Needle Rain Read Online Free PDF

deal.”
    Samos cleared his throat. “That would be treason.” He curled his fingers round the hilt of the dagger at his waist.
    Drager tilted his head to the side, as if he had seen some strange and rare animal. “But so is what you propose. We might both lose our heads if either one of us betrays the other. You must not think me weak, Mr. Samos.” His deep voice didn’t waver but there was a sheen of sweat on his face and, every now and then, a twitch in a muscle on his neck.
    Is he afraid? And here he’d thought the man ate ice for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
    “I take precautions.” Drager clicked his fingers.
    A square of the ceiling slid quietly back to reveal an olive-skinned bald man with hooded eyes. A loaded crossbow rested in his hands. The man’s forehead shone with perspiration. A shifting of the shadows meant there might be more than one man up there.
    This was not the ceiling of an honest man or even the ceiling of a man who was a zhenjui Needle Master.
    “Let me show you how we may both achieve what we wish to. Come.”
    What have I done? Yet he followed Drager through a door the man fumbled to unlock, as if the keys were something new. They went down a dog-leg flight of stairs. He’d been foolish. Punka had always told him he needed to think before he leaped, though this time he had thought, maybe just not for long enough.
    They entered a low room beneath ground level. The air was cold. The walls were stone and mortar. In the center sat a heavy timber table well provided with manacles. It looked unscratched and the manacles bright, unrusted. Fear shuddered through Samos, clean and chill.
    A yellow light came from a cone-shaped trink light dangling over the table on a silver chain. Dainty, beautiful, and the product of a master trinketologist. Round the edges of the cone was a procession of wolves in onyx, each chasing the others’ tails. It would have cost a tall stack of grints. Maybe Drager judged that a light that lasted until its maker died was worth it.
    “Sometimes, when inserting needles I need my patient absolutely still.”
    He nodded. You lying bastard.
    The room smelled of cleaning fluid and a flowery fragrance, and menace oozed from every corner, every brick. Slowly, a smile spread across his lips. Violence he knew. It was his profession. If Drager meant to scare him, it had not worked. He felt like a horseman settling into the saddle, like a sword sliding from the sheath at the start of a battle.
    Drager had been kneeling before a small chest. He rose, pocketing a set of keys. A wooden box rested across the palm of his hand.
    “This is the fulcrum to our success.” He laid the box on the table and slid back its lid. The inside was divided into two sections. One section contained several thin golden needles – so thin they were almost invisible.
    “These are memory needles, and with them go these – memory worms.” Using finger and thumb he picked out a brown wormlike thing as long his thumbnail. It squirmed and whirred and Samos could see the lines where it articulated.
    “I must insert the needle so that it goes deep into your brain, and the worm is then threaded onto the part of the needle that remains on the outside. It will record all that you see and feel and hear for about thirty minutes. Long enough for the precise insertions of the Immolator needles to be recorded. These worms are trinkettons, like my light up there.” He pointed at it. “Made by a trinketologist to exacting specifications. Flesh and steel fused into one mechanism. Each segment of them holds an identical memory. All one needs to do is swallow one segment to know what the worm knows. You understand?”
    He would not show fear. “Are they...safe?”
    Compassion flickered across Drager’s face. His neck twitched several times. “I’ve...not used them before, but yes, I believe they are safe.”
    Drager clicked his fingers. The three men Samos had known were waiting just out of sight came swiftly