Read Online Path of Honor by Diana Pharaoh Francis - Free Book Online Page A

direction of the Sea Gate, Indigo clopping behind. Juhrnus swung along beside her. “I don’t think so.”
    “Don’t tell me he agrees with those skraa -headed imbeciles.”
    “No. He definitely doesn’t agree with them.” Her voice was grim.
    Juhrnus scowled, tired of the puzzle. “Then what?”
    “Ask him.”
    “I’m asking you.”
    She shook her head, her face white as alabaster, her jaw jutting. “Let’s just say I was a fool. Again.”
    Jurhnus ground his teeth. “Could you be more specific?”
    She pulled up short. “I could. But there are some things that I’d just as soon stay buried in the dark where no one can find them. You want to know any more, you ask Sodur.”
    She glared at him until he nodded and they set off again.
    They passed out of the pink district with its fancy shops into the green trader district and then out the walls through the Sea Gate. The pink district had made a great many repairs since the Patversemese siege years before, but the walls and streets of the green district still showed the damage caused by trebuchet and ballista fire, as well the scorch marks from barrages of burning oil. There were great fissures in the cobbles of the streets and cracks in many of the buildings yet standing. Even the snow could not mask the decay and ruin. It grew worse the farther east they went. In the poorer quarters beyond the Sea Gate, whole blocks were decimated. The palace had funded many rebuilding projects, but the gray, white and red districts composing the southeastern quadrant of the city had not yet seen much help. Juhrnus eyed the passing destruction, hoping that Reisil’s destination was among these ruins.
    “So where are we going?” Juhrnus asked, relieved when they at last passed out of the gate and out onto the bluffs. The wind off the ocean buffetted them, picking up the snow and swirling it in the air. The clouds hung heavy and leaden, signaling another storm to come. The cliff boomed as whitecaps rolled across the bay and crashed into the harbor cavern below. Deep and high enough for even the tall ships, the harbor cavern resonated like an inverted drum with the thrust of the waves and the rush of the wind. The sound vibrated along the cliff wall, making the ground feel like a living thing.
    Reisil said nothing, but pointed ahead to the abandoned lighthouse perched out along the edge of the cliff.
    “There? You’re going to live there?” He’d have preferred the ruins inside the city. The lighthouse was far more unstable and dangerous. “Have you a death wish? That place will tumble down around your head in the middle of the night. Probably tonight.”
    “Don’t worry about me. It’s perfect.”
    There was something hard edged and bitter in her voice, and again Juhrnus wondered what she wasn’t telling him.
    He gazed up at the scarred tower as Reisil unloaded Indigo. During the Patverseme siege, the tower and its outbuildings had taken substantial damage to the keepers quarters, storage sheds, and the stairway twisting up its exterior. After the siege, a new lighthouse had been built out along the headland, one that boasted a taller tower with an interior stairway and a greater beacon range.
    “You’re going to get snowed on this winter,” he observed, looking at the gaping holes in the slate roofs of the outbuildings and the white-crusted droppings of the sea-birds that nested inside. “Or you’ll have to share with the birds.”
    “It’s not that bad. Besides, I’m not going to live down here. I’m going to live up in the tower. There’s a perfectly good watch room just below the lantern deck. No damage to it at all. Even the windows are in good shape. If any birds want to bother me, they can talk to Saljane.”
    With that she proceeded up the winding stairs, ignoring his scornful exclamations at the missing railing and decaying steps. Rubble from chipped walls and broken stairs crunched and rolled beneath his feet, tiny drifts of snow along the risers