The Cutting Edge Read Online Free PDF

pole was a job he thought he could handle. He had not wanted all this. The aftermath of battle was no time to be breaking in a new man, but obviously Shandie was going to do it anyway. Ylo wondered more than once if he was just being worked to death to get rid of him. In one moment of particular despair, he even suggested that to Hardgraa.
    "Not Shandie," the monolith growled. "His grandfather would, certainly. Not a scruple in his head, that one. But not Shandie. It's always like this around him."
    Out of uniform, the prince imperial was nothing much to look at. Even in his bathtub he went on working, listening to reports, so Ylo knew exactly what he looked like, and he wasn't a patch on Ylo himself for looks. Like any imp, he was dark-haired and swarthy; his complexion was poor. He was slighter and bonier than most, with hardly a hint of his grandfather's aquiline arrogance. His eyes, though ... his eyes gave him away.
    He was eerily impassive, never wasting a move, and yet he had more energy than a hurricane. Oh, he was quiet. He was patient. He would explain in detail-but Ylo dared not give him cause to explain twice.
    He dictated to four pairs of secretaries at the same time-a burst of short sentences to each, then on to the next, and by the time they had written down his words he would be around with another burst. He rarely needed to ask for a read-back.
    Ylo was supposed to organize all that, making sure both versions of each letter were the same, coding those that were especially secret. It went on without respite until dark was falling and insects batted and fizzed around the lamps. He could not remember when he had last slept, and his head was stuffed with rocks.
    Accepting a bundle of letters to be sealed, he swayed on his feet. Shandie reached out and steadied him. Ylo peered blearily at that now-familiar black stare. He began to mutter an apology and was cut off.
    "Can you last another twenty minutes?"
    "I think so, sir." Liar!
    "Good. Now, who else wants to see me tonight?"
    Ylo turned to the door, struggling to remember names and faces.
    Perhaps it was only twenty minutes. It felt like an hour before taps was sounded and Shandie suddenly called a halt. The secretaries clutched up their writing cases and hurried away.
    Ylo stepped outside and ordered a military escort to see them back to the auxiliaries' quarters. The moon was up. Distant peaks in the Progistes glimmered like pearls. He shivered-he had never known a place to cool off as fast as this one, and he had never known a man could be so weary and still live. He returned to the tent that seemed to have become his prison. He removed the benches the secretaries had used. He straightened up the chests and rugs; he tidied up odds and ends.
    Shandie was sitting on the chair, studying a sheet of vellum in the wavering light of an oil lamp above him. He seemed unconscious of the flies and moths wheeling around him.
    He was nothing much to look at, but he could twist a man like a string. Ylo hated him, didn't he? Hated him for the way his grandfather had slaughtered the clan? Hated him for the torment of overwork? Hated him just for being Shandie? Didn't he?
    Maybe he was just too tired to hate, and his hatred would come back in the morning. Maybe he wasn't the hating type. Ylo tucked a few stray blades of grass back under the edge of a rug. The prince's bedding must be in one of the chests, but he did not know which. It would be his job to find it and set it up. He did not know where he himself was supposed to sleep, but any flint quarry would do nicely, thank you.
    Shandie was watching him. "Bedding, sir?"
    "It's in that one, I think. But we shan't need it, I hope. Pass me my helmet. "
    No more, no more! Gods let it end!
    Ylo fetched the helmet. He knew the drill now-they stood face to face; he inspected the prince, adjusting his plume, rubbing smears off his cuirass. At the same time, Shandie inspected him, straightening the wolfskin hood so the ears stood up