Read Online When Demons Walk by Patricia Briggs - Free Book Online Page A

somehow to appear cluttered. Part of the effect was caused by the way the furniture had been arranged to be easily accessible by a wheeled chair, but most of it was the result of the wide variety of weaponry and armament scattered on walls, benches, and shelves.
    â€œThank you, Talbot, I see you found her.” As he spoke, the Reeve wheeled into the light that drifted into the room through colored glass panels of the three large windows high on the outer wall. Although the original builders of the Castle had planned on the building being fortified, later Southwood Kings had added a second curtain wall and traded safety for comfort and light.
    Sham was surprised at how unaltered the Reeve seemed. Though confined to the chair, the silk of his thin tunic revealed the heavy muscles in his upper arms and shoulders. Even without the bulk of the chainmail he’d been wearing the night of the Spirit Tide, he was a big man. She couldn’t tell anything about his lower body because it was wrapped in a thick blanket.
    â€œHave you satisfied your curiosity?” There was bitterness in his voice, though the man’s innate courtesy kept him speaking Southern rather than his native tongue.
    Sham looked up into his face and saw there the changes she hadn’t seen in his body. Pain darkened his eyes to black and made his skin grey rather than the warm brown it had been. Lines she didn’t remember seeing before were etched deeply around his eyes and from nose to lips.
    Remembering the young soldier who sought the company of a child too young to hide her curiosity rather than endure the sympathetic pity of his former comrades, her reply was different than courtesy demanded.
    â€œNo.” Her voice was neutral. “Do you cover your legs because they are deformed or because you are cold?”
    She knew that she’d chosen correctly when his crack of laughter covered Talbot’s gasp at her temerity.
    â€œA bit of both, I suppose,” Kerim answered with a surprising amount of humor considering his former bitterness. “The wretched things have started to twist up. Since it bothers me to look at them, I wouldn’t want to inflict the sight on anyone else.”
    Sham observed him shifting slightly uncomfortably in the chair and said, “You ought to have more padding in the seat. And if you asked your wheelwright, he’d tell you that a lighter, larger wheel would turn more easily. You might try something like the ones on the racing sulkies—” she shrugged and found a seat on the wide arm of an expensive chair, “—if more padding and bigger wheels work for horses, they should work for you.”
    The Reeve smiled. “I’ll take that under consideration. I trust that Talbot explained what we need you for?”
    She grinned at him. “He said that I get to rummage through the houses of the aristocrats with your permission. It will certainly make life easier, if not as much fun.”
    Talbot cleared his throat warningly, but Kerim shook his head and said, “Don’t encourage her, she’s just baiting you.”
    â€œWho else is going to know about me?” she questioned, realizing that she was enjoying herself for the first time in a long time.
    â€œJust Talbot and myself,” answered the Reeve. “I don’t know who else to trust.”
    â€œWhat about your source?”
    The Reeve’s eyebrows rose.
    â€œYou know, the one who told you the killer is here?”
    â€œElsic,” said Talbot. “He doesn’t know about ye, and we won’t be telling him.”
    Sham looked at the Reeve’s discomforted face and Talbot’s bland one and thought that the first thing she would look for was this Elsic.
    â€œDo you have any particular house that you want me to . . . explore first?” She asked.
    Kerim shook his head and gave a frustrated grunt. “Idon’t have any idea where to start. If you’ve robbed