01 - The Burning Shore Read Free Page A

the sinecure of militia commander. Or why he’d
done anything since his parents had died.
    He sighed, turned and made his way home.
    Behind him the dead man lay in the street, his form as still and pale as a
stone knight beneath the light of the gibbous moon.
     
    Florin’s apartments were at the top of an old building that sprawled
drunkenly across three streets. It had served many purposes over the years: it
had been a barracks, a stable and an inn.
    Now it was none of those things. The cavernous spaces between its peeling
lathe walls and high drafty gables had been carved up into a shabby warren of
little chambers that housed everything from bales of cheap calico to the
workshops of a dozen stooped and weak-eyed artificers.
    Florin unlocked the side door and made his way up three flights of narrow
stairs. They squeaked and groaned as if they were about to collapse, but he was
too used to them to pay any heed to their protest.
    In summer the slate roof above his rooms became hot enough to fry eggs on,
but in the winter it froze into a flat sculpture of snow and icicles. Even the
rats deserted the gables at that time of the year, although the cockroaches
weren’t that fussy: they scuttled away now as he unlocked his front door and
pushed it open.
    And yet, despite the discomfort, Florin had never considered moving back into
the luxury of his family’s town house. For as long as he could remember that
home had felt like a prison, the bars of respectability strictly guarded first
by his father and then, after his death, by his brother. Here, at least, he was
free.
    Hungry, but free.
    He bolted the heavy door shut behind him, dropped the dead weight of his
purse onto the table, and collapsed into the beaten up sofa that had been drawn
up to the window. Putting his feet upon the sill he leant back, stretching as
luxuriously as a cat.
    As the first pink hint of dawn crept across the slate of Bordeleaux’s
rooftops and spires and distant ramparts Florin breakfasted on half a loaf of stale bread, which he washed down with a few mouthfuls of sour
wine.
    Tomorrow, he decided, he would eat properly. For the first time in what
seemed like an age he’d be able to afford to. Perhaps he’d buy some fat pork
sausages from the Empire, or maybe find a Tilean cookshop where the fish was
smothered in one of their delicious cream sauces. He’d even heard that a new
halfling restaurant had opened near the docks. That might do.
    But for now he was content to sit and gnaw his week-old bread and watch the
city wake. The citizens grew as loud and raucous as the flocks of sparrows that
flitted above their heads. The cries of the costermongers and beggars rose up
from the streets below in a ragged chorus that would last all day.
    Meanwhile, to the east, the red ball of the autumnal sun rose up behind the
great central column of the Lady’s temple. She stood silhouetted in eye-watering
sunlight, a vision of beauty in gold and pure white marble.
    The spire upon which she perched rose out of the merchants’ quarter like a
sword hilt out of the stomach of an enemy. It had been raised at the expense of
one of Bordeleaux’s most celebrated grail knights, the martyr needing something
to buy with the hoard of the dragon he’d slain.
    Not that “martyr” was the word the merchants used to describe the late St.
Gilles. It was rare to find any of their class that showed anything but derision
for their aristocratic masters. How many times had Florin’s own family equipped
their protectors at usurious rates, or sold them warhorses with weak lungs and
strained fetlocks?
    “Idiots,” Florin muttered, without conviction. He’d never been able to muster
the hard shell of contempt that the merchant families of Bordeleaux showed
towards their supposed betters.
    The sun climbed higher as he dozed. It was almost midday before a bang on his
door jolted him out of his sleep. He turned just in time to see it crash open
and a