Dragon in Exile - eARC Read Free Page B

answer.
    “Your message was that you wished to ally yourself with my purpose.”
    “Ah,” she said softly; very nearly a sigh.
    She bowed once more, deeply, hands expressing gratitude, admiration, and sincerity even as she lunged into a throat punch.
    He dropped, leapt up, saw her spin, and blocked the second blow, recognizing the beginning of the sequence, as he spun away from the third, and launched an attack of his own, meaning to disable her even as she leapt to meet him, fully committed to the kill, and there was no choice—there was no time!
    His body knew the answer, and provided it, firm and hard. The sound of her spine breaking was loud—and final.
    He dropped to his knees beside her, his fingers going to the pulse-point on her throat—but no; he was far too competent to have botched a kill so straightforward as the Fist of Malann.
    The door opened while he was still kneeling, weeping over her body.

Chapter Two
    Audrey’s House of Joy
    Blair Road
    Surebleak

    “This hallway!” the gentleman declared. “This hallway cries out for Queterian carpet!”
    It was a handsome hallway, at the moment made more handsome by the rich, rare, sunlight flowing in from the mid-hall window. The highly-polished plastic floor positively glowed under the suasions of the sun; the pale pink walls were as rosy as love’s first blush.
    The gentleman’s companion, some Standard years past her first, and even her fifth, love, laughed fondly down at him, and shook her bright head.
    “You think I didn’t look at them catalogs you brought me?”
    “Of course, you looked at them. Given your final order, I would go so far as to say that you had studied them thoroughly.”
    The gentleman smiled. The sunlight was less kind to him than to the floor and walls; it struck true silver from his hair; and wantonly traced the fine lines about his eyes and mouth. The lady dyed her hair, so the sun got nothing but false gold there; and had its revenge among the lines of her face.
    It was an interesting face, round-cheeked and pale; the shrewd eyes a pure blue, the chin truculent, and the mouth a little hard. The gentleman’s eyes were kinder, and grey; his chin decided; his mouth firm and sweet. Together, they made a pleasant picture, there in the sunlight, she the taller; he the slighter, obviously very much at their ease with each other.
    “I studied them all right, back and forward, and back again. So, I’ll take leave to tell you that I know how much Queterian carpet costs.”
    “But do you know,” the gentleman mused, his eyes dreaming on the wide, gleaming hall, “how much it costs, wholesale?”
    “Strange to say it, I do. And it’s still outta range. Even if I hadn’t just bought a whole house full of new carpet and furniture—which I have done, and you well know!”
    “The upgrades to the house are good for business,” the gentleman pointed.
    “Agreed! Queterian carpet, though—that’s what we here on Surebleak call ice on top the snow. It’s nice to dream on, but—”
    “But you are in the business of dreams!” the gentleman said, tucking the lady’s arm through his. They proceeded amiably down the hall toward the stairs.
    She laughed.
    “Luken, I thought you knew what my business is!”
    “I do,” he said promptly. “You are in the business of comfort, and joy, and dreams. Ephemeral goods, and all the more precious for being so. Such things must be offered and received in an environment of beauty and grace. Thus, the new furniture, the new paint, the new rugs. Your house may now stand with any other house of delight on any port I have visited. Indeed, you already enjoy custom from Surebleak port—from persons of wide experience.”
    “That’s so; we had to upgrade for those folks, but here’s the thing we can’t lose sight of: The local folks—those fancy dreams and comforts you’ll have me selling—the local folk need those things, maybe more’n the port custom. I gotta be careful not to price myself