Prince of Outcasts Read Online Free PDF

meditatively.
    â€œPerhaps,” John said, and then smiled. “Or perhaps they’re not as clever as you, Captain. I’ve noticed that extremely smart people tend to assume that there’s a deep-laid plan when they may be facing blundering incompetence. My grandmother the Queen Mother Sandra said
she
had to watch that tendency in herself, and she only had to walk into any room on Earth to be the smartest person in it.”
    Feldman chuckled, but grimly. “Ordinarily you might be right. But the things we’re fighting . . . they’re not stupid, worse luck.”
    â€œTrue, but a lot of their followers are dumb as a knapsack full of hammers,” John pointed out. “I think it goes with the territory.
I’ll eat you last
isn’t really a recruiting slogan to attract the intelligent.”
    Feldman gave him a considering look, and then a respectful nod. John was flattered . . . and slightly annoyed. If you were a young, handsome prince with an eye for the ladies and artistic inclinations people tended toassume you were a lightweight, for some reason. Nobody ever thought that about Órlaith, she was always taken seriously . . . though to be fair,
Órlaith
had never underestimated him. She knew he was perfectly
capable
at anything he put his mind to; she just thought he was lazy, and was always shoving work onto his plate like a second helping of boiled broccoli.
    Feldman turned his telescope towards the shore again. Time stretched. He’d noticed that happened when things got tense. A while ago, in fact—the same thing happened at tournaments, or before a performance, but never quite like
this.
Some of the younger sailors—younger than him—were looking a bit anxious, peering shoreward. Some of the others were relaxed enough that there was a quiet game of skat going on behind one catapult, though he’d have bet himself that the grinning woman who was raking in the pot had been the one who started it.
    One of the bits of barracks wisdom Evrouin had taught him was that you generally did a lot better at cards if you were focused and the other players weren’t.
    â€œ
Hel
lo,” Feldman said. “Something’s going on there. Boat going ashore from the Korean flagship—just one. White parley flag . . . no, and that’s a Japanese flag it’s flying too.”
    John’s eyebrows shot up. Reiko and her followers had made very clear that Dai-Nippon and the realm that called itself
Chosŏn Minjujŭi Inmin Konghwaguk
were deadly enemies.
Chosŏn
was ruled by the descendants of the man who’d run the northern part of that country before the Change. He’d been a spectacularly bad ruler then by all accounts, managing to starve his people even in the abundance of the ancient world, and he’d brought himself and his immediate followers through the chaotic aftermath of the Change by
eating
their enemies—not to mention many of their subjects. That had opened the way for certain
things
from beyond the world of common day; extreme evil often did, and his descendants had become far worse as they spiraled down that trap. They’d been raiding Japan’s less numerous survivors ever since, too. He had a strong impression that the grimly warlike cast of the Nihonjin was a result of that long merciless struggle.
    John stretched out a hand. Evrouin put his binoculars in it, and he leveled them. It was surprisingly difficult to keep them trained on the shore from a moving ship, and the way the picture swayed and pitched made his stomach swoop in sympathy for a moment before excitement drove it out of his awareness.
    â€œReiko’s coming down the road to meet the ones under the Japanese flag. . . . Two of them are in Nihonjin armor, whoever they are,” John said. “She’s got Egawa and six of her samurai with her. Mother of God, but I wish I could hear what’s being