Free The Hero's Lot by Patrick W. Carr

keep it quiet.”
    â€œWhat were the ferrals trying to do?” Luis asked.
    Cruk grimaced. “Ferrals don’t do, they kill.”
    Martin rubbed a sudden ache in his temples. “Gerold is the new abbot. Would he have just left her in prison?”
    â€œLeft who?” Cruk asked.
    That brought Martin up short. Then he gave a rueful laugh. “I don’t even remember her name. The herbwoman Morin imprisoned.”
    â€œOdene,” Luis said. “Her name is Odene.”
    Luis would be the one to remember that. Not for the first time, Martin wished he was gifted with a reader’s memory.
    The smoky air of the common room burned his lungs. He let it out in a sigh. One more night before they might get some answers. “We should retire to our quarters before the crowd thins enough to make us conspicuous.”
    Cruk’s hand caught his arm as he started to rise, forced him back to his seat. “Too late for that. Look there.”
    At the entrance to the inn, four men in dark cloaks scanned the crowd. The torchlight, bright and cheery, reflected from the sallow-tinged skin of the one in back.

 7  Flight
    M ARTIN LIFTED HIS TANKARD and took a pull that wet his lips and nothing more. He cast a look toward the door again when he lowered his mug. Palpable relief washed over him as the men by the door turned to survey the crowd at the opposite end of the common room. A knot somewhere in his gut started to loosen. He had no doubt Cruk would exact a costly price if they were attacked, but his own best days with a sword were far behind him, and Luis had never been a fighter. And fights were risky, unpredictable.
    He leaned toward Cruk, moving so as to attract as little notice as possible. “I think they missed us.”
    The captain nodded, pulled his dagger to slice a wedge from the block of cheese in front of them. The blade passed through the dark yellow block with ridiculous ease. He grunted, not sounding convinced. “Maybe. If I were hunting someone, I’d do everything in my power to keep them from knowing they’d been spotted.”
    The knot in Martin’s midsection re-formed.
    Luis ran one hand over the rough wooden texture of theirtable. “Perhaps we should slip into the kitchen and out through the door by the stables.”
    Cruk gave the best shake of his head. “No. If we do that, they’ll know we’ve spotted them. Let’s continue up to our room as if we had no suspicions. Then we can slip out through the window onto the roof and down into the stable yard.”
    â€œThe roof? I’m not exactly built for rooftop adventures, my friend.” He gave his paunch a pat. “The trusses may pay a penance for my gluttony.”
    Luis laughed under his breath, but Cruk remained stoic.
    â€œI’ll go first,” the captain said. “Step where I step.” His brows drew together as if he resented the direction of his thoughts. “I’ll go up to the room first. That should cement the idea that we don’t know we’ve been spotted. The two of you follow me after a moment.” He rose and upended his tankard, spilling beer in a cascade down the front of his tunic.
    Martin let his head nod as if he were sleepy. “How did they find us, Luis? Sarin is a thousand miles away. Even if he can cast for us, there’s no way he could put men on us at such a distance.”
    Luis brushed his fingers across a dark stain in the wood—blood or oil, impossible to tell which. “You know as well as I do. Sarin isn’t the only reader they have. The conclave can only guess at what the circle he’s formed can do—a group of readers bonded to his will and thoughts by a malus . . . I shudder to think of the possibilities.”
    Martin exhaled in an attempt to defuse the flash of anger washing over him like the sudden heat from an oven. “By the three, it’s the conclave’s job to