Traitors' Gate Read Online Free PDF

like so many sheep.
    Captain Jushahosh limped, his face smeared with blood and his sword mottled.
    â€œHei! Hei!” he cried. The Qin soldiers stepped away from their flock as more green-jacket guards streamed in and two aides brought forward lanterns. Four men had fallen to their knees, faces pressed into the dirt. The other figure was veiled, and she clasped a small body against her own, shielding it as the captain approached her. He gestured, and one of the junior officers stepped forward, grasped the little child, and ripped it out of her arms.
    Her silence was worse than a scream would have been.
    The Qin soldiers stared like dumb beasts as the junior officer cut the silk wrap off the child to reveal his sex. The child could not have made more than two years, a plump, healthy-looking boy with a strong voice exploding into a terrified howl.
    The captain gestured. The junior officer slapped the child so hard he was stunned, splayed his body on the ground, and stepped back. The veiled woman flung herself forward, but before she reached the child, the captain hacked off the boy’s head. She scrambled on hands and knees, a keening sound rising, and as she crawled to the body her veil and outer robes were wrenched into disarray, split to reveal an underrobe heavilyembroidered with gold and silver thread. Her head, exposed as the veil ripped away under her crabbed hands, was that of a young woman of exceptional beauty; her eyes were dark, wide with stunned grief, and her hair, falling loose from its pins and clasps, was as thick and black as a river of silk.
    The Qin soldiers shook their heads, frowning.
    The captain raised his sword again.
    The Qin chief stepped forward, a man of easy competence who reminded Kesh of the scout Tohon. “Captain Jushahosh. No need to waste this young woman. I will take her as a wife if you do not want her.”
    But the motion was already complete, her fortune long since sealed. The cut drove deep into her neck, and she slumped forward, twitching, not yet dead, mewling and moaning. As the captain stepped back with a look of dazed shock, as if he’d thought to kill her in one blow, the Qin chief calmly finished her off but with a wry smile that Kesh took at first for cruel amusement. A murmur swept through the Qin soldiers like breeze through trees, but the Qin chief raised a hand and all sound ceased. The chief turned his back on the dead as a look of pure disgust flashed in the twist of his mouth and the crease made by narrowed eyes. Then he caught Kesh watching him, and his expression smoothed into the solemn look the Qin normally wore, as colorless as their black tunics.
    Perhaps the captain had seen. “A woman of the palace! She can have no honor left, her face exposed in such a manner. And her hair, seen by every man here, even by barbarians! Death honors her, although she disgraced herself.”
    â€œShe’s dead now,” said the Qin chief, facing him with the same deadly smooth expression unchanged. “Why kill the child?”
    â€œThat was one of the sons of the Emperor Farazadihosh.”
    â€œA boy can be raised as a soldier, useful to his kinsmen.”
    Servants brought canvas and silk to wrap the bodies. “Why do you think we found a palace woman on the road at all? Escorted by a contingent of palace guards? With Farazadihosh’s death in battle, the palace women who have borne sons of his seed have scattered. If even one survives, a standard can beraised against the new emperor. With a few such deaths, we bring peace. Isn’t peace to be preferred to war?”
    â€œThis seems settled then,” said the Qin chief. “Are these slaves to be killed also?”
    â€œSlaves belong to the palace, not to the emperor. They obey those who rule them.” He handed his sword to an aide, who wiped it clean. “Master Keshad, will you continue our meal?”
    Eliar stumbled away, collapsing to all fours as he heaved. Kesh looked