The Prince of Shadow Read Free Page B

his old mentor. His heart told him otherwise.
    Desperately he wanted to confide in someone, to ask if any of it could be true, but he knew better than to take such a risk, even with Lling or Hmishi. The Harn hadn’t always needed to steal Thebin children for the slave trade. The Thebin pearl divers on his quarter-shift all came from small-claim farms scratching out a marginal living on the fringes of the Thebin landhold. Harn raiding parties had robbed their homes and burned their crops, leaving them with nothing but their children and an agonizing decision. They needed the money that selling their children would bring just to feed the younger ones until they, too, were old enough to send to market. He once asked Lleck why the king did nothing to help his people. “In some ages, the gods favor their people, and in others they turn their backs.” The minister had wept softly after that. Llesho hadn’t understood, but he’d started a list right there of questions he would ask when he met the gods.
    For the children trained to dive for pearls, however, slavery was little worse than the devastation they left behind them in the mountains. They knew nothing of kings or princes or palaces laid waste in that last great and terrible invasion. How could they understand his need to rescue his brothers when they could not imagine any rescue for themselves, or any reason to expect one? If they did not believe Llesho mad, they would believe him a danger. It surprised him to realize that he could not bear to lose the only companions he had left in the world.
    â€œKwan-ti will know how to help you.” Lling touched his arm, for comfort and for strength. The jokes and challenges that usually marked the trip home from the bay were silenced today, the pearl fishers watching him somberly. Llesho remembered the first time he had seen a drowning, when Zetch, a diver well past the age at which most had fed the pigs, had stayed below for almost an hour. When they brought him up, his sack was full of pearls, but so were his mouth, his nostrils, his ears, and he had jabbed mother-of-pearl shells into his eyes. Gone mad, the foreman had announced, but the Thebins knew better. The pearls in Zetch’s body would pay his rent in the kingdom of the dead, and buy him a new body—a free body—for his next turn on the wheel.
    â€œI had a dream,” Llesho said, but gave no description of his conversation with the spirit. Lord Chin-shi, it was said, feared witches, and dreamers could sometimes fall within the web of his superstition. For his part, Llesho wondered if he must be a witch, to have the dead visit him in waking dreams, but he dared not ask. The question alone would be enough to send him to the flames. So he only said, “I didn’t mean to frighten you. I must have let my mind wander.”
    â€œWe’ll talk about it later,” Lling answered. “Kwan ti will know what to do.”
    Llesho knew her to mean that he should say nothing more in the crowded wagon. Good advice, and easy to follow. He leaned his head against her shoulder and closed his eyes.
    â€œBe careful with him. We could lose him yet.”
    Kwan-ti, that was, and with a tone of command she only assumed when real trouble threatened. For a moment, Llesho wondered what had happened. As his companions jostled him awake, however, he realized that he must be the emergency.
    â€œI’m all right,” he protested, struggling to disentangle the hands that reached to gather him up.
    â€œNo, you are not,” Lling contradicted in tones almost as commanding as those of Kwan-ti. “His mind drifted down below, during quarter-shift,” Lling explained to the healer, her voice shrill with her anger. “Then, because he’d dropped his rake when he was fading, Shen-shu lowered him back into the bay to find it. If I had not breathed into his mouth, he would have died with his head stuck in the mire.”
    â€œLleck