Ruler of Naught Read Online Free PDF Page A

brother that that word brought to mind)...
Brandon’s flesh was mottled with purpling bruises, but there were no visible
wounds. “Back.” Brandon’s breath hissed as he fell into bed. “Carrying. One of
the dogs.”
    “A dog?” Osri reached for understanding—he knew very well what
dogs Brandon was referring to—but couldn’t find it. “You ran through the palace
Minor, exchanging fire with Dol’jharian soldiers, while carrying a dog ?”
    “Yes. Wounded. By some predatory animal brought by the
Dol’jharians.”
    That was exactly the sort of idiocy Osri had hated Brandon
for all their lives. Carrying a 30-to-40-kilo dog through a couple of miles of
corridor under heavy fire when he could have been doing something useful. Like
halting the torture of Osri’s father sooner.
    Afraid he would say something he would regret, Osri hit the hatch
control and walked out, though he’d meant to take his own shower first.
    The dispensary was not many steps away, but it seemed farther
to Osri, who did not want to encounter any of the wretched outlaws crewing the
Columbiad. Especially its captain, who was a tempath. Supposedly her kind read
emotions, not actual thoughts, but the very idea of some outlaw able to sift
anything from his mental state was unbearably repellent. And the worst thing
was, she would be able to glean that reaction from him. He did not want to be
shot out of hand.
    He smacked the dispensary hatch control with his fist.
    His mood worsened when he stepped in and found the huge,
grizzled ship’s surgeon waiting, fists the size of the melons Osri had been
compelled to cut up under this same man’s orders, for Montrose was also the
ship’s cook. Osri had been teaching navigation for five years, a fact these
villains knew, which compounded the insult of working as a cook.
    “He’s asleep, Schoolboy.” Montrose’s voice rumbled in his
chest like thunder.
    The presence of an Arkad dog at the big man’s side, its
masked gaze intent on Osri, did not lessen his menace. It’s not wounded;
there must two of them on board. He had little experience of companion
animals, let alone the ancient breed maintained by the royal family and favored
others. Osri’s mother Risiena had forbidden animals in her presence. “Filthy,
destructive things.”
    Past Montrose, at the other end of the dispensary, the doors
to the three recovery berths were closed. Above each of them yellow indicator
lights with a black quarter-section blinking in rotation glowed, indicating
quarter-gee acceleration within.
    “I want to see my father.” Osri made an effort to keep his
voice even. Montrose had demonstrated early on, with detached exactitude, his
opinion of Osri’s lawful authority as an officer of the navy. The last of the
bruises had taken weeks to fade.
    “You want to worry him to death with interrogation,”
Montrose stated. “I can tell you more than he can. Ask your questions. I will
answer to the best of my knowledge.”
    But this Osri was unable to do. Most of the questions
crowding his mind were personal, some were political, and all of them he refused
to discuss with an outlaw. He was forced back to the most fundamental of all,
and he hated himself for how plaintive his voice came out, “At least show me
that he is alive.”
    The monstrous tangle of grey-shot black eyebrows lifted over
Montrose’s deepset gaze, then the Rifter surgeon-chef shifted out of the way.
“If you waken him, I will put you in your bunk for a month,” he warned, in the
typical manner of Rifters.
    Osri had learned that the old bully meant exactly what he
said. He swallowed his irritation and managed a short nod. Montrose touched the
rightmost of three door controls, revealing a tiny single berth, barely big
enough to hold an infirmary bed, with a med console and a visitor’s stool next
to it.
    Under the warm-sheet lay Osri’s father, moored to the med
console by a tangle of tubes and wires. He looked unsettlingly like an
oversized,