The Prince of Shadow Read Online Free PDF Page A

fishers. But Shen-shu was the older of the two, and he was scarcely thirty. Neither was likely to give up their privileged position any time soon.
    Pearl fishers never left the island, not living or dead. If they died of disease, they were cremated immediately to curtail the spread of infection. Rumor had it they did not always wait for death before feeding the fire with the struggling remains. When they drowned, or grew too old to work at all, they were fed to the pigs.
    Kwan-ti had been right, though, he could not go back to the oyster beds. His lungs were fine, he could survive underwater as long as he ever could. But if he were visited by a vision again, he would surely drown while he argued with the demon who accosted him. He needed a second skill, one that would keep him out of the pig trough and get him off the island.
    While he sat on the dock, thinking, the sun had dropped low, and he heard the taunting challenges of the pearl fishers returning home from the quarter-shift. He looked up, vaguely embarrassed to be wearing clothes when Lling and Hmishi and all of his fellow pearl divers were naked from work. He forgot all about the incoming divers, however, when he recognized the device on the prow of the harvest boat: tridents crossed over a round shield. Of course! Lord Chin-shi made his fortune on the pearl fisheries, but he spent his fortune in the arena. Renowned even in the longhouse for their prowess, Chin-shi’s gladiators competed in arenas almost as far away as Thebin itself. And gladiators were given a cut of the purses they won. If a gladiator was good, and survived his battles, he might pay his way free before age and injury cut him down.
    Llesho elbowed and apologized his way past his companions who were swarming off the boat, mocking him for his clothing and asking after his health. When he reached Foreman Shen-shu at the prow of the boat, Llesho fell to his knees and knocked his forehead on the dock in the formal style of a petition. “Honorable Foreman, sir, I respectfully request that you take my petition to your master, Lord Chin-shi of Pearl Island.” He carefully referred to the master as that of Shen-shu alone, accepting by implication that Shen-shu held that position over himself. He’d learned long ago not to show the anger that flared every time he had to kowtow to the foreman: strategy, Lleck had taught him, sometimes meant sacrificing today’s pride for tomorrow’s victory.
    â€œThe witch forbids you to go back to the beds, doesn’t she, pig food?” Shen-shu answered.
    Llesho lifted his head from the dock and sat back on his heels, his palms resting on his knees. “I know of no witch, Master Shen-shu,” he said, ignoring the more pertinent part of the foreman’s statement for that which he could truthfully refute. “I come to you with a petition to Lord Chin-shi that I may train as a gladiator for the ring.”
    For a moment the entire dock went quiet, as Foreman Shen-shu stared at him in amazement. Then the foreman began to laugh. “A gladiator, pig food? A short contest with the pigs, perhaps.” In the silence, Shen-shu’s words rang sharply. “You pearl fishers are so skinny, Lord Chin-shi’s gladiators will use you to pick their teeth.”
    Llesho reddened to the roots of his black, wavy hair. Beneath his clothes, he knew himself to be as skinny as his companions, whose bones he could plainly see pressing against the thinly stretched flesh that covered them. He imagined the gladiators to be huge men, taller than mountains with muscles like carved rocks, and knew he could not compete against such specimens of manhood. But, he reasoned, even gladiators must once have been boys. They could not have been born with all that muscle and sinew, and they didn’t have a Thebin’s natural endurance. If they could become great fighters, so could he.
    â€œIf I am so skinny,” Llesho argued, “the pigs won’t