Read Online The Prince of Shadow by Curt Benjamin - Free Book Online

he were inclined to accept the offer. Which he wasn’t. Made virtue easier that way.
    â€œThank you,” he sat, and Bixei’s knuckles whitened around the handle of his spoon. “But I have promised myself to a woman, a pearl diver. She’s Thebin, like me. We’ve known each other since we were seven.” He smiled. The memory of Lling, slick as a seal under the bay, lightened his heart. He could imagine her expression if she heard his declaration, the way she would raise one eyebrow and pucker her lips like she’d eaten something sour. She’d punch him, no doubt, for the outrageous lie, and neither of them would ever admit how close to the truth he swam. Laughter sparkled in his gut, and he set it free. “We’ve been workmates half our lives.”
    Stipes shrugged good-naturedly. “Then you’re best off staying where you are,” he advised. “His Honor won’t ask, and some in the barracks would make their offer with a fist in your belly. Best to have some friends about you and a bit of a name in the ranks before you take on those offers.”
    Llesho knew good advice when he saw it, so he gave a little nod of agreement and dug his spoon into the mess on his plate. The fish was passable, the mushed grain tasteless, but he watched Stipes mix the two and found that, when taken together, the food wasn’t bad at all.
    Llesho noticed that Bixei’s knuckles had returned to a more natural color since he’d rejected Stipes’ offer, but the other boy hadn’t said anything for most of the meal. When Llesho had almost finished, though, Bixei asked a question, tinged with contempt. “You work with women?”
    Llesho almost answered with his own challenge, but he saw the gladiators lean closer over the bench and realized that Bixei asked for them all, and that the disdain covered a real curiosity. He relaxed, then, like he’d fitted a puzzle piece into place, and smiled. “Every quarter-shift. Lling saved my life. I had run out of breath and would have drowned.” The memory of hanging upside down from Shen-shu’s chain, his strength gone with the last of his breath, shivered through him with the terror he’d been past feeling when it happened. “Lling breathed into me, and brought me to the surface. Without her I’d be dead.”
    Fighting men, it seemed, could understand living or dying by how loyal a man could count his friends, but they still looked doubtful that a woman could share something as complex as honor. Stipes asked the next, and most obvious question. “But isn’t it . . . distracting?”
    Llesho shook his head ruefully. “Not after the first black eye,” he said, and the laugh that earned him seemed directed not at his own defeat in the field of romance, but at Stipes himself, and Bixei, both of whom received nudges in the ribs and a few waggled eyebrows along with the hoots of derision. Bixei flamed red in the face, but raised his chin to defy them all. “And don’t forget it, either, Stipes,” he said, confirming Llesho’s suspicions and giving Stipes a new warning as well.
    â€œNot likely to, am I, boy?” As an apology the words might seem lacking, but they were said with enough fervor to earn Stipes a nod of acceptance.
    Llesho had finished his breakfast and waited only for a pause in the brief conversation to make his excuses. Bixei was the next to stand as the rest of the bench also began to clear. He seemed less hostile, but said nothing more to Llesho and left quickly.
    â€œYou’ll do, boy.” Stipes gave Llesho a slap on the back, and followed as Bixei cut through the throng for the exit.
    â€œSure, I will,” Llesho muttered under his breath, though he doubted every word of it. He wished Lling were here now, and Hmishi. Together they might take on the world, but alone he didn’t know how he would make it as a gladiator. He wasn’t even a