Sin Eater's Daughter 2 - The Sleeping Prince Read Online Free PDF

and I’m tall enough for a girl. His feet are crossed at the ankle as he leans against the wall with an air of studied nonchalance that I can see straight through. He raises his head at the sound of my footsteps and my mouth suddenly dries.
    “I’ve been waiting for you,” he says in his low, ragged voice. All of him is ragged: his patched cloak; his shabby gloves, the fingertips thin and worn; his scuffed boots. His words always seem to catch on my insides, like a goose grass burr, or a torn fingernail dragged across silk. His voice sticks. “How was the meeting?”
    My voice is thankfully steady when I reply, though my heart still beats like the wings of a bird against a cage. “If you’d come, then you’d know.”
    “Alas, I had other plans. Skulking. Creeping. Avoiding discovery and possible arrest. The usual.”
    “How did you even know there was a meeting?”
    “Skulking. Creeping. I just said that, pay attention.” When I raise my eyebrows at him, my lips pursed, he smiles and continues. “I overheard a pair of soldiers moaning about having to police it. Were there many of them there?”
    I try not to return his smile, and fail, as some of my anxiety recedes. “We practically had one each.”
    “Was it that bad?”
    “It was that bad,” I say, my smile fading, the knot inside my heart returning and tightening. “Golems marched on Haga last night and destroyed the temples there. Four hundred people were killed.”
    His mouth opens, but he says nothing, waiting for me to continue.
    “The Council think he’ll move for Chargate next. It’s not that far from here, fifty miles at most. We’re at war, officially.” I take a deep breath. “They’ve closed the border.”
    Silas nods, chewing his lips thoughtfully before he speaks. “It was bound to happen, sooner or later.”
    “Sooner, it seems.”
    His mouth becomes a line and he speaks hesitantly. “What about Lief?”
    I shake my head, glancing at the forest involuntarily. I don’t believe Lief is dead. I know he isn’t. But it’s not something I want to talk to Silas about. He knows Lief was in Lormere, and that he hasn’t come back. The way he speaks about him, gently, distantly, tells me he’s less optimistic than I am. I don’t think we need to talk about it.
    I look around before I reach into my cloak and pull out the vial of hemlock draught hidden there. “Here. I brought it to your hut on my way to the meeting. You weren’t there,” I tell him.
    “It’s not my hut any more. I had to move again,” he says. “I’m in the one by the old pigsty now. Gods know for how long though.”
    He holds out a gloved hand for his potion and I drop it into the palm, watching his fingers curl over it, making it disappear. Then it vanishes into the folds of his cloak, to be replaced with gold coins. I open my hand as he does, so he can drop them in; we don’t touch, Silas and I, not even like this, not even during the simple taking of a coin or a vial.
    “Thanks.” He nods, peering around.
    When he pulls his hood down further, preparing to leave, I blurt, “Do you need anything else?”
    He shakes his head, his lips pursed. “No, thanks. With the border closing I expect the situation will change.”
    Silas has placed a fair few orders with me over the last few moons, wildly varying his requests from the most innocent remedies to the deadliest poisons. I’ve recorded each and every order in my apothecary log: what it was, how much of it, and the cost. He pays three gold florins for the illegal ones, and four silver centas for anything else. I have no idea what he does with them; he won’t tell me, nor will he tell me how he gets the coin to pay for them. If I’m honest, he never tells me anything. I’ve tried asking outright, and I’ve tried tricking him into it. He always shakes his head ruefully, giving me a close-lipped, inscrutable smile, and tells me if I ask no questions, I’ll be told no lies.
    I shrug, as though I don’t care