Read Online The Summer Palace by Lawrence Watt-Evans - Free Book Online

admitted. “I haven’t known her very long. She certainly
seems
trustworthy, but that’s her role.”
    â€œSo you don’t know whether there really is a ninth?”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    â€œI’m still not sure I see how this led to you coming to the Uplands, though.”
    Sword sighed, and shifted his jug to his other hand.
    â€œHe was killing wizards because, he said, they wouldn’t tell him who was the ninth member of the Chosen. The Leader and the Scholar went to talk to him about why he was killing wizards, and to ask him to stop. Because he was so certain that sooner or later the Chosen would turn on him, he assumed their request for an audience was the start of a campaign against him, and he determined to strike first. He turned it into a trap. He had soldiers whose ears were plugged, so they couldn’t be swayed by the Leader’s words or magic, and he took the Leader and the Scholar prisoner and had them thrown into his dungeons. Then he sent more soldiers to kill the rest of us—swordswomen to kill the Beauty, archers to kill me, swordsmen and spearmen to kill the Archer, and so on. They killed the Speaker and the Seer, but I escaped, and I think the Thief, the Beauty, and the Archer may have survived, but we were separated, and without the Seer we have no way to find one another, so I’m alone.”
    â€œBut why are you
here
?”
    â€œBecause all of Barokan is siding with
him,
with the Wizard Lord. Everywhere in the Lowlands I’m a fugitive, a criminal. He’s sentdrawings of me to all the nearby towns, and soldiers are hunting for me, and I realized the only place I could go where he would never find me would be here, to the Uplands. So here I am.”
    Whistler nodded. “I see,” he said. “And what will you do next?”
    Sword grimaced, and shifted the jug again.
    â€œI wish I knew,” he said.

[ 4 ]
    Sword was not permitted to hunt at first; the birds belonged to the clan, and he was not a member of the clan. He was given a fair share of the meat at supper, but not allowed to join the young men in obtaining it. Instead he was kept in or near the camp, where he earned his keep by hauling water, cleaning
ara
leather, and doing various other unpleasant but necessary jobs.
    In fact, he quickly realized that it was exactly the work he would have done as a slave. The only real differences in how he spent his days were that he was permitted to keep his sword, he was never chained, and his instructions were usually in the form of polite requests rather than brusque orders.
    Those differences were appreciated, though, and his evenings were his own—by the Patriarch’s orders, his assigned tasks stopped when the sun sank below the cliffs, where a slave might have found himself working well into the night. He decided to use part of this free time to make himself clothing in the Uplander style—he planned
ara
leather pants, a woven-feather shirt, and a long leather vest, and perhaps, if he had the time and materials, a pair of the soft leather boots the Uplanders wore. A proper Uplander vest would be adorned with elaborate patterns of feathers, but Sword did not expect to have the time needed to do that, and intended to leave his plain.
    There were plenty of other things he hoped to do with his evenings, as well—planning his revenge on the Wizard Lord was high on the list. Learning more about the Clan of the Golden Spear, perhaps picking up a little of their language, getting to know some of the young women—he hoped to find time for all of those.
    First and foremost, though, he intended to stay in shape. Althoughhe no longer had any magical compulsion requiring him to do so, Sword still had his habits, and he therefore spent the first hour of his free evening every day, beginning almost the moment the sun dropped below the horizon, practicing his swordplay. His ability with a blade was no longer superhuman,