The Swordmage Trilogy Bundle, Volumes 1-3 Read Online Free

backhanded slap across her high cheekbones with a thick leather gauntlet. The executioner put his boot between her shoulder blades, pressing her neck into the edge of the block. The ax gave a dull ring as it was drawn across the platform and lifted to his shoulder.
    The executioner hefted the blade and Royce found himself riveted. Most people closed their eyes in that final moment, or opted for the hood. She didn't. She kept her eyes open and fixed on the platform mere inches beyond her nose. The ax man’s arms tensed for the swing and Royce sprang forward, landing on the balls of his feet. His hand flashed out, arresting the ax mid-stroke.
    “Hold your blade,” he said quietly but firmly. The crowd groaned. They were growing tired of the interruptions in their entertainment. Two executions and both stopped at the penultimate moment. Their dissension spread like wildfire through those who had assembled.
    A swarthy little man with a bulbous red nose waddled onto the platform, his face suffused purple with rage.
    “Enough! What's the meaning of this? She needs to die, and die now! She's filth. Vermin. A pestilence to be destroyed.”
    Royce eyed him up, studying the fine cut of the tunic, the flash of the large gems on each finger, the full purse tucked into his belt, the neck twisted and folded over to ensure that no coin could find its way out until it was called upon. He didn't know the man, but he knew the type. Royce raised an eyebrow and the ghost of a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
    “Who are you, tiny creature, to question the Constable, former Knight of the Flame and Sergeant-at-Arms to the One True King?”
    Rocking back on his heels, the man seemed to deflate, his face going from rage to confusion, to fear. He was obviously used to barking orders and expecting them to be followed without challenge. Probably backed by the bite of a whip. Slavers. Royce snorted derisively. They were all the same.
    “My name is Cerrin, Mi’lord. I am a purveyor of...resources, foreign and domestic.”
    “What did this vermin do to have her neck placed on the block, slaver?”
    The tips of the man's ears went red and he stammered a moment. He snapped his mouth shut and swallowed convulsively, then seemed to find his backbone.
    “She’s a menace. She attacked one of the other girls without provocation. Killed her in cold blood that one did. She cost me good crowns and I’ll see to it that the others learn their place.” The girl’s spine went rigid as she fought against the restraints that held her down. It wasn’t hard for Royce to believe that she had killed another slave. She fought like a caged animal.
    “I didn’t kill anyone, you filthy lying pig!” Spittle flew from her lips as the girl screamed at the little man. “ Darcy was only defending me and you know it!”
    “Do you dispute her claim?” Royce asked, almost conversationally. He fixed such a piercing gaze on the slaver that Cerrin went white.
    “Err, no. Not exactly, Mi’lord.”
    “So she didn’t kill directly? She was merely the cause of the, ah, altercation?”
    “Yes. Yes! That’s it precisely, Mi’lord.” A smile flickered across the slaver’s face. “She was an accomplice!”
    Royce dropped his hand from the executioner's ax and waved him away. He knelt beside the girl and flipped up her thin shift, exposing the pale skin of her back all the way up to her breast band. Her sides were mottled in the green, purple, and yellow of aging bruises. It was an old slaver trick. Keep them in line, but only where the paying customers can't see. He ran a calloused hand down her side and the girl shied away from the touch. There were new layers of bruises on top of old here. There was no telling how long she had been brutalized this way.
    “So she's to lose her head,” Royce remarked quietly. “As an example for the others.”
    Royce jerked his head at the other girls, chained wrist to wrist, each with a thin witchmetal collar, clustered at