The Burning City Read Online Free

he spoke of Whandall in glowing terms. When the rest fled the forest in terror, Whandall had stayed to help Shastern. If he’d learned little of the customs of Serpent’s Walk, it was because he was otherwise occupied. When none of the boys would return to the wood but took to the streets instead, Whandall Placehold continued to brave the killer plants, to spy on the woodsmen.
    The room was big enough to hold fifty people or more. It was dark outside now, and the only light in the room came from the moon shining through holes in the roof, and from torches. The torches were outside, stuck into holes in the windowsills. Yangin-Atep wouldn’t allow fires inside, except during a Burning. You could build an outside cookfire under a lean-to shelter, but never inside, and if you tried to enclose a fire with walls, the fire went out. Whandall couldn’t remember anyone telling him this. He just knew it, as he knew that cats had sharp claws and that boys should stay away from men when they were drinking beer.
    There was a big chair on a low platform at one end of the room. The chair was wooden, with arms and a high back, and it was carved with serpents and birds. Some kinless must have worked hard to make that chair, but Whandall didn’t think it would be very comfortable, not like the big ponyhair-stuffed chair Mother’s Mother liked.
    A tall man with no smile sat in that chair. Three other men stood in front of him holding their long Lordkin knives across their chests. Whandall knew him. Pelzed lived in a two-story stone house at the end of a block of well-kept kinless houses. Pelzed’s house had a fenced-in garden and there were always kinless working in it.
    â€œBring him,” Pelzed said.
    His brothers took Whandall by the arms and pulled him to just in front of Pelzed’s chair, then forced him down on his knees.
    â€œWhat good are you?” Pelzed demanded.
    Shastern began to speak, but Pelzed held up a hand. “I heard you. I want to hear him. What did you learn from the woodsmen?”
    â€œSay something,” Wanshig whispered. There was fear in his voice.
    Whandall thought furiously. “Poisons. I know the poisons of the forest. Needles. Blades. Whips.”
    Pelzed gestured. One of the men standing in front of Pelzed’s chair raised his big knife and struck Whandall hard across the left shoulder.
    It stung, but he had used the flat of the blade. “Call him Lord,” the man said. His bared chest was a maze of scars; one ran right up his cheek into his hair. Whandall found him scary as hell.
    â€œLord,” Whandall said. He had never seen a Lord. “Yes, Lord.”
    â€œGood. You can walk in the forest?”
    â€œMuch of it, Lord. Places where the woodsmen have been.”
    â€œGood. What do you know of the Wedge?”
    â€œThe meadow at the top of the Deerpiss River?” What did Pelzed
want
to hear? “Woodsmen don’t go there, Lord. I’ve never seen it. It is said to be guarded.”
    Pause. Then, “Can you bring us poisons?”
    â€œYes, Lord, in the right season.”
    â€œCan we use them against the enemies of Serpent’s Walk?”
    Whandall had no idea who the enemies of Serpent’s Walk might be, but he was afraid to ask. “If they’re fresh, Lord.”
    â€œWhat happens if they aren’t fresh?”
    â€œAfter a day they only make you itch. The nettles stop reaching out for anyone who passes.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œI don’t know.” The man raised his knife. “Lord.”
    â€œYou’re a sneak and a spy.”
    â€œYes, Lord.”
    â€œWill you spy for us?”
    Whandall hesitated. “Of course he will, Lord,” Shastern said.
    â€œTake him out, Shastern. Wait with him.”
    Shastern led him through a door into a room with no other doors and only a small dark window that let in a little moonlight. He waited until they were closed in before letting go of