Jimmy and the Crawler Read Online Free PDF

quite a different story: they would be impossible to detect easily, and James knew that anyone he passed by could be working for Keshian Intelligence. He might spend days observing these people before he got a hint of who the true agents were.
    Lord Hazara-Khan might be content to leave Durbin’s miserable inhabitants to the mercies of the governor’s rule, but the city was still a gateway into the Empire, and the head of Kesh’s Intelligence Service would wish to know who passed through that gateway, as well as keeping the governor’s excesses somewhat in check.
    By the time James got to the opposite end of the docks he had spied at least two other agents watching for people such as himself. He knew he would attract attention if he made a third reconnaissance, even in disguise. The docks, like the city square, or other heavily travelled areas of any city, had a rhythm, a flow of people from one place to another, and just breaking that flow would draw notice.
    His time was limited, for the sight of a desert man at the docks, while not unusual, was less common than sailors and traders, so he kept walking.
    Jazhara and William would be arriving the next day on a diplomatic mission for the prince to the Governor of Durbin. Given the horrors they had encountered so far since the three had been given the mandate to recover the Tear of the Gods, it seemed a good idea to begin at the top – the governor’s palace – and work down as they sought out any magical or demonic influences. Once that charade was accomplished, Arutha had left it up to James to decide how to proceed. Being in Durbin meant they could return to the Kingdom if needs be, or venture into the surrounding countryside should the trail take them outside the city. As Jazhara’s people were encamped to the south, her taking a small retinue of guards out of the city by horse or camel would not draw undue attention. James relished the possibilities, and discovered he was also enjoying the responsibilities given to him by the prince. Always without false modesty, and with more than his share of bravado, Jimmy the Hand, now Sir James, Knight of the Court, was finding his rise as addictive as any drug sold in the back alleys. He also discovered that he lacked personal ambition, wishing for no wealth or power for its own sake, but only the opportunity to serve Arutha.
    Almost giddy with the realization that he was having the most fun he had experienced in months, he set off to see what Durbin had to offer.
    The girl was unusually attractive and a bit unexpected. She was Kingdom-born by appearances, with a fair skin only found along the eastern Kingdom frontier in Great Kesh. The usual tavern dancers in Kesh tended to be buxom and plump, but she was neither. Slender, with a nice roundness in the appropriate places, she had blue eyes and almost black hair. She wore a jade-green costume consisting of a brief top and even briefer bottoms, and a swirl of gauzy veils that floated around her as she danced. She moved slowly to a drum-and-pipe melody played indifferently by two musicians sitting near the tiny stage in the corner. At least this tavern had a stage, James reflected. He had been in a few places where the girl would be kicking over drinks on the bar or knocking food off the table if the customers were too slow in making room for her.
    Sipping his second-rate ale, he watched her from the bar as she finished dancing and worked her way through the room, seeking customers for whatever the traffic would bear. Some legendary dancers had accumulated great wealth by being the object of desire of wealthy merchants, at least in Keshian lore. Those stories originated in the great pleasure palaces of the city of Kesh, where nobility and wealthy commoners would mingle and the most beautiful courtesans in the Empire lived in luxury, and where jaded men of immeasurable riches would ignore them too long for dancers they could not have. It was almost poetic, thought James; and