Read Online Darkening Skies (The Hadrumal Crisis) by Juliet E. McKenna - Free Book Online

entire inns for themselves and their retinue, only the meanest accommodations had been left for latecomers to the parliament. Not even the Archmage’s coin could buy him some more dignity. Corrain sighed and drank the sour small beer that the tapster had offered for breakfast. He chewed on a slice of bread so full of chaff it was more fit for horses than their riders.
    Voices grew loud outside the empty taproom’s door. He threw the bread down and hurried outside.
    In the morning sunshine in the yard, Fitrel was glowering at a handful of Karpis men.
    Corrain didn’t waste any time on courtesies. ‘What do you want?’
    He could see all the rest of the Halferans coming down the wooden stair from the stable loft where they had been sleeping. Karpis men and Halferans alike bore the bruises from their earlier encounter.
    ‘We have a letter for you.’ The Karpis sergeant proffered a sealed parchment with bored insolence.
    ‘Linset!’ Fitrel jerked his head at the nearest Halferan trooper.
    It took Corrain a moment to place the boy. Of course. The son of that new blacksmith who’d come to Halferan while he’d been a corsair prisoner. The lad had some growing to do, if he was ever going to match the breadth of his father’s shoulders. Linset might be tall enough for his head to reach the required measure on the old manor shrine’s door but he was thin enough to hide behind the stable yard’s hitching post if he turned sideways.
    The instant before the boy’s fingers touched the letter, the Karpis sergeant let it fall to the straw-strewn cobbles.
    ‘Too slow,’ he mocked.
    Corrain saw Linset’s face turn ugly, his hand going to the short sword at his belt.
    ‘You don’t want to soil your hands, boy.’ Fitrel stepped between Linset and the Karpis man and smiled as merciless as a mantrap. ‘How about you? Got a new blade yet? Not going to crumble away, I hope? You lads need steel the likes of ours.’
    All the Karpis men recoiled. The panic on their faces was almost comical.
    It took Corrain a moment to realise that the Karpis troopers were ready to believe the Halferans were still carrying ensorcelled blades. Weapons deadly with that same black enchantment which the lady wizard Jilseth had sent sliding along every Halferan sword to cut down the corsairs.
    And these Karpis men had more reason than most to fear the meek and mild lady wizard, as modest as her plain grey gown. Corrain had heard that tale the evening before in this very tavern.
    Their fat baron had heard, back in the spring, that Master Minelas had abandoned Halferan. Karpis hadn’t bothered with legalities, arriving instead with a troop of his guards and relying on force of arms to seize control of Lady Zurenne, her children and the household.
    Before a chime had sounded, the Karpis troop and their baron had retreated, humiliated and defeated. Wizardry had rusted their blades and chainmail away in an instant, their sword scabbards warping and splitting.
    That was all very well but Corrain didn’t have such magecraft to back him now, whatever the rumours troubling this parliament. He also didn’t want to attend the day’s session with news of another brawl following hard on his heels.
    ‘Enough!’ he snapped. ‘Halferans, you’re dismissed, all of you. Karpis, you may go!’
    The sergeant had the grace to look guiltily down at the letter lying on the ground. He didn’t pick it up though, hastily marching his men away instead as Fitrel drove the Halferans on into the tavern for bread and sour ale.
    The Karpis troop’s pace was ragged and their posture worse. If Corrain was their captain, that lad so completely out of step would win an extra day of stable duty. That duffer twisting his head to look back at the Halferans would be washing up the whole troop’s dinner plates for three days.
    Once he was satisfied the Karpis men were out of sight, Corrain drew a deeper breath and went to pick up the dropped letter. He might as well see what their