Read Online Captive Scorpio by Alan Burt Akers - Free Book Online Page A

skins, the place and people were surprisingly clean. There are towns on Kregen where even the aristocracy are clean, as there are towns where everyone is filthy. But Vallians take a pride in themselves and their country.
    The Ball and Chain looked as though if the loafers moved away from the pillars of the front porch the whole lot would tumble down onto the heads of the throngs in the street.
    I stopped under the awning of a man selling second-hand sandals and fingered a pair of curly-toed foofray slippers. They must have been stolen from some luxury-loving lord. The proprietor eyed me and prepared to sidle up to extol his wares. So, looking at the tavern, I became aware of two things.
    A thin and incredibly dexterous hand was fingering delicately along my belt seeking the strings of the leather purse. And Barty heaved up, red faced, panting, shoving through, opening his mouth to yell over the hubbub. First things first.
    I took the thin and sinewy hand in my fist and pulled. An urchin flew out before me, swinging around the elbow socket, starting to yell, rags and tatters of clothes fluttering. It was a young girl, scrawny, with a mass of brown hair, with grimy streaks down her cheeks. I eyed her with some severity.
    “Diproo the Nimble-Fingered abandoned you, it seems, shishi.”
    “Let me go! Let me go!”
    “Oh, aye. I’ll let you go. And I will not even box your ears.”
    “Get away! Get away you hulu!” screeched the owner of the sandal stall.
    I felt the second hand stealing around the leather purse strings, and I stepped back, dragging the girl, and took the lad — who was probably her younger brother — with my other hand.
    I surveyed the pair of them, and shook my head. Products of a city, living by thieving of any description, free and not slave, well — what were their futures to be? What the futures of a thousand or more like them in the Old City? A thousand — there must be thousand upon thousand of half-naked urchins like this running wild in Drak’s City.
    “Let us go,” panted the girl, her brown hair falling across her thin face. She’d be about twelve or thirteen. “We’ll be thrashed.”
    The lad tried to kick my shins.
    Then Barty arrived, almost losing his brown blanket which he was totally unaccustomed to wearing. He wanted to hand over the cutpurses to the authorities.
    “The only authorities in Drak’s City are the people who employ the fellow who employs these two,” I told him.
    He was a Vallian and so would know that; but it was not a fact easily digestible. The Laws of Hamal are notorious. The law runs differently, more quietly, in Vallia. Here in the Old City of Vondium the law ran as a mere trickle, the greater torrent passing outside the walls.
    I managed to get the girl’s raggedy collar jammed up under her ear, and with the lad picked up and stuffed under my other arm I had a hand free. I pulled out a silver sinver. Awkwardly, for the little devil was kicking and squawking — and no one was taking the blind bit of notice of all this — I gave the sinver to the girl. I released the collar of her tunic and let her go. I looked steadily into her face. She did not run away. Then I dumped the lad on his feet, and gave him another sinver. The two coins, here, were like spitting twice into the middle of a vast and burning desert — but it seemed to me there was little else in truth to be done. I had once fought a duel over seven copper obs.
    “Now be off with you, you scamps, and next time Diproo may smile upon you.”
    The girl looked back at me. Her brown Vallian hair, her brown Vallian eyes — her gauntness could not conceal the beauty she would one day become.
    “I give you thanks, dom. And would you be telling your name to any who inquire?”
    “I am Jak Jakhan. It is not important.”
    Barty, wheezing alongside me, tried not to think. He eased closer and whispered. “Should we not ask them about The Ball and Chain — about Nath the Knife? They could give us useful