When Demons Walk Read Online Free Page A

Purgatory at night to see the Spirit Tide.
    Unlike Sham, the man was in the open, clearly visible in the silver moonlight. A Cybellian warrior, she thought, outfitted with surcoat, sword, and war horse.
    For a disorienting instant terror choked her as she stared at him from the shadows, seeing not a lone man but thebloody warriors who had taken the Castle. The past was too close to her this night. She swallowed the lump in her throat and ran her hands across various weapons hidden on her person. Thus reassured, she took a closer look at him.
    The chainmail shirt that extended past his surcoat at wrists and throat was of the highest quality, the links so fine that it appeared to be fashioned of cloth rather than metal. The surcoat itself was of some dark color. He was facing slightly away from Sham, and she couldn’t make out the device on its front. A wealthy warrior then, and a fool.
    It had been a long time since she had been the daughter of the captain of the guards at the Castle, but not so long that she’d forgotten how to judge a horse. She ran an assessing eye over this one, an aristocrat from the flared nostrils to the long, dark hair that covered his legs from knees to hooves. Only a fool would take such an obviously valuable animal through Purgatory at night.
    The stallion snorted and sidled as he caught her scent in the salt air. He rolled his eyes until the white showed and shook his wet mane fiercely. The impulse to stay hidden came and went unheeded. The warrior was the outsider here; she had no reason to avoid notice.
    With a nearly invisible signal from his rider, the horse spun around on its haunches as the man looked for the cause of the horse’s unease. The stallion blew spray of his own as he snorted impatiently and completed a full circle, giving Sham her first view of the man’s coat-of-arms.
    At the sight of the silver and gold leopard emblazoned on the silk she whistled soundlessly and altered her assessment of the man. Wealthy warrior he was indeed, but not a fool. Even the most formidable group of thugs would hesitate to attack the Leopard of Altis, Reeve of Southwood.
    Lord Kerim, called the Leopard, ruled most of Southwood in the name of the Voice of Altis and the Cybellian Alliance that the Voice ruled. At the tender age of eighteen the Leopard had led an elite fighting unit to spearhead the invasion through the Great Swamp and across a fair portion of the lands between the Swamp and the Western Sea.People still talked in whispers at the cunning and skill that he’d displayed.
    Eight years ago, when the Cybellians had snuffed out all but a hint of rebellion in Southwood, the Voice of Altis had called upon Kerim to become his Reeve, answering only to the prophet himself.
    Kerim had been less than a quarter of a century old when he’d taken control of Southwood, and turned it back into a thriving country. With a mixture of bribery and coercion he had made the Southwood nobles and the Cybellians cooperate with each other—resorting to force only once or twice.
    Whether as statesman or warrior, there were very few people who would take on the Leopard without a great deal of thought. She had just decided to try and escape unnoticed, when his eyes locked onto hers.
    â€œI like to watch the neap tide come in,” he said in Southern. Nearly a decade of living in Southwood had softened the clipped accent Cybellians brought to the language until he might have been mistaken for a native.
    Sham waited where she was for a moment, caught by surprise at the conversational tone the Reeve used—speaking as he was to a roughly garbed, wet street urchin. Deciding finally it was probably safe enough, she scrambled up the rocks until she stood on a level with him. It struck her as she did so that this was an opportunity to attack the Cybellians that might never come again. She looked at the Reeve and remembered the dead that littered the Castle grounds after it had been taken by the