Beyond the Gate (The Golden Queen) (Volume 2) Read Online Free

highwaymen and bandits. And if the Angel of Death is on his side, you’ll need more than thirty men to take him—even if you have the Lord Inquisitor to back you.”
    Some of the younger men looked about to the faces of those around them. Fighting against Gallen O’Day was foolhardy enough. But no one would want to be found fighting against God.
    “Hmmm …” Scarface muttered, squatting on the ground to think. “Things to consider. Things to consider.” He got a wineskin from his pack, filled a bowl, then looked up at Orick darkly, his thick brows pulled together, and said, “You’ve earned yourself more than a little supper. Sit with us tonight. Drink and eat hearty, Mister …”
    Orick did not like his probing look.
    “Boaz,” Grits answered quickly. “And I’m his friend, Grits.”
    “Keep those bowls filled,” Scarface ordered his men, and he offered the wine to Orick.
    Orick thanked him and began lapping at his bowl of stray lamb stew. He intended to eat his fill. He’d need the energy later tonight, when he ran to Clere to warn Gallen of the danger.
    * * *

Chapter 2
    “Maggie,” a man’s voice called. “Maggie Flynn? Are you in there?” His voice trailed to a garbled string of words Maggie couldn’t make out. She knew everyone in town, and whoever was hollering for her was a stranger.
    Maggie looked up from sewing ivory buttons onto the back of her wedding dress, stared up toward the door of the inn, expecting the stranger to enter at any moment. It was a bitter cold day in early fall, with a sharp wind—sharp enough so that the fishermen of Clere had dragged their boats high onto the beach. A dozen of them were lounging about the fire, drinking hot rum.
    Danny Teague, a stable boy who had shaggy hair and a fair-sized goiter, opened the door and looked out. A horse cart had drawn up outside the door. Its driver was a stranger in a gray leather greatcoat, a sprawling battered leather hat pulled low over his face. He had piercing gray eyes and a neatly trimmed sandy beard going gray. Still, at first glance, Maggie knew that it was his moustache, waxed so that the ends twirled in loops, that she’d remember when he was gone.
    “I’m calling after Maggie Flynn,” the stranger shouted at Danny. “You don’t answer to that name, do you, man? What’s the matter with you—did your father marry his sister or something?”
    Danny closed the door and sort of stumbled back under the weight of this verbal insult, and Maggie shoved her wedding dress up on the table.
    “It’s all right, Danny,” she said with obvious annoyance. “I’ll have a word with Mr. Rudeness out there!”
    Already, several fishermen had got up from their seats by the fire and were rather sidling toward the door. If the stranger had hoped for an audience—and folks who stood in the street and hollered usually did want an audience—well, he had one. And whatever Maggie said to him now was likely to be talked about in every house tonight-as if the town didn’t have enough to gossip about after the past few weeks: with demons and angels and fairies battling in the forests outside of town, the priest and innkeeper murdered.
    Maggie got up, straightened her green wool dress and a white apron so that she looked the part of a matron who kept an inn—albeit a very young matron. Her long dark red hair was tied back.
    She went and opened the door, gazed into the biting wind that smelled of ocean rime. The man’s wagon was old and battered, and it was drawn by a bony horse that looked as if it hoped to die before it had to plod another step. The blacksmith’s hammer had quit ringing across the street, and he stood squinting from the door of his shop. Elsewhere, an unusual number of people suddenly seemed to have business on the streets.
    The stranger set the brake on his wagon and greeted her. “Damn it, Maggie, you look too damned much like your mother.”
    She studied him. Since he spoke so familiarly, she thought she should