Free The Queen's Blade Prequel I - Conash: Dead Son by T C Southwell

horse and searched the saddlebags, finding a
treasure trove of food. Dried meat, pastries, jam, bread, spiced
meat and pickled potpears. He stuffed them into his mouth, and they
tasted far better than ducks and frogs. A little sanity seeped back
into his brain, and he looked down at the ragged dress and mud that
covered him. He was a boy, not a cat. Setting down the food, he
went over to the dead man and stripped off his clothes. A warm
coat, trousers, a fine shirt, a knife and a money pouch. The shoes
were too big, so he left them on the corpse's feet, then rolled it
into the pond. He had committed a crime. He was a killer. That is
what it took to stay alive.
    Conash waded
into the pond and washed off the mud, scrubbing it from his hair,
then braided it and hacked it off with the knife. With a leather
thong from the saddle bags, he tied the braid around his neck over
the slave chain. He donned the clothes, which were several sizes
too big. Replacing the rest of the food in the saddle bags, he
mounted the bay horse. It set off through a forest, and he let it
go where it wanted. It seemed to know the way. It found a road and
followed it. At dusk he stopped it and slid from its back, tying it
to a tree. He ate more food, then slept.
     
     
    Two tendays
later, Conash rode into a vast city. The horse had brought him
here, following the road through forests and fields, past villages
and towns. He did not know the city's name, but it would do. At a
livery stable, he sold the horse for thirty silvers and went to the
market. A new set of cheap clothes cost a few coppers, and the dead
merchant's purse remained heavy. His hunger drove him to a vendor's
stall, where he bought a bowl of hot ryelen for a copper. Many
people thronged the streets, and they made him nervous. Surely they
could tell that he was a killer? He stank of it.
    Conash found
sanctuary in a sordid alley choked with litter and home to rats and
stray cats. Urchins hounded him, pelted him with dung and shouted
insults. He retaliated in kind, and they soon learnt to leave him
alone. He had no past. He had been born in the pond with the ducks
and frogs.
    The silvers
bought food for two moon-phases. He slept in the gutter under an
abandoned box, with the rats and cats. Food was expensive in this
city. When the coins ran out, he slipped through the crowds and
filched purses from pockets. He was fast, but one day he was not
fast enough. A man grabbed him and beat him, leaving him bruised
and battered. A tenday later, he was caught again, and barely
escaped with his life. Thieving was a risky business, apparently.
He still had not spoken to anyone, and did not intend to. No one
cared about him, and he cared about no one. That was the way of the
world.
    The third time
he was caught lifting a purse, the man beat him with a stick, and
it hurt. He was not a good pickpocket, but perhaps he was a better
killer. The fat merchant had not complained. Conash armed himself
with a smooth stone, like the one he had used to bash out the
merchant's brains. It worked well, and he killed a luckless,
drunken man in a dark alley, taking a fat purse. The man had no
familiar with him, so it was probably a goat or sheep locked away
in a pen while its friend went drinking. Killing was easy,
especially for a corpse. He had not seen Rivan for a long time, and
he missed his dead familiar.
    The coins from
the drunkard's purse fed him for several tendays, but he had
stopped marking the time. He survived, and that was enough. When
the coins ran out, he hung around an alehouse's kitchen door. The
cook's helpers threw out scraps, and he fought with the stray dogs
for them. Fishing bread out of the gutter seemed like a perfectly
good way to find food, after eating frogs and ducks. Several times,
drunkards who staggered past singing raucous songs disturbed his
slumber under his box in the gutter.
    One night, the
gentle fall of warm liquid on his face woke him, and he smelt
urine. Conash sat up, his hatred