Rise of a Merchant Prince Read Online Free Page B

with dried blood, and they all nursed an assortment of bruises, scrapes, and cuts. “What happened?” croaked Roo, his voice sounding as if he’d eaten sand.
    Jadow said, “Those Quegan sailors, remember?”
    Sho Pi and Nakor, who seemed, of the company, the least worse for wear, exchanged glances, andNakor said, “One of them tried to remove a young woman from your lap, Roo.”
    Roo nodded, then wished he hadn’t. “I remember now.”
    Jadow said, “I hit someone with a chair. . . .”
    Nakor said, “Maybe we killed those Quegans.”
    Erik tried to stay on his feet by leaning against the wall, his knees shaking from his hangover, and said, “It would be just the sort of black joke the gods make that after all we have been through, we end up back here waiting for the gallows again.”
    Roo felt vaguely guilty, as he always did when he had drunk too much the night before. He was a slight man, so trying to keep up drink for drink with men the size of Jadow and Erik was foolish, even though Erik didn’t have much of a head for drink. “If I killed someone, you’d think I’d remember,” Roo observed.
    â€œWell, what are we doing back here in the death cell, man?” asked Jadow from where he sat in the corner, obviously disturbed at their circumstances. “I didn’t sail around the world and back again so Bobby de Loungville could finally hang me.”
    As they were attempting to gather their wits, the door to the hall was yanked open, clanging into the wall hard enough to make every man visibly wince. De Loungville walked into view and shouted, “On your feet, you swine!”
    Without thought, everyone except Nakor leaped to his feet, and each man groaned an instant later. Jadow Shati turned his head and vomited into the chamber pot, then spat. The others stood on unsteady feet, Erik having to grip the bars of the cell to keep himself upright.
    With a grin, de Loungville said, “What a lovelybunch you are.”
    Nakor asked, “What are we doing back here, Sergeant?”
    De Loungville moved to the cell door and pulled it open, showing it hadn’t been locked, and said, “We couldn’t think of anywhere else to put you conveniently. Did you know it took the better part of a full watch of the city guard and a squad of the palace guards to arrest you?” He beamed like a proud father. “Quite a brawl. And you had the good sense not to kill anyone, though you did damage quite a few.”
    With a wave, de Loungville indicated they should follow him. “Prince Patrick and his uncles felt it was better to keep you lot close by for the rest of the night,” he said as he led them from the cell.
    Roo glanced around and remembered the last time he had seen these passages, as he was being led to the mock hanging that had set his feet upon a path he never could have imagined before leaving his birthplace. The first journey he had made along here was almost lost on him, so far had his mind retreated into terror then. Now he could barely focus because of the abuses of the night before.
    He and Erik had fled their lifelong home in Ravensburg after killing Erik’s half brother Stefan, then Baron of Darkmoor. Had they stayed and faced trial, they might have convinced a judge it was self-defense, but their flight counted heavily against them and they had been sentenced to die.
    They reached the steps that led up toward the yard where the gallows stood, but this rime they passed them by. De Loungville, the man who had held their lives in his hand from the moment they had fallen tothe hard wooden floor of the gallows until they had departed ship the day before, said, “You’re a scruffy bunch, so I think we should clean you up a bit before your audience.”
    â€œAudience?” asked Erik, still showing signs of damage from the night before. One of the strongest men Roo had ever