River Secrets Read Online Free PDF

dead.”
    “Not all of us. Good luck, Razo.”
    Victar waved farewell as he rode ahead, and Razo waved after him, then felt ashamed, naive, to have been friendly at all. Just a year ago, Victar was someone Razo might have tried to kill in battle. What a strange circumstance, how unsteady it made the road feel. He patted Bee Sting’s neck.
    The road spilled into a broad, paved avenue coursing through the center of the city. Half the Tiran soldiers led the way, and the remaining ten brought up the rear, like jailers herding convicts to the gallows. Ingridan citizens eased out of shop doors and leaned from upper windows, arms folded, gazes hot.
    They crossed the avenue’s second bridge, this one spanning a river four horses wide. Razo liked the rivers, blue tiles covering their banks, giving them a smooth, clean look.
    Every few blocks, crowded tenements and grand palaces pulled out of the way of paved squares. Often there were trees, though nothing like the wild, deep Forest that Razo knew. These trees rose slender from planter boxes, their foliage trimmed round on the bottom and pinched off at the top in the shape of a candle flame. Others wore their greenery in perfect balls and shook glossy leaves and tiny white blossoms, their odor claiming both tangy and sweet flavors at once.
    Razo was peering into a courtyard’s turquoise-tiled fountain as he rode by when something struck him on the cheek.
    “Go home!” A group of boys a few years younger than Razo stood in the square, their hands dripping with soggy pieces of orange fruit. Razo wiped the pulp from his face and flicked it at the back of Enna’s hand.
    “Ew,” she said, shaking it off.
    Another fruit whizzed past their heads, making Enna alert. A third might have hit Finn, but a wind blew it curiously off course, and it slammed into the nose of Tumas, the Tiran soldier directly behind them. Enna was careful not to smile, staring to the side with an extremely proper expression.
    “Good shot, Enna-girl,” Razo whispered.
    Tumas cursed at the boys.
    “What are you going to do, blue jackets?” One of the boys planted his feet and raised his fists. “You lost us a war, and my fists bet you’ll lose a street fight.”
    Tumas wheeled his horse out of formation and cantered at them. The boys pulled their bolder compatriot into an alley, and Captain Ledel ordered Tumas back.
    Razo was not particularly eager to keep the seething soldier as a foe and offered him a friendly grin. “My ma used to soak her hands in fruity water. Maybe it’s good for our skin?”
    “The first chance I get…,” said Tumas in the hollow manner of one always congested. He sniffed and rode ahead without finishing the threat, leaving Razo to imagine.
    The avenue merged into a broad crossroads, and at last they caught sight of the palace. It nestled between two rivers, far behind iron gates, and proclaimed its magnificence not with towers or banners, but simply by its immensity. Razo counted four stories, forty-four front-facing windows per story, and guessing there were two other wings with a large courtyard in the center … he calculated in his head, a trick Talone had taught him for estimating enemy troops from the number of wagons or tents.
    “How big?” asked Finn.
    “Averaging three windows per room,” said Razo, “I would guess over five hundred rooms in the main structure, not including outbuildings, barracks…”
    “That’s too big,” said Enna.
    “… stables, gardens and gardener shacks, separate servant quarters, and I’d guess a dairy, animal workers, a mill, all self-sustaining—”
    “What do you do with five hundred rooms?”
    “It’d only make sense in a siege, though those gates aren’t built for sieges, only really useful for keeping out the riffraff.”
    “Bayern’s capital was made for defense,” said Finn, “but Ingridan assumes it’ll be doing the attacking.”
    Razo slowed Bee Sting as they neared the gates. “Once we’re inside, d’you think