might have
laid a geas upon you.”
    “ Some people
just don’t appreciate my bedside manner. Let me in, Lord
Vairya.”
    “ So you can
show me your bedside manner?”
    Oh, so the little shit
was going to flirt with him. Unimpressed, Reuben crossed his arms
and glared. “Because you’re sick, and I have siege
weapons.”
    As soon as he said it, he
wondered if he had pushed his luck too far. People tended not to
recognise his sense of humour. They were more likely to take him at
face value and hate him.
    Vairya, after a second of
incredulity, collapsed into a fit of laughter, leaning hard against
the battlements. The laughter lit him up, and Reuben had to bite
back a smile of appreciation. For someone who had been designed as
a glorified database, he was too pretty for his own
good.
    When Vairya stopped
laughing and stood up properly, he said, “I will let you in, and
two of your orderlies, but know this, Sir Knight: mere medicine
alone will not cure the Dolorous Wound I have suffered.”
    He left the wall, and
Reuben rocked back on his heels to wait. Something about that last
comment had tickled his memory. It had been something he read, in
those long months in witness protection when he had nothing to do
but wait for the trial and read his way through over three
millennia’s worth of literature. In the cold, clean isolation of a
room in space, he had been drawn to old stories, the passion,
violence, and colour of knights and heroes, devils and the doomed,
the plays of Shakespeare, the poetry of dying empires, the raging
against the dying of the light of those who could only reach the
stars in their dreams. When he had finally been set loose to live
his own life again, he had been more educated, if no wiser. All he
had learnt from his reading was that people were still stupid in
the same old ways, no matter the era or the technology they
wielded.
    It had been oddly
comforting at the time, when he was face to face with the price of
his own hubris, but there had been times since when he wondered if
he had missed something.
    By the time the wicket
gate creaked open, he had chased down the reference, and he didn’t
bother to hide his incredulity. “The Dolorous Blow was suffered by
the Fisher King in Arthurian myth. You, on the other hand, just
have a particularly irritating head injury.”
    “ Irritating to
me or you?” Vairya inquired, holding out his hand.
    “ Both.”
    Vairya laughed again.
Closer up, he looked subtly different to the body in the infirmary.
Everyone did, when they were projecting their own self-image, but
there was so much more life and mischief in his face that he looked
like his own brother. “Do come into my city, Sir Reuben. We are
honoured to have you as our guest.”
    “ The honour is
all mine,” Reuben said, remembering some manners, and waved to two
of his nanoknights to follow him inside.
    “ Aren’t you
going to ask why I chose that particular myth?”
    “ Since a wound
to the thigh was a medieval euphemism for castration, I’m just
going to assume—”
    “ My dick works
just fine,” Vairya snapped, the first hint of irritation in his
voice. “I chose the Fisher King because he can’t be healed by just
anyone. It has to be someone worthy.”
    Reuben wasn’t convinced.
There