The Malmillard Codex Read Online Free Page A

expecting to be denounced as an escaped slave since they'd
arrived at the Dancing Toad, and he still could not fully wrap his
mind around his getaway from the hunt. And now this mad woman—for
mad she was, he had decided—had called him, naked and filthy as he
was, her friend. What was wrong with her? Had she no sense of the
proprieties? No concept of the danger in assisting a slave escaped
from the hunt?
    Madryn unbuckled her swordbelt and hung it
on the back of a chair, then settled herself into the third with a
sigh of relief. She stared at Valerik for a long moment as she
drummed long fingers on the linen cloth, and then said with a
shrug, "I don't like hunts, slave or animal." She cocked her head
to one side and watched him from narrowed eyes.
    "You're the only one I've ever met who did
not, then, except for the slaves—and no doubt the
animals—themselves," Valerik replied gruffly. The trembling was
lessening now, his cold hands warming at last. But he could not,
would not believe Madryn. He had never met a noble he could, or
would, trust. Another image of his late mistress rose in his
mind…her bloody hands wielding a whip…her surprised eyes staring
into his as the light of life died from them…her blackening tongue
lolling from her slack mouth…
    "There are others who do not like it, I
assure you, and not only slaves," Madryn continued, interrupting
his reverie. "But I have a more personal reason than most to
disapprove."
    "Worried about the horses getting hurt?"
Valerik suggested with a faint sneer and a passing thought for
Daemon. He remembered hearing nobles express concerns about their
steeds, even as they rode down women and men, trampling them to
lifeless pulp beneath galloping hooves.
    "A good enough reason, to be sure," said
Madryn with a slow smile, as though she could see what was passing
through his mind.
    "But not your reason?" Valerik
couldn't resist asking.
    Madryn's eyes locked onto his. Valerik could
see that hers, which he had thought gray, were shot through with
the oddest tendrils of violet against the smoky background. "I
don't like to see people killed," she said at last. "Yes, even
slaves, as you were about to remark. I have been too close to my
own death to enjoy the sight of it. Especially in the name of
sport."
    She thinks they were chasing me for
sport , Valerik thought uneasily, tearing his eyes from her
violet gaze. What will she say when she finds out why they were
really after me? What will she do then, when she discovers
the real reason I was on the run? What will she do, when she learns
that I…she's staring at me, waiting for a reply…
    At that moment, to Valerik's total if
unexpressed relief, a discreet knock sounded, followed the next
instant by the door opening. Dwarfing the doorframe, a tall man
with wide shoulders and a broad chest stood balancing a cluttered
tray on one meaty hand. Almost hidden behind him stood a skinny
boy, drowned in layers of folded cloth, a massive boot dangling
from either hand.
    "Supper, milady," rumbled the newcomer as he
strode into the tiny room and set his tray down with a clash and
clatter on a shelf against the wall. "And th' master said as how
you might be a wanting of some clothes for a largish sort of
gentleman, so I brought these along. My name be Radisin, an it
please you, and this here be Dimm."
    Dimm was a skinny boy and from the look in
his large, gentle eyes, his name was more descriptive than most. He
pattered in behind his huge friend and stood like some animated
clothes rack, boots held out in extended hands, one arm displaying
a shirt in a rusty brown color, the other coarse but serviceable
breeches of almost the same hue. A wide belt hung like a necklace
around the boy's neck, stockings peeped coyly from a pocket, and a
leather jerkin was tossed about his scrawny shoulders to drag with
studied elegance on the floor behind him.
    "I hopes as how these poor clothes might do,
milady and sir," said the waiter as he unloaded the