Read Online The Lawkeeper of Samara (The Fourth Age of Shanakan Book 2) by Tim Stead - Free Book Online

If anyone was here, that’s where they’d be. Only Hekman had a room of his own. But the big room was empty. Someone had put a table in the middle, and scattered chairs around it. She sat on one of the chairs.
    The physic was supposed to see her this morning. She wondered if she’d get another bottle of that potion. It had certainly made the pain go away, if only for a few hours.
    Ulric appeared. He was carrying a pile of blood red cloth and a hessian sack. He put them on the table. “Tabards,” he said. “Badges.”
    “Badges?”
    Ulric opened the sack and pulled out a piece of brass. It was about half the size of a hand and took the form of an oak leaf with a vertical sword across the front. The oak leaf was the symbol of Samara’s council. She knew that. It represented trust, strength, all the things they hoped for. There was a pin on the back so it could be affixed like a brooch.
    Arla picked up one of the tabards. It was good cloth, quite thick, and plain red.
    “We’re supposed to wear these?” she asked.
    “You wore one as a guard,” he said.
    Arla took off her bow and quiver, undid her sword belt and slipped the tabard over her head. She put the belt back on. It felt comfortable, but the colour was alarming. You couldn’t go unnoticed wearing a thing like this. She took a badge from the sack and pinned it on.
    “Splendid,” Ulric said. “Now you look like a law keeper.”
    “Now I look like a Pekkan ship in full sail,” she said.
    Ulric didn’t bother replying. He was sorting the tabards into piles on the table, by size, Arla assumed. “No-one else here yet?” she asked.
    “The chief’s been here for a while.”
    It didn’t surprise her. Hekman and Ulric seemed almost to live in the law house. She wondered if they did, if that’s what the beds upstairs were for.
    A voice carried through from the front of the house and Ulric hurried out. Arla followed him more slowly, thinking it might be the physic. It wasn’t. By the time she reached the front door Ulric was already heading back down the corridor with Ella Saine behind him. It was unusually early for a house call from the mighty, so Arla followed them to Hekman’s office.
    She stood by the door and listened as Ella told her story, saw the wad of parchment that she laid on Hekman’s desk, and there was that word: magic. Magic had always been the province of the Faer Karan – for four centuries they had ruled by its power and nobody could oppose them. She had seen magic. The Faer Karani Borbonil and his lieutenants had used it to whisk the guard about the land, to heal and kill, and she had seen it. You could not fight magic with a bow. You could not stab it with a sword.
    Hekman did not seem to share this appreciation.
    “We cannot wait,” he said. “I will not sit on my hands while someone murders children in my city.”
    “You must be cautious, Sam,” Ella said. “You are not yet a power in the city. There are those who could crush you and barely notice it. It is not some mindless butcher you pursue.”
    “Life is not without risk,” Hekman replied. “You must use what influence you have to defend us. Del will help.”
    “Del can barely help himself. He follows Calaine.”
    Voices called out from the direction of the door and Ulric left again, bustling his bulk along a corridor that he all but filled. Arla stayed.
    “May I speak?” she asked.
    “Of course,” Hekman said.
    “This magic – it is called low magic, yes?”
    “It calls it so in the book,” Ella said.
    “Then is it not a lesser thing than the Mage Lord’s magic, than the magic of the Faer Karan?” Arla didn’t know why she said this, other than she thought Hekman might want to hear it. She knew his vision of the law – inexorable, constant.
    “It seems likely,” Hekman said.
    “You don’t know,” Ella said. “You’re guessing.”
    “Nevertheless,” Hekman said. “Our course is set. We will continue to seek the killer, and if we find him we