Rock of Ages Read Online Free PDF Page A

just jumped half a foot, but was what people always said in these situations.
    “My apologies,” Maijstral said. “I’m light-footed by profession, and sometimes I forget that I should shuffle a bit or clear my throat.” Which is, more or less, what he always said in these situations.
    Maijstral offered three fingers in handclasp—having once stolen her jewelry permitted him a certain intimacy—and was given three in return. They approached one another and sniffed one another’s ears, and then Maijstral sniffed Roberta’s wrist. The odor of Roberta’s perfume sent a shimmer of pleasure up Maijstral’s spine, something that caused him to reflect that the custom of shaking hands—recently revived by the Constellation Practices Authority as a “natural, human custom” to replace the refined ear-sniffing of the Khosali Empire—had a long way to travel before it could replace the voluptuous pleasure of approaching a beautiful woman’s pulsing throat and taking a glorious whiff.
    “It’s an unexpected pleasure to see you,” Maijstral said. “I ran into your Mr. Kuusinen, who informed me you were here.”
    “Allow me to introduce my Aunt Bathsheba,” Roberta said. “She’s my favorite member of the family. We call her Batty.”
    “Your servant,” Maijstral said. Aunt Batty’s soft dark fur was thinned with age, and she’d perched a pair of spectacles on her muzzle. Lace hung from her pointed ears.
    Maijstral was too familiar with the genealogies of aristocratic Imperial families, with their sibs-by-adoption and cousins-german and morganatic marriages and fostering-patterns, to wonder how a human duchess managed to have a Khosali aunt. He sniffed Aunt Batty’s ears and offered her two fingers in handclasp, and she returned him three.
    “Forgive the intimacy,” she said, “but I feel as if I know you quite well. I’m writing a multivolume work about you, you see.”
    Maijstral blinked. He didn’t know whether to believe this remark, or, if believed, to take it seriously.
    “Are you indeed?” he managed.
    “Two volumes so far. The first was rather twee, I think in retrospect, but the style of the second settled down nicely, so I have hopes for the third.”
    Maijstral sighed. Any number of hack biographies had appeared since he’d been ranked first in the burglar standings, and most were filled with a glittering scintillation of errors, some of which he’d cheerfully supplied himself.
    “I hardly think myself worthy of the attention,” he said.
    “On the contrary,” Batty said. “I’ve found you quite an interesting character, well worth the study. Of course I’ve had to make a few guesses concerning things not on the public record. And now that I’ve met you, I’ll be most interested to discover whether my surmises are anywhere near the mark.”
    Maijstral laughed uncomfortably. “I hope I won’t disappoint you.”
    “I’m sure you won’t, however it turns out. Unlike so many of my species, I’m almost never disappointed in humans—even when someone does something that I can’t entirely approve of, it’s always for the most interesting reasons.”
    Maijstral was at a loss for a response to this. He couldn’t tell whether she disapproved of him already, or planned to disapprove in the future, or if the remark wasn’t directed to him at all, but rather to the general run of her biographical victims. . . . So he said the only thing available to him, which was, “Ah.”
    “And there are so many people here who have known you,” Batty went on, “Roberta, of course, and the Prince, who knew you at school. And Mr. Kuusinen—well, he’s a first-class observer, and I’ve already spoken to him.”
    Maijstral felt a chill of alarm at the mention of Kuusinen’s name. The man was far too first-class an observer. There were certain things he hoped Kuusinen never guessed at—there was a little service he’d done the Empire, for one, that could get him killed if certain parties in