The Marcher Lord (Over Guard) Read Online Free Page B

boy said defiantly, “but maybe I keep it. Han’t decided yet.”
    By this time , some of the other young Chax that Ian had suspected were present also began to come out from the crevices of the alleyway. Ian could only spare brief glances to keep a rough idea where they were since he knew it was important to maintain eye contact with the lead boy. He wasn’t particularly worried about the others trying anything though, so it was more a matter of curiosity, like it was for them.
    “What if we run now again?” the boy went on. “You fery tired look.”
    “Not particularly,” Ian shrugged, mostly telling the truth. “And I don’t think it would be a good idea. Getting to chase all of you once was fun, good exercise. But I wouldn’t be so well humored to do it again. I imagine you’re all familiar with buzzing around the local authorities without any trouble, but I doubt any of you have ever seen the inside of a Bevish Glasshouse. That’s the sort of experience you’d be best to avoid.”
    The lead boy was staring hard at the ground just in front of Ian. One of the smaller boys near him called out something uncertainly in a sing-song Dervish dialect. The lead boy said quiet in Dervish without looking at him.
    “You couln’t catch us,” the lead boy decided, raising his nose up.
    “I would catch one of you,” Ian said. “I promise.”
    For a moment , the tension changed, and Ian realized he was about to lose the situation as the leader looked angrily at the boy who was still sitting on the ground.
    “But it doesn’t have to be that way. There are plenty of alternatives,” Ian said, shifting his weight a bit, “and some of them would be beneficial to both of us.”
    “Yes?” the boy said, not sounding all that hopeful.
    “I need to be somewhere soon,” Ian said. “However, I don’t know the best way to get there. I also don’t know much about the city in general, and would like to learn more about it.”
    The boy made some sort of sound with his throat and waved his hand in a particular way up and off to the side of his face, which Ian guessed was meant to convey a n apathetic sentiment.
    “I would be willing to pay one sovereign if you would show me the best way there,” Ian said, “and I would be inclined to pay another if you were to also properly inform me about the city.”
    An excited ripple ran through the loose ring of Chax around Ian. It was doubtful that they knew all that many Bevish words, but they certainly knew that one. And while neither of the boys that Ian had spoken to would probably ever be able to manage the King’s Bevish, he was quite thankful that they knew common Bevish at all, which was probably in addition to the local Dervish dialect as well as their own languages. This was fairly impressive to Ian—getting a better grasp of Dervish, beyond the bitter basics that Ian knew, was one of his overarching goals. The language itself wasn’t particularly appealing to him, but it would reap bounds of practicality if he could learn it. Especially on planets like Orinoco—of which the Dervish had many.
    “Lotta hope in you making that,” the boy scoffed, evidently not as moved by the notion of a sovereign as his compatriots.
    “I will,” Ian scoffed back, only needing to slightly exaggerate his offended airs, even though he wouldn’t really expect the other to just believe him. “You have my word on it, and by my proxy, the word of the king.”
    A slight, negative change ran through Ian’s audience that the leader promptly voiced, though his reaction was probably stronger than the group’s true average.
    “Kin ’s, queens,” the boy said, derisively snapping his hands down off at the ground in some manner that Ian wasn’t able to catch, “emper’s. Zhey’e all the ‘osser same.”
    “No,” Ian said, shaking his head calmly, “not the same at all. And you have my word. Here,” he took a moment to withdraw one of the sovereigns from inside his jacket, “a fair