Asunder: A Gathering of Chaos by Cameron Hopkin (children's ebooks free online .txt) 📕

the inn appeared. She bore a hefty club studded with sharpened stones. After a quick, calculating glance around the room she retreated, her feet thudding down the stairs.

“We need to be gone,” growled Renna. “She’ll bring the Watch.”

Gamarron hesitated. He didn’t like being pushed into a decision, but there was no denying the reality of what the stone-hearted Hand said. Sighing, he crossed to Kest and gently picked him up. “I have a room not far from the docks on the far side of the river. We can go there.” How have things gotten so out of control?

“Down the back stairs,” Renna urged, shepherding Nira out the door. Gamarron walked after her with a heavy heart. He was allied to a woman with the heart of a killer who wanted to help him kidnap a man of power he’d never met, whom he pursued for a reason he could not divine. Never had he felt so lost. But Renna was right: he would leave a thousand men in ruins, steal anything under the sun, and even turn his back on the koda if need be. His was a work that could not be denied or put aside, no matter the cost. Shouldering his burdens both without and within, he left the broken men behind and fled into the night.

Chapter 9 Chaotic Infiltration

Nira took a deep breath, feeling utterly exposed. She was utterly exposed. The amount of clothing she was wearing wouldn’t have covered an infant. She held the edges of her ratty cloak closed in front of her at the waist, but it was a breezy day, and the hem kept flapping up and showing off her bare calves. The wind tickled its way up her legs a truly discomforting distance before being blocked by cloth. “We should have made Renna wear this,” she muttered.

“I wouldn’t want to see that,” Kest replied. He scanned the crowds as he scratched beneath his leather eyepatch. The Beast Rider had been subdued during the weeks that he had spent in their rooms healing, but he didn’t seem like a bad sort. Then again, Nira wasn’t sure he was a good sort, either. She didn’t have enough experience to tell the difference. He glanced at her. “She’s not exactly a lovely woman,” he said with a small smile.

Her tongue cleaved to the roof of her mouth. Wait. Is he saying I am? She felt a little panicky. “No,” she managed to say noncommittally. The boy drew the gaze of every woman that walked down the street, and more than a few of the men’s as well. He was broad and muscled without being too tall, his chestnut-brown locks pulled back into a long braid with a few wavy curls escaping to frame his face. He was deeply tanned, though not as dark as her, and his face seemed to have been chiseled by a master artist. The scabs and fading bruises could not hide his beauty, nor could the eye patch. He seemed embarrassed by the patch and played with it often, though he snatched his hands away if he thought anyone was looking. In fact, his tawny eye sought the floor if anyone looked at him, and he deferred to others at every turn. He seemed shy. Or broken. Nira was surprised he had ventured the comment even if he wasn’t complimenting her.

Renna was forever pestering the boy, half-motherly and half-predatory, but he never complained. In fact, Nira wasn’t sure Kest would have objected if the older woman had carted him off to her bed, as nauseating as that thought was. Out of curiosity one night, Nira had told him to go get her a cup of ale from the common room. He had looked to Gamarron first, who ignored him, and then left to get it without a word. Renna had tongue-lashed her for it, but Kest hadn’t seemed to mind. He was forever glancing at the old warrior monk as if checking for permission. Sometimes Gamarron gave it with a nod of the head, but mostly he seemed uncomfortable around the young man.

For her own part, Nira was fascinated by Kest but uneasy around him. He hadn’t pushed his attentions on her, but he was too beautiful to ignore, and it made her antsy. The attention of men was something she had always dreaded. Being short and flat-chested had protected her for a time when she was younger, but even so her parents had started pushing for her to marry. It was what had finally convinced her to run away with Fi. The thought of having endless babies and shipping them off to seek the Light filled her with horror, and the growing attention of the older men in her village had made her learn to avoid them. Kest’s one-eyed gaze put her in mind of that old dread, no matter what he might be thinking. At the same time, though, his look put flurries in her stomach that were maybe more hopeful than dreading. It was confusing to say the least – and being half-naked under her cloak wasn’t helping any.

“Shouldn’t we be on our way?” she asked, trying to divert her thoughts.

Kest shook his head. “Not until we hear them start. That’s what he said, so that’s what we do.” The boy never said Gamarron’s name that she had heard, but the inflection on ‘he’ let her know exactly who the Beast Rider was talking about. The word sounded uncomfortably like ‘Lord’ or ‘Master’ when he said it. Nira shook her head. The obedience that Kest gave the older man was baffling. The old goat put out his eye! She itched to ask him about it, but she didn’t think that the twenty words they’d exchanged over the last several weeks had earned her the right.

“You shouldn’t worry,” he continued, apparently taking her discomfort for nervousness. “It’s a good plan. It will work.”

“It’s a crazy plan,” she shot back. She looked to the Coliseum. It loomed just ahead,