The Forever Knight: A Novel of the Bronze Knight (Books of the Bronze Knight) Read Online Free Page B

I’d gone to Grimhold myself so we could work on the cape together. When she saw me arrive, Cricket circled me like a child searching for sweets, wondering what I’d brought her. The sun was hot on the black cape as we rode, but Cricket didn’t care. She was full of questions and eager to get back to Jador. I was happy just to see her smiling.
    A decent road winds from Grimhold to Jador, through a canyon of sheer, red rock. Inhumans and Jadori have used the road for decades, keeping their alliance secret. Before Gilwyn took over, Minikin was Grimhold’s mistress. She’d spent her vast lifetime searching for the kind of kids Gilwyn had been once. Blind kids or crippled, she brought them all to Jador for an Akari, for the chance to live a normal life. I’m an Inhuman now, too, in a way, because Malator keeps me alive. Without him, my old wounds would quickly kill me.
    Cricket isn’t one of us. She has no Akari, and no use for one. She’s not blind or lame or deaf. She’s normal in every way—except for her broken memory—and it’s only because Minikin loved and pitied her that she has such access to our world. Seekers from the Bitter Kingdoms had found her in Akyre. She’d been wandering, they said, starved and alone. No family and no memory of one either. All she knew for sure was her name. Cricket.
    I rode beside her on my horse, listening to her explanations. Ahead of us, the two Jadori warriors Gilwyn assigned as escorts bobbed on the backs of their green-scaled kreels.
    “It was like a dream,” Cricket exclaimed. “Like it was talking to me. It was screaming, and no one else could hear it.” She turned, imploring me. “That must have happened to you once, right Lukien?”
    “No, Cricket. I’ve never had a chicken talk to me.”
    “With its
eyes
,” she stressed. “It knew I would help. I had to!”
    “Uh huh.” I nodded, bored with her horseshit. “What about all the chickens you actually eat? Can’t they talk to you? And what about the cistern?”
    “He told you that?” Cricket frowned. “Gilwyn’s an ass.”
    “Hey!” I reined in my horse.
    She kept riding for a while, then stopped. “Sorry.”
    The warriors turned around to look at us. “Go,” I told them, waving them on. “It’s all right.”
    I rode up close to Cricket. “You want to go live with the other Seekers in the shanties?”
    “I’m not a Seeker.”
    “Anyone who comes across the desert to Jador is a Seeker, Cricket. And any one of them would trade places with you. You live in the palace because Gilwyn lets you. So show him some respect.”
    “I said I was sorry.” She sighed as she got her pony going. “You ain’t been in such a great mood either, you know. Like you got an itch or something.”
    “Yes, I’ve got an itch. And I don’t need you making it worse. I come back from the desert and all I hear about is how worried everyone is about you. I’m not your mother, Cricket.”
    “What’s itchin’ you, Lukien?”
    I still hadn’t told her about Gilwyn’s idea. I’d meant to, but the days just sort of slipped away. “Nothing,” I said, “forget it,” and reached up to scratch beneath my eye patch. Cricket stared, trying to see under it.
    “You got an eyeball under there?”
    “Of course I do. It’s gone white, that’s all. Sometimes I get a grain of sand in there. Makes me crazy.”
    “How’d that happen to you? You’re a handsome man, Lukien. Bet you were pretty to look at when you were younger.”
    I smiled, because she was so good at changing subjects. “You’re dodging, Cricket. We’re not done talking about the cistern.”
    “I’ll paint it back to normal,” she groaned. “So what happened?”
    “A Norvan scimitar.”
    “From when you were a mercenary?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Must make it hard to fight, having one eye.”
    “Two would be better,” I admitted. “Doesn’t hurt any more, though. Malator sees to that. Nothing hurts me anymore. Not for long, anyway.”
    We