Weapon of Blood Read Online Free PDF Page B

didn’t change
what they were.
    “Evening, Vic.”  Mya nodded in passing.
    Warmth and light, laughter and the
clatter of dice, the clink and clatter of cups and glasses, all met his senses
at once.  Lad’s tension eased as he followed Mya into the pub’s boisterous
common room.  Many of those present—barmaids and prostitutes, gamblers and
drinkers—were Mya’s Hunters.  Here, if nowhere else in the city of Twailin, she
was safe enough without his protection.
    “Join me for some mulled wine, Lad?”  Mya
handed her cloak to the elderly woman at the door and accepted a towel for her
dripping hair.
    He nodded to the cloak-check woman, who
gave him a motherly smile and a wink.  As she hung up Mya’s cloak, he noted the
row of straight scars that crossed the underside of her forearm.  She, too, was
one of Mya’s people, and each scar, he knew, denoted a kill.
    Fathers, brothers, daughters, friends…
    “No, thank you.  I should go.”
    “Well, be careful.  I don’t want you to
catch your death in this weather.”
    “Catch my…”  He automatically gave her a naïve
look.  “You mean catch a chill and become sick, right?”
    “Very good, Lad.”  She smiled and clapped
him on the shoulder.  He forced himself to not flinch.  “But there’s more than
one way to catch your death in garrote weather.”
    “Oh, right.  Yes.  I’ll be careful.”
    “Do that.  And thank you, Lad.”  She
squeezed his shoulder, and her sincere tone told him what she meant.  He’d
saved her life again tonight.
    “You’re welcome, Mya.”  He nodded, then
turned and walked out into the rain and toward his other life.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter
III
     
     
     
    M ya shivered,
but not from any chill brought on by her damp hair or dripping clothes. 
Watching Lad’s departure always felt like a warm blanket being pulled away,
baring her to the cold night air.  Mya knew she was safe here.  Surrounded by
her most reliable Hunters, she had nothing to fear.  Besides, her performance
tonight proved that physical dangers were less of a threat than they had once
been.  Still, after five years of having Lad at her side, Mya found herself comforted
by his presence, and felt strangely exposed without him.
    She shook off the feeling, dismissing it
as post-fight tension.  Her nerves still sang with adrenalin after their brush
with Horice’s assassins.  She finished toweling her hair and returned the damp
cloth.  “Thanks, Jules.”
    “No problem, dear.  Night like this isn’t
fit for a walk without a warm towel and a mug of wine to greet you home.”
    “Too true.”  She surveyed the boisterous
common room.  Home .  Yes, it felt good to be home.
    Mya breathed deep, savoring the scents,
sights and sounds of her only refuge in the city.  Paxal, her long-time
landlord and self-appointed mother hen, stood behind the long teak-wood bar. 
Over his shoulder, the ridiculous portrait of a crowing golden rooster—the
pub’s namesake—glowed in the lamplight.  As if sensing her gaze, Paxal looked
up, gave her a nod and a gap-toothed smile.  Mya smiled back.  Aside from Lad,
the barkeep was the person in the world she trusted most.  More than a decade
ago, he had taken in a frightened runaway, allowing her to sleep in the
storeroom for the work she could do.  After her sudden appointment to
journeyman, then master, five years ago, he suggested she use the bar as her
base of operations and had never asked for payment.  She paid him, of course,
but he had never once asked.  She could never pay for his loyalty, she knew. 
That was something he had given her free of charge, that and one simple piece
of advice one night years ago.
    “There are two kinds of people in this
world, Mya.  People with power and people who live in fear.  You have to decide
which you are going to be.”
    “Which are you?” she’d asked, and he’d
given her one of his rare smiles.
    “Well, I’m the third type.  The type