The Dinosaur Knights Read Online Free

hissed through his head-swaddling. “I’ll have your ears for this!”
    â€œI’m no serf of yours, Yannic. City air is free air. And what about the Garden and egalité?”
    That set off a clamor like a harrier-pack screeching at the Moon Visible. Longeau’s tenor rang above the racket.
    â€œAll this to the side, no one disputes the foreign mercenaries held back, instead of joining us at the forefront of battle. What’s that, if not cowardice? Do you call that beauty, Eldest Brother?”
    Rob looked to Karyl. His companion had his head tipped back against the mural that was his dead protégé’s only monument. His eyes were shut, his bearded lips slightly parted, as if he soundly slept.
    â€œYou know the truth!” Rob raged at him. Out loud: he could have screamed it without being heard anybody farther away. “You’ve got to tell them! Why won’t you defend yourself, man?”
    As if that were his cue Bogardus raised his hands outward from his sides, unfurling his robe’s wide sleeves like wings. Once again he worked his magic and stilled the crowd.
    â€œPerhaps we should let our captains tell their story,” he said. “Brother Karyl, if you please?”
    Karyl opened his eyes and stood up briskly. He didn’t act like a man who’d been dozing an eyeblink before. Rob doubted he had, in fact. But he also knew Karyl could wake from the deepest sleep in an instant. When the nightmares let him sleep deeply.
    â€œThe facts are as you’ve heard them, Eldest Brother. If our actions don’t speak loudly enough on our behalf, what can words do? We’d proclaim ourselves in the right whether we were or not.”
    And he sat. Rob stared at him in horror.
    â€œYou’ve killed us, man,” he said, in Anglés thick with Traveler accent.
    â€œIt’s only the second act,” Karyl answered him in Francés. “Wait for the finale.”
    â€œThat’s what I’m afraid of,” he said. “Specifically, mine.”
    Yet Karyl had it right: the show was far from over. If these mad Providentials loved one thing more than art, it was arguing. Preferably at the top of their lungs, faces red and spittle flying like Ovdan horse-nomad arrows. Which they duly fell to now, with a will.
    Clearly Bogardus believed Karyl—perhaps because he hired the outsiders in the first place, and badly wanted to. At least he seemed to listen as attentively when the lowborn spoke as the high, which was more than most of the Council did. Or for that matter most Gardeners. Rob couldn’t help thinking of the softness of their hands, and how notably toil hadn’t stained their simple yet costly garb. Only the raw acolytes did anything useful—even tend the namesake gardens.
    â€œWhy won’t Bogardus speak up for us?” Rob muttered. He wasn’t sure what was actually being said: plucking out words like treachery and dismemberment from the general tumult had made him shut his ears. Instead he tried to track the collective passion. Which seemed to go up and down like a seesaw. “He carries the whole damn town in the palms of his hands.”
    â€œHe wants this settled once and for all,” Karyl said. “If he imposes a solution, it’ll be like face-paint over a festering boil. Maggots would breed beneath.”
    And sometimes Himself shows quite the streak of poetry , Rob thought. He sighed. For once he decided to keep his tongue on a short rein. He’d already mentioned headsmen and nooses as often as good taste allowed, in any event.
    An urchin slipped in the doorway to Rob’s left, past the guardsman, who frowned officiously but made no move to stop him. Or her. Rob could never tell. But he instantly recognized the shock of ragged black hair, snub-nosed face, the shapeless grey sack of frock.
    Like a ferret, Petit Pigeon never took a direct route across the open unless there was no choice. Sidling up