Read Online In the Courts of the Crimson Kings by S.M. Stirling - Free Book Online

the city, but they still attracted a fair bit of attention, though only the children showed it openly. They ranged from knee-high to almost grown, and the younger ones gaped and pointed and gave peals of shrill laughter.
    “Cute little tykes,” Jeremy said as they passed a knot of them where two of the narrow streets intersected.
    They were playing a game much like atanj , but with themselves for pieces. When the commander of one team maneuvered two of his pieces onto a single one of the other side, they gleefully pummeled each other. Atanj was supposed to be an analogue of war, like chess, but they took that more literally here.
    “Don’t let the big eyes fool you,” Sally said, and then shouted in Martian, “Don’t even think about it!” as one of a slightly older group bent to pick up something unpleasant.
    He—probably he, it was hard to tell when everyone was muffled up, and anyway Martians were less sexually dimorphic than Terrans—continued to bend for ammunition. Teyud wheeled toface him and flicked her right hand. Something like a small disk with curled spikes along its edge appeared between finger and thumb, and her hand cocked back with lazy grace. The atanj teams dove out of the way, squealing.
    Whoa! Jeremy thought. Let’s not let things get out of hand!
    He tensed his leg muscles and jumped. The results sent the little almost-mob of near adolescents scattering, as he soared through the air as if launched by a hydraulic catapult. Twisting, he landed in front of the fleeing would-be dung-thrower, forcing him to backpedal furiously and nearly drop on his butt to stop. The boy’s eyes were bulging with surprise through the slit in his headdress. Jeremy didn’t give him any time to recover, or to go for any of the various unpleasant devices undoubtedly concealed under his ragged robe. One hand gripped the back of his neck, the other at his belt, and the Terran pivoted and threw .
    He’d had six months’ practice with Martian gravity. The boy flew ten yards, arms and legs kicking, to land neatly in a two-wheeled cart filled with the droppings of various draught-beasts. Those were a lot drier and fluffier than their earthly equivalents; a big cloud of pungent brownish dust shot skyward. The boy tumbled out of it a few moments later, coughing and retching and beating at his garments. He stopped a moment to make three comprehensively obscene gestures at Jeremy, then took to his heels.
    “Suboptimal random breeding,” Teyud said, insulting the fleeing boy more than an avalanche of scatology could have done. “It would be public-spirited to cull him before he reproduces.”
    “Please do not kill anyone unless it is necessary to protect us,” Sally said. “That is a categorical instruction.”
    “Reluctant agreement,” Teyud said, then shrugged and slid the spiked throwing disk back to its place in her sleeve.
    For the rest, the crowds’ reaction was sidelong glances and low murmurs—and they were low indeed, pitched for the more efficient ears evolved in this thin air.
    You know , Jeremy thought, watching as Teyud za-Zhalt swayed along ahead of them, she really moves beautifully. Different from most Martians—she doesn’t give you that sense she’d fly away in a high breeze, even though she does look like someone took her by the neck and ankles and stretched her by about twenty percent .
    They came to a larger open space. One side of it was a semicircular border, a smooth olive green wall twenty feet high that vanished behind buildings on either side which, he knew, made a circle more than a mile around. Above that rose a glassine dome, and through it, he could see the tops of trees. A central tower reared gigantic in its center, but the fliers clustered around its thousand-foot peak were all warcraft in the red and black markings of the Despotate, the local government. Traffic was brisk over the russet-colored pavement, save where they swerved around a crew at work repairing a worn