Free The Red Wolf Conspiracy by Robert V S Redick

was furious with Chadfallow. The Anju was a nastier ship in every sense: a whaler that stank of burned blubber and echoed with the laughs of men whose lives were butchery on a giant scale. Pazel hated it from the first. But a month after his transfer, a deckhand returned from shore leave with the news that the Swan had meandered in a fog onto the Lava Shoals at Urnsfich, shattering her keel and sinking in a matter of minutes. Of her ninety sailors, just three had made it to shore.
    Life on the Anju was a terror. She leaked badly and her bilge-pumps clogged with whale grease. Her captain was violent and feared his own shadow. On calm days he lowered tarboys into the frigid seas to check for sabotage by murths or saltworms. During lightning storms he sent them aloft to tie live chickens to the topmasts, offerings to the demons of the sky.
    None of these dangers ever touched the whaling vessel. Her end came when the crew, their wits addled by spoiled rye, sailed her at ludicrous speed into Pól Harbor, where she would have rammed a Kings' clipper if the shore guns had not blown her to bits.
    The Noonfirth Kings shipped the dazed crew back to Etherhorde, where her captain was beheaded, and Pazel transferred to a grain ship. After that, an ore-carrier, a barge on the River Sorhn, a signal-boat guiding warships through the Paulandri Shoals. Finally, just six months earlier, he had been assigned to the Eniel . After each of these transfers, a rumor would eventually inform him that a certain nobleman, a brooding fellow with gray temples, had made the arrangements. But Chadfallow never sent so much as a word of greeting to Pazel himself.
    In the past half year Pazel had come to love Captain Nestef. The old navigator adored his ship and wanted a peaceable crew. They ate well, and had music after meals, and in each port the captain bought stories or travelogues or collections of jokes from the chandleries, and read them aloud on dull nights far from land.
    Of course, he was still Ormali. Jervik in particular took care that no one forgot it. He despised Ormalis—despised anyone to whom he felt superior—and just last week had stolen his skipper's knife and ivory whale, the only objects Pazel cared about in the world. They would be Jervik's forever now.
    But Nestef's kindness had made it all bearable. The captain had even talked of buying Pazel his citizenship, and helping him return to school. The very thought of reading again filled Pazel's mind with dazzling hopes.
    And now Chadfallow had blasted them. He didn't know why the doctor was interfering again, but this time he had plucked Pazel from the best ship he could ever have hoped for. And what had he slipped into that tea?
    He stood, threw a last nail into the water and turned to face the wharf. A new life: that was what he was choosing. A life without Arquali uncles. Without their protection, or their deceit.

Almost Free
     
    3 Vaqrin 941
    5:56 p.m .
     
    Niriviel, the moon falcon, shot by overhead, a cream-colored arrow. On the bench beside the splendid catfish tanks of the Lorg Academy of Obedient Daughters, the girl with blond hair felt her heart lift at the sight, and then an instant's regret at the thought that she would never see him again. An instant was all she could muster, for while she loved the falcon, she hated the Academy a thousand times more.
    Behind her, a woman cleared her throat. The blond girl looked over her shoulder to see one of the Lorg Sisters frowning at her in silence. In her dark brown robe the Sister's face seemed whiter than the lilies in the tanks; whiter than the fish weaving slow paths among the stems.
    “Good evening, Sister,” said the girl.
    “Her Grace will see you in the hatcheries,” said the woman tersely.
    Startled, the girl rose to her feet.
    “After your meditation, child!”
    The Sister turned on her heel and stalked off. The girl sat again, sidelong to hide her face from the Academy windows, and pressed her knuckles hard against