The Alabaster Staff Read Online Free PDF Page B

it.…” she added.
    She squatted beside him, taking care not to dirty her knees with the alley mud. She placed her half-eaten pear on her lap and patted the man down until she felt his coin purse tucked behind his belt.
    “In Unther, we don’t like foreigners trying to arrest innocent people. There’s a fine of, um …” She yanked his coin purse off his belt, though it took two or three tries before the thin leather thongs snapped. “Three coppers? You pathetic—
pah!
”
    Kehrsyn looked at the three small coins. Given the day’s events, she really needed them. She clenched and unclenched her fist and bit her lip, but she threw them down the alley.
    She picked her pear back up and stood.
    “You count to fifty before you try drinking that potion in your belt, you hear me?” she said, redirected anger adding force to her words. “And don’t you go looking for those coppers. Understand?”
    He nodded.
    Kehrsyn took two incautious steps, paused for two breaths, then took two more steps, all to give the man the illusion that he’d hear her when she left.
    She intended to glide silently away, but just as she was about to leave the hapless merchant’s guard, she heard the sound of clapping.

S tartled by the sudden applause (even if it only issued from a single pair of hands), Kehrsyn jumped forward, spinning with remarkable grace, and drew her rapier again, swinging it from side to side. The whispering sound of the blade slicing the air did nothing to dissipate the loud, arrogant clapping.
    The ovation made up in wet loudness what it lacked in quantity of hands, and the narrow, angled alley echoed the sound all around the startled young woman. Glancing around, Kehrsyn saw the alley was empty of anyone other than the wounded soldier and herself, but as her heart slowed to a more reasonable speed, she finally figured out the situation.
    She hazarded a look up. Despite the overcast, the sky shone brighter than the narrow alley, especially since the winter sun was edging toward the horizon, leaving the alley in relative shade. Kehrsyn shielded her eyes from the diffused lightand the drizzling rain with the hand holding her pear.
    There, above her, the silhouette of someone’s torso peered over the roof, elbows moving in rhythm with the clapping sound. Just as she spotted her audience, the person stopped clapping and leaned out over the edge of the roof.
    “Ooh, that was slick, hon,” said a hoarse, dusky female voice. It had a nasal tinge, as if the speaker was thoroughly congested. “You dropped that pasty-face like a poleaxed heifer.”
    Kehrsyn narrowed her eyes, trying to get any better idea of what the interloper looked like, but all she could see was the black of the silhouette.
    “ ’Bout as strong as a piece of moldy bread, I’d say, but you got the dance down right. Yessirree.” She paused to cough and clear her throat.
    “What do you mean?” asked Kehrsyn, stalling, trying to find a better angle to look at her. Had the sun been out, Kehrsyn might have been able to settle herself into a shadow to eclipse some of the brightness, but the clouds evenly scattered the light that bled through.
    “I mean I wouldn’t bet a half-eaten herring on you to wrestle a wolf pup three falls of five, but you got the eyes of a hawk and the strike of a viper.” She paused to clear her throat, hawked up something vile from her lungs, and spat down the alley to Kehrsyn’s left. “Yessirree, I don’t think a black hare could slip past you at midnight under a new moon.”
    “Well, thank you,” said Kehrsyn as she started to back away.
    “Oh, don’t be scootin’ off now, hon. No, that wouldn’t be the best snap of your nut today. We need someone the likes of you.”
    Kehrsyn paused. The guard, one hand pressed against his bleeding leg, started to try to pull himself back up into a sitting position.
    “What do you mean?” asked Kehrsyn, only partiallyfocused on the conversation. Most of her mind was filled with