Sword of Dreams (The Reforged Trilogy) Read Online Free PDF Page A

laser and snapped a pair of handcuffs around his prisoner's wrists.
    "Let's go."
    ________
     
    Logan Coldhand shoved Barnes into the arms of two waiting CWAAF soldiers. The middle manager who thought himself a daring thief was still sobbing in terror and very nearly had to be carried away. They vanished through the door, leaving Coldhand alone in the waiting room.
    The Sipho government had devoted little time or money to the bounty collection center. The entire building was a white prefabricated cube and every surface had the faintly oily look of janitorial nanites, not unlike those used on nanoblades to maintain the weapons' keen edge.
    There were no windows in the building, only a row of monitors that alternated between local news and cycling lists of other bounties. Coldhand could have been anywhere in the galaxy, in any one of ten thousand identical collection centers anywhere in the Alliance.
    The hunt for Barnes had been… unsatisfying. The man was unbelievably stupid. He had taken a commercial flight from Kahl, booked under his own name. Investigation of Barnes' hotel room on Sipho had yielded only a frightened prostitute and some cheap chems. The self-important little thief really had no copies of his stolen schematics. He was actually selling the original files with no thought about what he might do if he lost them. He threw away his career and his freedom for something he could sell only once. Cedon Barnes was an idiot.
    An idiot worth a lot of colour to Narsus Shipyards, but no less an idiot.
    Coldhand waited. There was an indignant yelp from the next room as one of the techs checked Barnes' redprint. The flashing screen on the far wall caught Coldhand's attention: Cult of Nihil – All members. Wanted for degree one heresies.
    The monitor displayed a sallow-skinned man in tattered clothes. Coldhand sat forward. The man on the screen was not Gavriel. This one wore the scarlet of an Emberguard, the Nihilist's most brutal warriors.
    Thieves. They took my hand and my heart. My life.
    Coldhand pushed the maudlin thought aside and read the text scrolling beside the picture. When the Union of Light banned the Nihilist teachings, the cultists became criminals under Alliance law, subject to all of the associated penalties. The CWA was offering a bounty for any captured Nihilists. Alive only, of course. It was a government bounty, after all.
    The price was low. There were only so many cenmarks to go around and the Alliance could not pay much for individual cultists. The bounty posting listed an estimated two hundred surviving Nihilists. Coldhand suspected there were many more than that.
    He ignored the rest. It wasn't worth his time. Coldhand had no useful leads. After the destruction of their Gharib cathedral, the Nihilists had probably gone into hiding on Stray. The planet was a long flight from Sipho and Stray was an entire world of desperate people with something to hide. Trying to find the Nihilists there now would be like sifting salt from sand.
    Too much work for too little pay.
    His leg throbbed dully. Coldhand looked down and found his left hand on his thigh. The illonium fingers had dug hard into the leg of his pants, bruising the flesh beneath. He forced the cybernetics to release just as a brown-furred Lyran stepped into the waiting room.
    "Thank you for waiting," he said. "We've checked over Mister Barnes. According to Narsus instructions, he will be held here for transport. He'll be assigned counsel and tried on Kahl. If you'll just sign here, I can pay out the bounty. It's late and I'm sure you would like to go home, too."
    The canine man smiled toothily up at Coldhand, who wordlessly signed his name to the offered datawork. The Lyran tucked the datadex under his arm and held out a single black cenmark chip to Coldhand. The hunter took the plastic square and turned it over. There was a name on the front: NARSUS.
    The company logo glowed faintly violet at his touch. He flipped it back at the Lyran, who caught