The Grave Thief: Book Three of The Twilight Reign Read Online Free PDF

deeds.
    ‘Fate’s pity, did Scree have such an effect on everyone? Did no good come of it at all?’
    The king laughed coldly. ‘No good?’ he echoed, then the hardness faded from his face and was replaced with a look of profound sadness. ‘Doranei, that poor boy Doranei: he fell in love.’

CHAPTER 3
    Unhindered by the weak candlelight, Lord Isak looked around at the assembled faces and tried to ignore the ache at the back of his head. One scowled back, making little effort to conceal his displeasure, but Isak had grown to expect that from his Chief Steward. The young white-eye had inherited an entire nation from his predecessor, Lord Bahl, and whatever else one might say about Chief Steward Fordan Lesarl - megalomaniacal sadist being one of the more colourful terms bandied about - the man knew how to run a country.
    The rest of those present were quite a handsome bunch, something that had surprised Isak the first time he’d met them, although he had never been able to pinpoint why exactly. They were divided into those staring back like cornered rabbits and those with eyes miserably downcast. He took a deep breath. The day hadn’t been going well and his already bad mood had only been darkened by the persistent drizzle that worsened to a downpour every time he ventured outside.
    Don’t lose your temper . Isak had to keep repeating this simple message to himself: don’t lose your temper; don’t turn on those you trust . He’d seen the warning in the eyes of his friends, his advisors, especially Carel. Though he was thin now, and aged ten years or more since losing his arm in battle, Carel had always recognised better than anyone else the temper boiling within Isak. Carel had been more of a father to him than Isak’s real father during the years they had lived on the wagon-train, and he had been made a marshal as much for the calming effect he had on Isak as anything. He was still the person Isak trusted most.
    Arranged around three tables were the nine members of Lesarl’s coterie, as disparate a collection as anyone was likely to find anywhere, and not all of the Chief Steward’s agents looked as if they belonged in the dusty attic of a tavern just off the bustling Crooked Tail Street. The main river docks in Tirah were only a stone’s throw from the Cock’s Tail, and the tavern’s regular patrons were as rough and raucous as they came. The grizzled first mate sitting at one of the tables, his arms and bald head covered in tattoos and scars, looked as if he’d fit right in downstairs in the taproom; the silk-clad dandy next to him did not - but no one here was fooled by the appearance of either.
    ‘I see you’re all as delighted as Lesarl to be here,’ Isak said eventually.
    The Lord of the Farlan was dressed almost as splendidly as Dancer, the foppish nobleman. His tunic and breeches of deep blue had swirls of silver thread and moonstones down the left side. Isak had abandoned his silver ducal circlet after a day of official functions, but everything else bar the lack of crest on his dark grey hooded robe was as custom dictated: a pristine exterior, even down to his smooth cheeks and trimmed hair, but all the finery could not disguise the muscles underneath.
    ‘They are concerned, as am I, about the security issue,’ Lesarl said.
    Isak acknowledged the point, and the informality. The Chief Steward had made it clear that his coterie were encouraged to speak freely and frankly, and without reference to rank.
    ‘There are so many clandestine meetings going on every night in this city, no one is going to notice one more.’
    ‘You are hardly unremarkable,’ said the youngest member of the coterie, Whisper, who headed Lesarl’s personal spy network. ‘And neither is Dancer, especially in this district.’
    Dancer gave her a broad smile and indicated those even more out of place than him. Prayer was a tonsured priest of Nartis, a sour-faced man in his early fifties who had sat as far as possible from