The Adorned Read Free Page A

greeneyes. There’s plenty of us looking for work in the Grey City. Since you come here country-fresh, you must have something already set aside for you. So you can spare some real charity, can’t you?”
    The woman wove behind me. Her hands were quick and hard on me, squeezing at my waist. “Look at him! He’s skinny as a girl.”
    “Well, his purse better be fat,” the soldier said. He brought up his fist hard against my stomach. I doubled over. I heard the woman laugh behind me. Her foot planted against my back, and I fell face down, hard against the stones. Blood gushed out from my nose. I tasted it salt-slick at the back of my throat.
    Someone kneeled on my back, bony fingers against my ribs, feeling up and down until they reached the purse of coins at my belt. “Now that’s a proper tribute to your heroes, greeneyes.”
    A foot lashed out against the side of my head. Sparks flashed behind my eyes and I gasped, breathing in a mouthful of gutter water. I heard shouts, weirdly distorted. For a moment I thought they were echoing in my own skull.
    Suddenly I could breathe again. The knees pressing me down, the hands grabbing my ribs were gone. I rolled onto my side, breathing slowly. Blood trickled onto the stones.
    Two guardsmen in red had unslung their rifles. The barrels were leveled at the men in blue and the broken-toothed woman.
    “You will move along,” one of them said, in clipped tones.
    The woman spat at their feet. “They’re worth a dozen of you!”
    “Bloodguard scum,” a soldier hissed; his lip was split, and his teeth were stained red. “You should be grateful. I was facing dogeater swords while you were playing soldiers here behind the walls.”
    The guardsman motioned to me with the tip of his bayonet. “Yes, he looks like he put up a real fight. A true Surammer menace, this one. Now get off , before I’m tempted to fire.”
    With a last curse spit out, they did.
    “Boy.” He jabbed his rifle at me. “Can you stand?”
    Slowly, I struggled to my feet. The guards offered no help. I swayed; I felt near-drunk. Worse, though, was the look on their faces. Looks like he put up a real fight —I bit my throbbing lip. The pain redoubled, and my shoulders shook.
    “Can you walk?” the guard asked; this time his voice was gentler.
    “They took my purse.” My voice came out thick and nasal. My nose felt three times its size. “That was all I had.”
    “You can make a report if you want,” he said, “but I don’t see it doing good. They’re gone, now.”
    “That was all I had,” I repeated, and I sank back down onto the stones. The guards looked at each other, shrugged and left me there.
    The crowds still moved around me, as if I were a pebble in a river. Slowly, the blood stopped flowing. I touched my nose softly. Was it broken? I could not tell.
    My lip was split along the same line that the soldier’s had been. He’d taken a hit from a rifle’s stock; I’d been kicked against the ground. I clenched my hands into useless fists. They were counting my money out, now. Laughing about the skinny greeneye Lowland boy.
    It’s because they have moss in their brains , they used to say in Lun, and then they’d laugh. Not at me—at the Gaelta stoneworkers who came down from the hills for summers in the quarry. Still, my eyes were as green as theirs.
    Someone collided with me, hard, and I pulled myself upright, swaying, ready to fight. My eyes were blurred. “What else do you want? ” My voice cracked on the last word, like a child’s.
    “Easy there.” This was a new voice, a man’s voice, low and soft. A gloved hand took mine, pulled me away from the crowd with casual strength.
    I blinked away the blur and looked up. The man was large, built tall and broad, with greying dark hair in a braid thick as a sailor’s rope. He was Gaelta, that much I could tell from his green, deep-set eyes, almost the same shade as my own. It was an unsettling familiarity, like looking into a distorted