Dragon Soul Read Free

Rook inside. It was a fairly standard room, bare but well tended to. Clean. No bugs that I could see, and therefore superior to most of the lodgings I’d taken in Thremedon.
    “Bathroom’s just through there,” she said, still behaving as though Rook were the only guest for the night. “I’ll be showing guests in for the rest of the evening, but if you need anything at all, my room’s second from the left on the first floor, and local people know not to bother me much past eleven.”
    I couldn’t help but wish that Rook’s particular charisma worked half as well on the innkeepers as it did on their daughters. We might have had extra gravy, or perhaps a discount.
    Rook surveyed the premises with the same bored, slightly derisive air he’d had for almost everything we’d seen up until this point. The innkeeper’s daughter twisted that stray lock of hair in her fingers again, anxious to know whether he’d heard her and not entirely willing to ask.
    “I’m gonna take a bath,” he said, nodding when he’d decided that the room was suitable. “Bring me up some dinner when you get a minute, will you? He doesn’t really know when to stop, and I don’t think there’ll be much left when he’s through.”
    “You poor thing,” the innkeeper’s daughter murmured, staring at Rook with such rapture that you’d have thought he’d up and announced he was joining the Brothers of Regina.
    I’d been mentally compiling my update to our log, but this was enough to make me pause.
    “I
beg your pardon,”
I began.
    “That’s all,” Rook said to the innkeeper’s daughter, still hovering in the doorway.
    “I’ll have it right up,” she promised, smiling as Rook disappeared into the bathroom.
    We were left together, staring at one another, completely at odds.“Thank you,” I began, but my pleasantries were too late; she swung the door closed behind her without a second look at me.
    “Am I invisible?” I demanded, going over to the bathroom door once she’d gone and there was no chance of her overhearing me. It was ironic, really, as there had been numerous times in my life when I’d wished for nothing
but
the power to be invisible. Now that I had it, such treatment was beginning to wear on me.
    “Not the way you’ve been eating,” Rook snorted. “Get out, Cindy. You ate my dinner. I’m taking the first bath.”
    “Please,” I said. “That language.”
    “Look,” Rook said, not for the first and no doubt not for the last time. “I’m tired and I’ve been traveling just as much as you. You wanted to come along, so you play by my rules. Eat your fucking turkey and leave me be.”
    Once again, a door was shut unceremoniously in my face, and I was left alone. The room smelled of gravy and horses and the mud of travel but also of clean sheets. There was only one chair, and one of the legs was shorter than the others, so that when I sat the thing nearly went out beneath me.
    To soothe my spirits, I took out my travel log and began to write of that day’s adventures. No matter how minor, I did wish to remember them.
ROOK
    The only problem I had with the fucking Hanging Gardens of Eklesias was actually getting there.
    I repeated the same thing over and over to myself, trying not to rip any throats out.
You try traveling with someone who spends more time talking about what he’s seeing than actually seeing it and you’ll know what I mean
. It was like dragging a lame horse along behind me, helping it out because of sentimentality instead of shooting it like I should’ve done, and I never had too much patience for that shit in the first place.
    Now he was tired, now he was hungry, now he was
a bit fucking parched
—there were any number of fucking problems that could make a good day’s traveling take three instead. Stopping to talk about a ruinedwall or a pile of stones or an old farmhouse wasn’t my style. I didn’t care if this was the famous spot where Absalom the Gentleman had killed himself only