Turning Points Read Online Free PDF Page B

otherwise found taverns boring. Strangers saw him as a child. He rarely found himself invited directly into discussions or games of chance, and the barmaids usually diluted his drinks to water. He had learned to appreciate that, as his slight-ness gave him little body mass to offset even one full-strength beer, it also gave him nothing much to savor.
    Dysan turned onto Wriggle Way and headed for the shop of Bezul the Changer. A pair of women passed him, discussing intended purchases in the market. He heard more than watched a dark-clad figure slink into the Maze. Ignoring them, Dysan tripped the gate latch and headed into the shop yard. He had taken only three steps when an enormous, muddy goose waddled from behind a bush with a snake-like hiss followed by a honk loud enough to wake the dead. More geese answered in ringing echoes from the back courtyard. Dysan turned his quiet saunter into a run for the door, the goose honking, flapping, and biting at his heels.
    Dysan charged into the changer’s shop, attempting to slam the door without breaking the goose’s neck. But the huge bird crashed in behind him, and the door banged shut an instant too late. Loose in the shop, the goose ran in crazed circles, huge wings walloping the air into whirlwinds and sweeping a line of crockery from a low table. Clay pots spilled to the floor, some smashing, some clomping hollowly against wood and tile. Shards scattered like frightened spiders.
    Bezul scrambled from behind a table where he had been servicing a customer. “No! No!” His sandy disarray of hair looked even more tousled than usual, and he moved spryly for a man in his late thirties. He rushed the goose.
    Dysan threw the door back open, hoping no one expected him to pay for the damage. He had no idea of the value of such things, but he had enough trouble keeping himself in food and clothing.
    The customer back-stepped, presumably to steer clear of the growing wreckage, but stepped on a crockery shard. Balance teetering, he flailed, lost the battle, and landed on his backside. A thrown-out arm barely missed the row of empty jars and vials he had been examining a moment earlier.
    The fall drew Dysan’s attention even more than the goose, now hissing and squealing as it raced back into the yard, a step ahead of Bezul’s broom. The stranger appeared to be nearing thirty, tall, with wiry black hair veined with white. Unlike most graying men, the lighter hairs did not congregate at his temples but seemed chaotically sprinkled, as if someone had dumped a scoop of wheat flour on his head. He had blue eyes, brighter than Dysan’s own but cast into shadow by prominent ridges. The long face and solemn features looked familiar, and Dysan took an involuntary, shocked step backward. He knew this man, or would have, had he sported a seething cacophony of tattoos. Like all of the Dyareelan priests, the man Dysan thought he recognized would have had arms as red as the blood ritually and gleefully splattered in the name of his goddess. That man had also worn permanent swirls of flame, numbers, and names plastered across his face and body.
    Stop it
! Dysan chastised his imagination. He had not projected an image of the Hand over an innocent in years. He shook his head to clear it, just as Bezul returned, leaving the door open as a welcome to customers. Dysan tried to apologize for letting the goose in, but his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.
    As if nothing had happened, Bezul leaned his broom against a display and approached the stranger. “Were we finished, Pel?”
    “Yes,” Pel said, his gaze on Dysan, his voice too gentle and deliberate to have ever served the Hand. “We’re finished.”
    Dysan knelt and started picking up pieces of broken crockery, feigning excessive interest in his work.
    “I think the boy’s a bit shaken by your deadly man-eating attack goose.”
    “Who, Dysan?” Bezul’s attention turned to him, much to Dysan’s chagrin. “He’s a regular. Not the