The Artifact of Foex Read Online Free Page A

doesn’t care about anything but your little political
games.”
    “Screw you, Chet Baikson.” Rory wasn’t the
kind of woman who flounced. Instead, she stalked away with the air
of a predator denied a kill.
    At the dig site, Chet hung back, hands behind
his back, watching the two Flame intently. No one else was looking
in their direction. The other students had avoided looking at or
speaking to either Flame at breakfast.
Their loss,
Chet
thought.
    Journey was dressed more sensibly today, her
makeup toned down. She had donned khakis and a broad-brimmed hat,
though she still wore the wig. She smelled fantastic. Well, both
Flame did, really. Chet had noticed the scent again this morning at
breakfast, especially since the intensity was double what it had
been before. Chet’s involuntary, half-formed erections were
becoming embarrassing. Somehow—he didn’t know why—he was vaguely
reminded of his friend and former roommate, Steve. Which was funny,
because Steve was the exact opposite of sensual in every way.
    Knife, too, was kitted out in heavy canvas
clothing. His still looked dapper, though. Chet had a feeling he
would look dapper while naked and covered with blood. He didn’t
know what Knife did for a living, but he couldn’t quite see the
Flame riding the train every morning to a desk job, then coming
home to pot roast. Anyway, who would cook Knife a pot roast? He was
Flame
, a pervert and sexual deviant.
    Idly, Chet wondered why both Flame had
decided to keep the same faces as they’d had yesterday. Didn’t
shapeshifters shift their shape more often?
    Both Flame chose flat-edged trowels from the
tool table and wandered with seeming purposeless between dig areas.
Chet grabbed a trowel and followed. To his surprise, they stopped
at the upside-down pair of boots that Journey had commented on
yesterday.
    Knife stood beside the boots with a funny
look on his face. In fact, he looked like a person who’d been
kicked in the gut but was unwilling to show pain or cry. “It seems
like yesterday.”
    “What seems like yesterday?” Chet asked,
sidling up to the Flame, his trowel held loosely in hand. “May I
join you two?”
    The Flame met each others’ eyes, and Journey
shrugged. Chet could almost see her thinking,
He’s harmless,
might as well.
Knife nodded, and they all knelt down to get to
work unearthing the rest of the boots.
    After a minute of digging, Knife said, “So
you’d like to hear the story, eh?”
    “I would.” Chet eyed him curiously. “This
must be important or you wouldn’t be here. Right?”
    “Smart boy. Well...” Knife paused, then kept
digging. “It started in Tache around 7305. Slavery had not yet come
to the continent, and it was still good to be Flame. At the time, I
was a courtier of then-Prince Konstantine.”
    “I’ve heard of him,” Chet said. Professor
Clementina taught a class each year on that period of Tache
history. She was an internationally recognized expert on the Tache
royal family. Chet hadn’t taken it, of course, though he wished he
had.
    Knife shot him an impressed, respectful look.
“We got word that an, ah, object of vast power had been found. I
should say it had been found
again
. It was being pursued
by a faction of powerful royal cousins who were set to oppose
Konstantine’s rule. I was dispatched along with a... colleague of
mine, named Fenimore LaDaven, to track down the object and bring it
to court.”
    Chet frowned in confusion. “I thought a
courtier was like a fop. Someone who hung around royal courts while
instigating intrigue and, um, having affairs.”
    Journey chuckled. “Knife does—or rather,
did—those things too, but just to blend in.”
    “The same way I wear suits in these days. And
play gentlemanly sports and read the newspaper on the train. To
blend in.” Knife paused in his digging and brushed dirt from their
goal.
    Chet was unsurprised to see that a pair of
legs were attached to the boots. Whole, solid legs dressed in