Play of Shadows by Sebastien de Castell EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: Sebastien de Castell
- Language: English
- Genre: Historical Fantasy
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 4.3 MB
- Price: Free
RABBIT, RABBIT
Everyone has a talent, and these days, mine is running. So superb is my
aptitude for panicked flight that it almost makes up for my less admirable
traits, which include cowardice, poor fencing skills and a regrettable
tendency to forget those faults while making bold threats against brutish
thugs who suffer no such deficiencies of their own.
‘Run, Rabbit, run!’ my pursuers cheered as they chased me through
bustling streets and abandoned alleyways, over one crowded canal bridge
and across the next. ‘Run down your warren, run up the hill! Run from the
Vixen before she makes her kill!’
The Vixen. Of all the sobriquets adopted by professional duellists in the
city of Jereste, surely Lady Ferica di Traizo’s was the most apt – and the
most terrifying.
I dived under a fruit-seller’s stall, rolled up to my feet on the other side
and kept on running. What had possessed me to go and challenge the
deadliest fencer in the entire city to a duella honoria?
‘Faster, Rabbit, faster! You’re the one she’s after!’
Damn their tune for being so catchy. Merchants shuttering their shops for
the night sang along. Scampering children trying to run between my legs
giggled their way through their own mangled lyrics. I had to shove aside
two young lovers out for a romantic stroll as they hummed the melody
while gazing soulfully into each other’s eyes.
I dashed through the overcrowded square and into an equally congested
courtyard, doing my best to avoid those among my fellow citizens who saw
it as their duty to stick out a foot to trip me in anticipation of witnessing a
good beating before I was dragged back to court. I’d been keeping up a
goodly pace thus far, but I was tiring, and my tormentors knew it.
‘Hide, Rabbit, hide!’ the black-shirted bravos chanted as they closed in on
me. ‘She’s searching far and wide!’
When I dared glance back, I caught the flickering light of the brass street
lanterns glinting off the metal orchid emblems on their collars. The Iron
Orchids called themselves a citizen militia, determined to rid the city of
petty criminals and other undesirables, but mostly they were street toughs
who sold their services to anyone looking to settle a grudge. Alas, Jereste’s
notoriously feckless constabulary did little to curb their activities.
An orchestra of swashing and clanging accompanied my pursuers as the
small buckler shields slung low on their leather belts banged against the
scabbarded steel hilts of their rapiers and sideswords. The thump of booted
heels on the loose cobblestone streets added an ominous rhythm section.
Saint Ethalia-who-shares-all-sorrows, I swore silently, help me escape
these mercenary thugs! They’re going to haul me back to court and dump
me in the duelling circle so that fox-faced lunatic who calls herself the
Vixen can stick her blade through my heart before mine even leaves its
scabbard!
The Iron Orchids were herding me deeper and deeper into the narrow
alleys of the Paupers’ Market, apparently determined to keep me from the
Temple District where I might beg sanctuary. Fortunately for me, I’d no
intention of sleeping in a church tonight.
‘Run down your hole, Rabbit, run up to the sky!
Run a little faster, or else you’ll surely die!’
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