dEaDINBURGH Read Online Free Page B

arrows over his shoulder and onto his back and darted through the chamber archway, running straight into Padre Jock’s rock-hard chest. Thrown onto his ass, he launched himself back up onto his feet.
    “Get the hell out of my way,” he ordered the old minister.
    Silently, Jock stood aside and offered his palm out towards the door allowing Joey to dart through.
    “Good for you, son.” Jock smiled to himself as he listened to Joey’s footsteps race through the tunnel.
    Performing a quick check on his knives and other equipment, Padre Jock strolled off towards the main chamber at a leisurely pace.

 
     
    Chapter 4
     
    Alys
     
    “Go to sleep, Stephanie,” Alys whispered to her younger cousin who was sitting up in bed.
    “I can’t. Can I come with you, Alys?”
    She was a sweet kid. Ten years old and at that age when she was just beginning to become a competent fighter, under the tuition of the council, but was still young enough to consider her combat training fun.
    Alys smiled down at her in her bed and pulled on her leather jacket. Tucking her three Sai into their places – one on each thigh, one on her belt – she told Steph once again, “No, maybe next time, but not tonight.”
    Alys tucked the girl back into bed and slipped out through the gap in her canvas tent. Once outside she looked up at the crescent moon, pulled her collar up against the breeze and took off at a slow run towards the gates of The Brotherhood.
     
    Unable to get the boy with the bow out of her thoughts, Alys had decided earlier in the evening to visit the Castle Esplanade and spend some time training there, where he trained. She deserved the freedom; she’d earned it. Unfortunately her mother disagreed and still demanded that she did not leave the safety of their fenced community until she deemed her ready. Alys was supremely confident in her abilities to defend herself and dispatch any threat, of either the living or the dead variety. Besides, the Esplanade was Brotherhood territory and they rarely ventured outside of their underground town, certainly never after dark. Aside from the boy with the bow. Something shifted in her gut once more at the thought of him and the freedom he had but didn’t deserve. I deserve it , she told herself.
      In order to reach the Esplanade, Alys would have to go through The Brotherhood gates and walk along through the Royal Mile, up Castlehill and onto the Castle grounds. She didn’t know that part of the city, but from the layout she was able to see from The Gardens below, it looked like a straight shot from the gates to the Castle. If the streets up on the Royal Mile were similar to those where her community lay, there’d be plenty of dark alleys, closes, doorways and crevices in which to hide in the darkness if needed.
     
    As she reached the gates Alys slipped her pair of blunted Sai from their sheaths on the sides of her thighs. Rotating them she held her Sai handles out with her grip on the cross bar and the main shaft running tight along her inside forearms. In this grip, the Sai were excellent for defence and attack. She left the third of her Sai in her belt. The sharpened edges and point made it her most lethal and least-used option. The Ringed and living people alike could easily be silenced or stunned with her more traditionally blunt Sai.
    After checking along the fence-line where Bank Street met High Street, the boundary between The Brotherhood’s territory and her own people’s and the place she’d first met the boy with the bow, Alys picked the gate’s lock and slipped through. A gust of wind shot along the length of High Street as she stepped through the gate, taking her breath away and causing her to retract through the gate in response.
    Get a grip. She stepped back out onto the cobbles of The Royal Mile. Locking the gate behind her, Alys moved quickly and quietly along the sides of buildings, pupils wide, taking in every speck of available light and every detail of the