Stardeep Read Online Free PDF Page A

shrugged. Better to expend resources than wish he hadn’t skimped later. Gage recapped the tube and returned it to his belt. Taking a breath, he slowly swung the door closed. Door and frame squeezed the sticky pitch between them.
    No sounds of surprise or alarm followed. If no one opened the door for another few moments, they’d find themselves held inside. Not for more than a moment, at most. But a moment could spell the difference between Gage getting in and getting out with a minimum of punctures.
    He nodded at his handiwork and made for the stairs.
    Five steps and he stood on a landing with a switchback. He continued down.
    Gage peered into anothei passage like the one above. More doors, though; two on each side and one at the far end.
    He suspected the door at the end was his ultimate destination. Still, prudence dictated he check the other four on the way.
    The first door on his left smelled like a chamber pot. Sure enough, a privy, and none too clean. He doubted Sathra used this one.
    Across the hall from the privy he found an office. A man sitting at a desk strewn with parchment and quills looked up as Gage peered in. “Yes?” said the man.
    Startled, Gage slammed the door closed. Nice. If he sat thinking for an eternity, he doubted he could imagine a more suspicious response.
    He jerked the door open again. The man was rising, his open mouth wide with alarm. “Hey!”
    Quicker than thought, Gage flicked a knife from the concealed scabbard below his left arm, flinging it across the room with the same graceful motion. The knife plunged into the man’s mounting yell, silencing him.
    The thief dashed forward and caught the body before it crashed onto the desk. He lowered the still-twitching form to mud-smeared floorboards. He retrieved his dagger and cleaned it on the man’s pants. Poor bastard. He told the glazing eyes, “You asked for it, working for Sathra. I’m sure you’ve done far worse in your time.”
    He stood, sheathing his knife. Gage checked the hallway to see if he’d roused any activity, then pulled back, closing the door. Returning to the desk, he skimmed through the papers scattered across it. He discovered the man he’d just knifed was a mid-level functionary, captain of the muscle upstairs and another group on this floor. Not part of Sathra’s personal force, then; the captain apparently didn’t measure up enough to be counted among the so-called “Shadow Cadre.” Gage hated that name. According to a rough floor plan he found, the cadre was housed on the ground floor. He kept reading.
    He found documents describing traffic in hellborn drugs, a protection racket broader than he’d imagined the Shadow Tongue could engineer, the outline of a scheme to blackmail the ruling council of Laothkund by implicating them in a made-up alliance with Thay, illicit slave trade in children… things that would curdle the stomachs of any moral person.
    But Gage wasn’t here to right wrongs. He looked for a clue, any clue to the singular article he sought.
    Was this it? A note about a detachment of Sathta’s cadre deployed to retrieve an item, unnamed. Whatever it was, Sathra had issued specific instructions—the item was not to be fenced under pain of death to her underlings. She wanted it returned directly to her, in this building, as her prize.
    That had to be it! For Sathra to name something as a trophy instead of metely selling it, an item had to be particularly special. As he knew it to be. Gage had never seen anything quite so beautiful, and no trinket had befote awoken his acquisitive nature so surely. If he could, he’d keep it for a prize, too…
    Gage shook his head. He couldn’t let his covetousness overmaster him—the object wasn’t for himself.
    When Sathra’s people stole it from under his nose, Gage was furious. He was here to steal it back.
    He quit the chambei. Back in the empty hall, he didn’t bother to check the temaining two doots. He made directly fot the door at the end of