Shadow Games: The Fourth Chronicles of the Black Company: First Book of the South Read Online Free PDF

do.”
    “There’s stuff we’ve got to do, according to you. Who says what we got to do has
     to wait on what she’s got to do?”
    And Goblin jumped on me. With both feet. “We put up with your infatuation for
     about twenty years, Croaker,” he exaggerated. “Because it was amusing. Something
     to ride you about when times got boring. But it ain’t nothing I mean to get
     killed over, I absodamnlutely guarantee. Even if she makes us all field
     marshals.”
    I warded a flash of anger. It was hard, but Goblin was right. I had no business
     hanging around there, keeping everyone at maximum risk. The longer we waited,
    the more certain it was that something would go sour. We were having enough
     trouble getting along with the Tower Guards, who resented our being so close to
     their mistress after haying fought against her for so many years.
    “We ride out in the morning,” I said. “My apologies. I was elected to lead the
     Company, not just Croaker. Forgive me for losing sight of that.”
    Crafty old Croaker. One-Eye and Goblin looked properly abashed. I grinned. “So
     go get packed. We’re gone with the morning sun.”
    She wakened me in the night. For a moment I thought . . .
    I saw her face. She had heard.
    She begged me to stay just one more day. Or two, at the most. She did not want
     to be here any more than we did, surrounded and taunted by all that she had
     lost. She wanted to go away, to go with us, to remain with me, the only friend
     she’d ever had—
    She broke my heart.
    It sounds sappy when you write it down in words, but a man has to do what a man
     has to do. In a way I was proud of me. I did not give an inch.
    “There is no end to it,” I told her. “There’ll always be just one more thing
     that has to be done. Khatovar gets no closer while I wait. Death does. I value
     you, too. I don’t want to leave . . . Death lurks in every shadow in this place.
    It writhes in the heart of every man who resents my influence.” It was that kind
     of empire too, and in the past few days a lot of old imperials were given cause
     to resent me deeply.
    “You promised me dinner at the Gardens in Opal.”
    I promised you a lot more than that, my heart said. Aloud, I replied, “So I did.
    And the offer still stands. But I have to get my men out of here.”
    I turned reflective while she turned uncharacteristically nervous. I saw the
     fires of schemes flickering behind her eyes, being rejected. There were ways she
     could manipulate me. We both knew that. But she never used the personal to gain
     political ends. Not with me, anyway.
    I guess each of us, at some time, finds one person with whom we are compelled
     toward absolute honesty, one person whose good opinion of us becomes a
     substitute for the broader opinion of the world. And that opinion becomes more
     important than all our sneaky, sleazy schemes of greed, lust,
    self-aggrandizement, whatever we are up to while lying the world into believing
     we are just plain nice folks. I was her truth object, and she was mine.
    There was only one thing we hid from one another, and that was because we were
     afraid that if it came into the open it would reshape everything else and maybe
     shatter that broader honesty.
    Are lovers ever honest?
    “I figure it’ll take us three weeks to reach Opal. It’ll take another week to
     find a trustworthy shipmaster and to work One-Eye up to crossing the Sea of
     Torments. So twenty-five days from today I’ll go to the Gardens. I’ll have the
     Camelia Grotto reserved for the evening.” I patted the lump next to my heart.
    That lump was a beautifully tooled leather wallet containing papers
     commissioning me a general in the imperial armed forces and naming me a
     diplomatic legate answerable only to the Lady herself.
    Precious, precious. And one good reason some longtime imperials had a big hate
     on for me.
    I am not sure just how that came about. Some banter during one of those rare
     hours when she was not