The Universal Mirror Read Online Free PDF

shovel.  Now he was leaning against it and looking down at Quentin as if he meant to bury him.  Pig appeared to be giving the question great thought, looking first at the questioner, then at Meg, and finally, at the man who’d punched Quentin.
    No one answered.  Asahel squinted, trying to read the outline of his friend’s body through the darkness.  Please let him be breathing.  His fingers clenched, knotting together hard.  If wishing alone could make it so, Asahel thought, it would have.  The air around him went static, a few blades of grass suddenly stirring as the silence continued.
    The older man snorted, breaking the calm.  “Look at the clothes.  Money.  He’s got that.”
    “That’s a crest on his ring.”  Meg’s voice was barely audible and all three men looked at her.
    “So it is, love.  So it is.”  The older man leaned his shovel against the dirt as he knelt down to examine it.  Asahel couldn’t see the exact gesture.  All that he could determine was that the man was bent down at Quentin’s side.  With no small relief, he saw his friend’s body stir.
    “He’s still alive, Taggart.”  Pig pointed out.  “We ought to go for a ransom.  What crest is it?”  Taggart, Asahel assumed, was the older man still kneeling by Quentin.  Taggart tugged at the redhead’s fingers, staring at the signet.  Quent was stirring more fervently now and Taggart dropped his hand, scowling at him from one squinted eye.
    “Swan.  Saw those here somewhere.”
    “Aye.”  Pig used his thumb to jab in the direction of the Gredara crypt.  “Old name, that one.”
    I don’t know what good it will do you, Asahel thought.  If everything Quentin said about his wife was true, Catharine wasn’t likely to ransom him.  And with the couple’s inability to produce an heir, he doubted that Quentin’s father-in-law would be any more eager.  He inhaled sharply, feeling the breath scissor through him.  I need help.  And it can’t be Catharine, nor anyone from the docks.  There’s too much risk to what little reputation he’s got left.  He stood there, his sense of impotence choking him as he watched Taggart gesture at the silent brute who’d punched Quentin down.  In one seamless motion, the man swung Quent over his shoulder so roughly that the redhead’s skull slammed against his back.  His captor didn’t appear to even notice.
    “Back to the hall with him, Embr,” Taggart said, his arms grand in their movement.  “If he’s a Gredara, we’ll be kings by the end of the week, we will.”
    “You talk too much,” Pig muttered.  The girl had dropped to her knees and Asahel noticed that her hands were smoothing out a patch of earth.  “What if he’s got someone who knows that he’s been here?  Minding the place is a brilliant job for you crooks and you shouldn’t be careless with the opportunity.”  Asahel saw the lines around Meg’s mouth harden.
    “Da’s the boss.  It’s him I mind,” she said as she picked up the shovel and stood, clumsily tucking it under her arm.  There was little bulk to the woman—certainly not enough to make carrying a shovel a graceful task. 
    Pig responded only with a scowl.  It made his thin face less pallid. 
    “Come along, then,” Taggart called back.  “We don’t know if he’s got family out looking.  Best to make it to the hall before somebody’s notices he’s gone.”  Asahel bit his tongue, surprised that the dirty band of thieves didn’t know who it was that they were dragging.  Then again, he reflected, they had no reason to.  He himself wouldn’t have known, had it not been for years spent at university.  The highest and the low simply didn’t mix and it had been that way for so long that both sides believed it choice and not just tradition.
    You follow them and then what?  Asahel’s foot sunk into the mud as he took a step forward, afraid to do much more than that.  Again, his mind turned to the thought of an ally as