Read Online 2: Servants of the Crossed Arrows by Ginn Hale - Free Book Online

something from there.”
    Pivan reached into his coat pocket and tossed Mou’pin a coin purse. “Don’t go alone and don’t take all damn day.”
    “Yes, sir.” Mou’pin saluted again.
    “Come on,” Pivan said to John. He turned and led John back through a door at the far end of the room.
    A bed and a dresser were shoved up against the left wall. A heavy wooden table and two chairs stood in the middle of the room. Next to the one small window there was a low shelf with a single leather-bound book, a dish of polished stones and a cloth decorated with the holy Payshmura symbols of the sun and moon.
    “Your room or your commander’s?” John asked.
    “Mine.” Pivan closed the door. “Rasho Tashtu is obligated to keep his bed in the great house, where he is close at hand should Lady Bousim call for him.”
    Pivan pushed out the chair closest to the door.
    “Have a seat. We should talk.”
    “What about?” John asked.
    “Sit down,” Pivan repeated and this time John obeyed him.
    Pivan removed his coat and threw it across his bed. Then he walked to the shelf and without looking chose one of the polished stones, a tawny colored one. He rubbed his thumb across its surface and then set it aside.
    Pivan asked, “Are you a married man?”
    “No.” John hadn’t expected that question.
    “Have you ever been?”
    “No.” John recalled Lady Bousim saying something about the rashan’im all being married. All of them but Alidas, who was to have been her son’s attendant up to Rathal’pesha.
    Pivan nodded thoughtfully. He walked to the table and took the seat across from John.
    “I imagine Lady Bousim treated you quite kindly when she called you before her.”
    “Yes,” John replied.
    “You’re the type of man she is often kind to.” Pivan put an unusual emphasis on the word kind. John knew what Pivan implied about Lady Bousim and he didn’t like it.
    “The lady treated my sister and her husband just as well as she treated me. She seemed compassionate to us all.”
    “I’m sure she did. Lady Bousim is immensely compassionate and she can be very charming when she wishes to be.” Pivan leaned a little closer to John. “Back in Nurjima, there was a fair-haired young man who Lady Bousim felt such compassion for that Lord Bousim had him hanged. Another was shot where he stood in the lady’s bedroom. Her compassion knows no bounds.”
    John began to open his mouth to say that nothing like that was going to happen, but Pivan cut him off.
    “It is the lady’s immense compassion that got her shipped out to this freezing backwater,” Pivan spat. “And as much as I wish it were not the case, it is my duty and the duty of my commander to see that she does not leave this place. She has humiliated her good husband too many times.”
    “I don’t see what this has to do with me,” John said.
    “It doesn’t. Not yet. But it will if you stay in the lady’s company. You clean up too nicely for her to keep away from you.” Pivan’s eyes moved over him slowly as if cataloging the changes that a bath and a shave had made. “You’re young and well-made. I would hate to have to hang you.”
    Pivan stood up and returned to the shelf. The morning light pouring in from the window cast hard shadows across his face, making his frown seem gouged into his mouth. Again, he chose a stone from the small silver dish. “They tell me that you came here to pray at the foot of Rathal’pesha. Is that true?”
    “Yes. I wanted to pray for my sister’s husband,” John answered warily, discomfited by Pivan’s suspicious change of subject.
    “I’m not sure how such a sickly man managed to chain your sister’s hands. Perhaps she didn’t give him much of a fight.” Pivan smiled as he said this. “But I can see why you would worry about his ability to care for her. Is that why you stay with her?”
    “I stayed to help them both. Behr isn’t just my sister’s husband. He’s a friend of mine.” John didn’t know if