Redemption of Thieves (Book 4) Read Online Free Page B

face and work calloused hands to the image of this cultured looking youth with his smooth chin and courtier-style clothing.
    Suddenly, I heard a door creaking open and I scrambled out from behind the desk, whipping the miniature portrait behind my back. It was only the guard who’d been posted outside the door, peering in to see what mischief I might be up to. I shrugged and tried to look nonchalant. I must have appeared more innocent than I felt, because after a cursory glance around the room, the man pulled his head back out and the door was closed again.
    I realized then I had better use more care. It might just as easily have been the Praetor coming in to catch me with his portrait—no, my Da’s portrait in my hands. I reluctantly returned the miniature to the box. I hated to do that as I had hated nothing before or since vowing obeisance to the Praetor, but I had little choice. Even with the pained and confused emotions the sight of the portrait awakened within me, I still had enough mental clarity left to know I couldn’t afford for the Praetor to know I had found it.
    I hastily re-latched the box, replacing it in the bottom drawer. I checked to be certain everything else I had touched was back in its proper place and then abandoned the desk and pulled up a high-backed chair in the corner to await whatever happened next.
    Time seemed to drag by, but as there were no windows in the room through which to judge the changing shadows, I had no way of knowing if I had truly been waiting for hours or if it were my own guilt and sense of urgency that made it seem so. I fell again to looking round the room. My eyes were drawn to the only untidy aspect of the place and the heap of scrolls I had vaguely noticed before spread out on the desk. They were disarranged and jumbled, looking as though they had been searched through with clumsy haste by the room’s last occupant before being shoved aside. One, I noted had tumbled to the floor and been left to lie at the foot of the desk. Automatically, I stretched from my chair and bent to retrieve the fallen scroll. As I set it on the edge of the desk, my eyes fell upon another scroll, unrolled and held open by a heavy rock weight.
    Curious, I bent over it and tried to make out the cramped writing scrawled across the page. There were words I was unfamiliar with, but it seemed to be some sort of recipe, a detailed list of herbal ingredients and the proper ways to mix them. What was it the Praetor found so fascinating in plants and dried, dead things? I found a second sheet behind the first, and on it were drawn detailed sketches of various plants with descriptions underneath. I paused as I recognized one of the herbs from Javen’s lessons. I had never heard the fancy name titled beneath the sketch, but we knew it as Horse Clover. It had no healing properties I was aware of beyond offering a questionable relief for sour stomach. For some reason, however, the five-petal flower held my attention. Now I thought of it, I was fairly sure that had been Horse Clover petals I found pressed in the book inside the Praetor’s desk.
    What was it Javen had told me about Horse Clover? Some superstitious folk would never touch the plant, not even for medicinal purposes, because a certain dark influence was associated with it. It was said in the days when sorcery was common and magic used openly among the people, in that “evil” time before the Praetor had purged our part of the Province of this magical pestilence, that such plants as Horse Clover, Black Fern, and Bitterweed were used commonly among practicers of magic as components for the casting of spells. Most folk, of course lumped magickers into the one general category as I had before Hadrian had taught me of mages and naturals. A natural, I knew, would have no need of spells or their components.
    I frowned at the implications of my find. Could the Praetor be studying the arts of magery or was there some other purpose for these lists and