Sharps Read Online Free Page A

promise. And anything that’s going, I’ll take.”
    It hadn’t been the right thing to say, and she slept with her back to him that night, while he lay awake and tried to think of something else he could possibly do, besides fencing. But he couldn’t; so just before dawn, he got up and shaved, using the cup as a mirror. His other shirt was being pressed under the mattress and he couldn’t very well retrieve it without waking her up; not a good idea at such an intemperately early hour. Luckily, the cold weather meant he hadn’t sweated too much the previous evening, so yesterday’s shirt was just about wearable. He buckled on his sword belt, thought for a moment and took it off again, in case he ran into the bailiff’s men in the street.
    In his sleep he heard someone repeating his name over and over again: Giraut, Giraut, Giraut Bryennius. He opened his eyes and saw light, which wasn’t what he’d been expecting.
    “I’m alive,” he said.
    “Indeed.” A woman’s voice, possibly the one he’d just heard, but he wasn’t sure. “There’s no justice.”
    A moment of confusion; then the joy of discovering that he hadn’t bled to death in the bell tower after all; then the horrible recollection of what he’d done, and what was going to happen to him.
    “Look at me,” the voice said.
    He turned his head. His neck hurt.
    She was middle-aged, with streaks of grey at the sides of her head; a stern, plain woman who immediately made him feel stupid. She was wearing black, and smelt very faintly of roses.
    “You’re in the infirmary of the Lesser Studium,” she said. “You lost a great deal of blood and you’re still very weak, but the brothers tell me you’ll live.” She smiled at him, cold as an archaic statue. “Perhaps that’s not what you wanted to hear. If I was in your shoes, I’d rather have died before they found me.”
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t think I know you.”
    Her face went through the motions of laughter, though she made no sound. “Of course you don’t,” she said. “You’ve never seen me before. You killed my husband.”
    Oh, he thought. “I’m sorry.”
    “You’re sorry,” she repeated. “Well then.” She picked up a jug and a cup from the table beside the bed, poured some water and handed it to him. “It’s all right,” she said, “I haven’t put poison in it. Go on.”
    Now she mentioned it, he was painfully thirsty. He drank, spilling water down his chin.
    “I really am sorry,” he said. “About your—”
    “No you’re not.” She said it calmly, as if correcting a trivial error. “You’re sorry for yourself, and deeply embarrassed. You have no idea what the proper form of words is for apologising to the widow of your victim.” She put the jug down and settled herself in her straight-backed chair, her hands folded in her lap. “My husband,” she went on, “was a pig. He was a boor and a bully, forever making a fool of himself with the female servants, shamefully neglectful of his family and absolutely hopeless with money. I was married to him for twenty-seven years. The reason you’re here, rather than in a cell in the Watch house, is that I went to the Prefect and asked him for clemency. Theoretically, you’ve been remanded into my custody while the court decides what’s to be done with you. In practice, they’ve more or less left it up to me to decide.”
    He stared at her. She was looking straight at him, frowning slightly, as if he was some rather unsatisfactory object she’d bought on a whim and paid too much for. He remembered something else, and said, “I’m really sorry about your daughter.”
    “Oh, her.” She shrugged. “I got the truth out of her. She’s never been able to lie to me, though not for want of trying. I knew it was a mistake allowing her to go to college, but her father insisted.” She paused for a moment, as though taking time to ratify her own decision. “I’m in the interesting position,” she