Read Online The Empire Stone by Chris Bunch - Free Book Online Page B

noticed these were smaller, thinner than the others — were naked.
    He sighed, knowing after what a couple of Koosh Begee’s thieves had told him about prisons what was likely to come next. The inner door was unlocked; Peirol walked into the main room, and the door clanged shut. There were shouts, catcalls about dwarves, nothing Peirol hadn’t heard from street urchins for years and years. He kept his back close to the cage, waited.
    One of the better-dressed bullies swaggered up, flanked by three others. “Pay or strip!”
    “Pardon?” Peirol asked politely.
    “The way things are,” a satellite thug explained in a not-uneducated voice. “If you have copper, or a bit of silver, Guran and we’ll make sure you’re taken care of, not hurt, get food when they serve it. If you’re skint, your clothes’ll serve for payment. I fancy that tunic — the embroiderin’ll look good on me.”
    “So give,” Guran demanded.
    “And,” another of his men said, “we’ll have a look at that wee roll you’re luggin’.”
    Peirol began to slip out of his jacket. Guran beamed, and Peirol spat in his face. Guran recoiled, and Peirol raked the side of his foot down the man’s shinbone. He screamed, bent, and Peirol head-butted him in the face. Guran stumbled, fell on his back. His assistants were frozen. Hating what he had to do, but doing it, Peirol jumped forward and stamped hard on Guran’s throat with the side of his foot. He felt cartilage, bone crunch, and the man flopped, was dead.
    A sound came, somewhere between a hunting beast’s roar over his kill and astonishment.
    “You killed him,” Guran’s former toady whispered.
    “Did, didn’t I,” Peirol agreed, forcing toughness when he wanted to vomit. Keeping his eye on the other three, but not very worried that they’d jump him, he knelt, swiftly felt through the corpse’s pockets, found a scattering of copper, one gold and four silver coins, as well as a rather handy little knife that he pocketed.
    “Lord Kanen’ll have you skinned,” a watcher said.
    “No, he won’t,” Peirol said. “Guran slipped on the steps, fell. A true pity. I could tell he had signs of real leadership. Now listen well,” he said, raising his voice. “Somebody talks to the guards, I’ll have time to get you before they take me away. But nobody talks. Who needed Guran, anyway? These assholes who sucked around him? Nobody else. New rule. Everybody leaves everybody else alone. Or else I’ll sic my new jackals here on you.
    “Now you — ”
    “Habr,” Guran’s former aide said.
    “Habr. Show me to Guran’s cell. That’ll do for me.”
    • • •
    As Peirol had expected, none of the guards were very interested in the circumstances of the late Guran’s passing. He kept the plug-uglies around, to alert him when the guards checked the upper tier and to get food and drink. He warned that any bullying he saw would be dealt with in the same manner as he’d handled Guran. Peirol wasn’t naive enough to think the prison had become a delight of civilization, but life appeared quieter.
    After a day’s thought, peering deeply into the heart of the best diamond he had, which he’d heard gave strength, Peirol had an idea. He set out his tools, wishing he had either a pedal- or sorcery-powered lathe. He also lacked a crucible to melt and cast, so he gave one of his goons a silver coin and an iron spoon and set him to tapping the edge of the coin, turning it regularly hour after hour. Slowly the edge metal flattened, and the coin became a ring two finger-widths wide, needing only its center drilled out.
    Peirol mixed glue from his roll, fastened a diamond to a stick, improvised a tiny vise, then began spinning that diamond against another, more perfect greenish-yellow gem, slowly cutting the stone round: what was known as girdling, or, in the case of this already worked gem, perfecting the “bearded,” poorly rounded girdle it’d already had.
    That finished, he used ink to mark