Read Online The Broken Dragon: Children of the Dragon Nimbus #2 by Irene Radford - Free Book Online Page A

eager fingers. Instead of satiny wood and crisp strings he brushed a crackling fold of parchment. Good parchment, heavy enough to scrape clean and use to write music on later.
    Where did it come from? He’d brought no such obvious signs of wealth with him.
    Carefully he pulled it free of the harp, holding it by his fingernails. The sea-green wax seal made him pause.
    “Got yersel’ a dispatch,” Garg, the head drover said gleefully. “Them’s rare and expensive. Only magicians can send those things so they always find who they’re addressed to and only them.” He came up beside Skeller, peering avidly at the document.
    Sure enough, Skeller’s long, pompous, legal name appeared across the front in his father’s florid hand. Had he truly used royal purple ink?
Showoff
, he thought contemptuously.
    “Kin you read it?” Garg asked him skeptically.
    “Yes,” Skeller replied. The man’s awed expression told him not to add, “Can’t you?”
    “Must be University trained. Sure, no one but a magician could turn a simple tune into magic that Lazy Bones would follow. Only magicians got business sending and receiving dispatches.” He jerked his head toward the adoring sledge steed that even now tugged his load a little faster so he could drape his head over Skeller’s shoulder.
    Skeller kept silent, neither admitting nor denying his education. But the old man had taught him something. A dispatch sent by a magician. His father had a magician as chief counselor and spymaster, a man who’d appeared on and off over the last several years and schemed his way into the king’s good graces with too much ease to be anything but magical manipulation.
    “Well, ain’t you goin’ t’read it?”
    Skeller glanced around. Only Garg and the big steed seemed to be watching him. The contents he could keep to himself if he needed to. He slid his fingernail beneath the seal, as he’d been taught, to pry the wax loose without damaging the parchment and keep the seal intact at the same time. Never knew when you’d need proof of the sender.
    “My dear son,” Father began the missive. Skeller had never been dear to the man, and rarely acknowledged as a son. Father usually ignored him completely rather than admit he’d sired a
male
with no interest in politics or political power.
    “Wonder what the old man wants this time.” Skeller scowled at the written words. “Great Mother, he wants me to marry my cousin Bettina!” he nearly shouted.
    “That a good thing?” Garg asked.
    “Not really.”
    “Ugly as sin so she can’t attract anyone but a cousin in an arranged marriage.” Garg chuckled knowingly.
    “She’s pretty enough.” His gaze strayed toward the litter with the girl he’d been watching.
    “But . . . ?” Garg pressed.
    “I’d have to go home and I have no interest in going home,” Skeller finished. He didn’t mention that Bettina had a fascination with watching huntsmen and butchers prepare meat for cooking. He wondered if her fascination would tip over to the need to kill the animal herself or possibly another human. Her father and mother, who ruled the neighboring city-state of Venez, executed criminals. Publicly. Maybe that was where her bloodthirsty interest had come from.
    Violence colored Bettina’s attitude daily.
    Skeller’s father had many faults, but at least as long as his wife lived, he’d sent people into exile, and never executed one.
    But before Skeller fled the continent on his current mission, he’d watched Lokeen order the private execution of a man and his wife who’d publicly questioned a man’s right to rule without a wife to grant him authority.
    Violence in the streets and marketplaces became more common each year; people settling their differences with fists and cudgels. Women disputing a husband’s wandering eye with heavy iron pans swung with malicious accuracy. He’d needed to escape this descent into a primitive lack of civilization.
    Running away hadn’t cured the