Knife Sworn Read Online Free

these ones are being trained.”
    “Yes.” Rorrin showed no concern.
    “You weren’t alone.”
    “No,” he said.
    “If we move fast we might still catch them before they reach the city gates.” Grada scooted back across the ground, half sand, half dust, and stood out of sight from the school.
    Rorrin followed her, his pace a sensible one but too slow to suit her mood. She waited for him at a milestone. Such stones counted out the first hundred miles from the city—this one read “twenty” in the old script of lines and dots.
    “We may lose them in the city,” she said as he drew closer, river dust scuffing under his sandals.
    “Meere will not lose them.” Rorrin watched her face as if he had asked her a question.
    “Answer my question,” she said. “Why have you followed me?” Rorrin seemed almost uninterested in the slaves, as if she herself were the quarry that mattered to him.
    A shrug. “Is it only the emperor’s enemies who must train new agents for the fight?” He stepped closer, close enough that she could see the sweat on his brow, the grey stubble above his lip.
    “I’m not a fighter.” The idea pulled a laugh from her. “I’m an Untou—”
    His hand was on her shoulder, a move of shocking swiftness. “I touched you. Be something new.”
    The echoes rose from the base of her skull, old whispers hissing repetition.
    A sharp edge demands a cut. Quick hands kill, quick hands kill. Aristo touched me so.
    She took his wrist and lifted his hand away. There had been an Aristo… was that voice hers? A memory?
    “You don’t have to be a warrior to fight for the emperor. The Tower fights his battles, the alchemists in the Tun, spies who live new lives in far corners beyond the edge of empire.” Rorrin smiled. “Give me my hand back.”
    Grada let him go and in a flicker he held her wrist instead, one finger digging down into a nerve that made her cry out and almost fall to her knees. She kept standing though, snarling at the pain.
    “You’re too used to doing what is asked of you, Grada.” He let her go. “Can you unlearn that lesson of a lifetime and show that same obedience to only one man?”
    The pain subsided in waves as Grada cradled her arm. “I serve the emperor, nobody else.”
    “Well next time I ask to have my hand back, consider saying no.” And he walked on by, sandals scuffing.
    They walked through the cool of the night with the blazing stars to light a moonless path. The love song of ten thousand frogs accompanied them, and the river’s sigh as it slipped past unseen.
    Grada slapped her neck and brought her hand away dark-smeared with blood and pieces of mosquito.
    Rorrin snorted at her side. “The death of a thousand bites. The emperor—”
    “You don’t have to make every damn thing an… an…”
    “Allegory?”
    “Yes, one of them.” Grada didn’t know the word, but it sounded right. “A story about the emperor or a lesson or—”
    Rorrin pressed something into her hand. “The emperor gave me these.”
    Grada looked. Dark objects, rounded, small. A sniff—the faint scent of lemons, bitter lemons.
    “Citronel pods. Crush them and wipe the juice on. The blood-suckers won’t want you.”
    “Sarmin gave you these?” Grada asked.
    “Emperor Beyon. He hated mosquitoes. The things will drink royal blood soon as take from peasants.”
    “You knew Beyon? Was he like Sarmin?”
    Out in the darkness a whip-o-will unleashed its cry, like a shriek of agony.
    “You can’t see the emperor as a friend, Grada. That will make trouble for you and for him. And no, Emperor Beyon was nothing like his brother. He would never have spoken to an untouchable and his friendship was… dangerous. Apt to be pulled away as swiftly as it was given. He had a quick temper.”
    “They say he was a great emperor. The people loved him in the city.” Jenna had always offered prayers for Beyon. And to him, which made no sense.
    “The people adored him because he did nothing. They