undying legion 01 - unbound man Read Online Free

Sometimes there would be nothing from one carrier for weeks, and then a fat parcel would drop on his desk with letters that had been written a season ago. But that was the price you paid for hiring merchant companies — or, more specifically, their extensive networks of couriers and messengers — to carry your correspondence. The fees were low enough, if you picked the right network for the right destination, but the messengers were company men first and public couriers second, and the interests of their masters ultimately ran in only one direction.
    Merchant companies, the Quill, even the Library: at bottom, they were all the same. Whatever purpose they claimed to espouse, in truth they all shared the same goal. They existed that they might continue to exist. They grew that they might continue to grow. All their efforts were bent toward one end: their own wellbeing.
    It was, Arandras had come to see, the common sickness that afflicted all such shared endeavours, no matter where or how or why they came into being. Take the Quill, established centuries ago as refuge from the destructive, sorcery-charged bickering of the time. Beyond all reason, their efforts had borne fruit. Sorcerers and scholars had flocked to their cause. Slowly, the terror of sorcery among the ungifted had eased to distrust, then uncertainty, then enthusiasm. And somewhere in among it all, the first shoe had dropped.
    We do well, the Quill had said. By our efforts, peace is restored. By our ingenuity, the benefits of sorcery are shared among all. The greater we are, the more we can achieve. Thus, self-interest is no vice for us, for that which serves us, serves all.
    So saying, they’d begun to equate their own interests with their purpose for being — after all, how better to serve others but to grow in power and influence? And the second shoe had begun to teeter. Until, one day, there was no longer any distinction between their ends and their own advancement. And nobody saw anything amiss, for loyalty and commitment were prized above all — not commitment to the founders’ vision, nor even to any definable achievement, but loyalty to the Quill itself.
    It was a kind of institutional madness, as tenacious as a Kefiran road preacher, predictable as Rondossan clockwork. None were immune: not traders, not scholars, not sorcerers, not priests. Sooner or later, every association succumbed.
    But not me. Onsoth could go hang. The Library was the same as all the rest, and Arandras was damned if he was going to give a single copper duri to another establishment’s dreams of self-aggrandisement.
    He picked idly through the large bundle of letters. Two were for a nearby boot-maker from the man’s sister in the river city of Anstice, the second dated a week after the first; one was for a local herbalist from her colleague in Poet’s Corner, a town midway between Anstice and Spyridon; one for the headsman’s widow from her lad, who’d been taken on as a shepherd boy on a farm just this side of the Tienette… and several dozen more, most of which had no connection to Arandras. Grae had left him someone else’s letters as well as his own.
    Curious, Arandras flipped through the misplaced correspondence. Most were addressed to someone called Yevin, up at the Arcade — a Library scribe, like as not. Here was a message addressed in large, awkward letters, written either by a child or by someone who rarely held a pen. Here was something formal from the Three Rivers company itself — perhaps Yevin’s invoice. Here was an elegant, flowing script, the handwriting of someone who —
    Arandras froze. That writing. As though of its own volition, his hand reached for the catch under the desk, slid open the hidden drawer. His questing fingers found the note as he had left it that morning, and the previous day, and the days and years before that; the scrap of paper folded in on itself like a dead spider. He withdrew it carefully and placed it beside the wrapped letter,