Mistworld (Deathstalker Prelude) Read Online Free Page B

present Council with a stern watchfulness. A great circular table dominated the room. Almost thirty feet in diameter, and carved from a single huge block of ironwood, it had been commissioned by the original Mistport Council over ninety years ago. Port Director Gideon Steel ran his plump fingers caressingly over the polished wood of the tabletop, and tried not to yawn as the arguments around him droned on and on.
    His chair creaked complainingly as his two hundred pounds of weight stirred restlessly. Steel was beginning to think the meeting would never end. He’d been here six hours already, to no damned purpose he could see. As far as he could tell, it was just business as usual, and they hardly needed him for that. Unless it concerned the starport itself, he was quite content to let the other Councillors go their own way and do what they wanted. Steel had no interest in politics or government, and was only a Councillor because his position as Port Director demanded it. Unfortunately, there was one item on the present agenda that did affect the starport: the installing at the starport of the one hundred and fifty disrupter cannon from the recently discovered wreck of the Darkwind .
    Steel laced his pudgy fingers together across his vast stomach and glanced round the Council table, not bothering to hide his boredom. Gideon Steel was a short fat man with calm, thoughtful eyes and a disturbingly cynical smile. He had just turned forty and resented it. He had little tolerance for fools or people who wasted his time, which was why he avoided Council meetings as often as he could get away with it. He sighed quietly, and tried to concentrate on the matter at hand. Eileen Darkstrom was still speaking, her harsh staccato voice echoing sharply back from the low ceiling. Steel sometimes wondered if she made such long speeches on purpose, so that when she finally finished, everyone would be so grateful they’d vote for anything she proposed, just to stop her from starting up again. Steel grinned. He wouldn’t put it past her. Darkstrom had only been a Councillor for five years, but she’d already got more done in that time than all the other Councillors put together. She was a great one for getting things done, was Eileen Darkstrom.
    She was a short, stocky woman in her late thirties, with a thick bush of bright red hair that burned like glowing copper in the lamplight. Her skin was pale and freckled, but what would have been pleasant enough features were marred by her constant scowl. Darkstrom was a fighter, and didn’t care who knew it. Her green eyes blazed fiercely as she hammered on the table with her fist, and Steel winced in sympathy for the table. As one of Mistport’s leading blacksmiths, Darkstrom’s muscular arm was enough to frighten anyone, let alone a table fast approaching its century.
    She was finally getting around to the matter of the Darkwind’s disrupters, but Steel had given up trying to follow her tortuous argument. He looked away, and his gaze fell on the tall, brooding man sitting to Darkstrom’s left. He looked up, and their eyes met for a moment. Steel kept his features carefully impassive. Count Stefan Bloodhawk nodded curtly, and then turned his attention back to Darkstrom, his long elegant fingers laced together to provide a platform for his sharply pointed chin to rest on. The Bloodhawk was known to be well into his forties, but his aristocratic features were clear and unlined, and he had the lean musculature of a man half his age. His shoulder-length jet-black hair had been pulled back and tied with a scarlet ribbon, showing off his prominent widow’s peak. There were those who said he dyed his hair, but never to the man’s face. The Bloodhawk’s dark eyes were hooded and unrelenting, like those of the ancient bird from which his Clan took its name, and his great beak of a nose and high-boned features only added to the resemblance. Steel frowned slightly, and lowered his eyes. There were many