Free The Lawkeeper of Samara (The Fourth Age of Shanakan Book 2) by Tim Stead Page B

have no joy of it we will seek another way, but Tarquin will answer our questions.”
    Sam sat back in his chair and gazed out of the window towards Gulltown. The idea of a trap still appealed to him. It would not do to march over the bridge and station his few men in daylight. There must be stealth. There must be surprise, and darkness would make that possible.
    “You may take the afternoon off,” Sam told them. “Your lawkeepers, too. But I want you all back here after nightfall. There is some business we must do in darkness. Do not come until the sun has set. Do you understand?”
    They nodded.
    “Tell your lawkeepers the same. They must arrive here after dark, and come in via the yard, and quietly.”
    “Is that all?” Arla asked. She expected more, but he had none to give her. The afternoon would provide a plan as he sat here and thought.
    “Until tonight.”
    Sam watched them go, quieter now, nothing between them. It was clever of Arla to let Gilan speak. The man was no fool, but he favoured action over thought, and speaking meant thinking, and so he learned his error by telling his tale.
    He looked at the bell that Ulric had left on his desk. He was supposed to ring it when he wanted anything. It would save him time, Ulric said, if someone came to him. He could smell something cooking at the back of the law house where Ulric had installed a cook. Sam wasn’t hungry, but he could certainly use a hot cup of jaro to keep him awake.
    Why not?
    He rang the bell.
    *
    Arla had seen the physic while they were waiting for Hekman to come back from Gulltown. There had been no potion, but the physic had rubbed more salve on the burns and declared herself satisfied with the progress of the healing. Arla confessed that the pain was not so raw.
    The free afternoon was unexpected. There were a number of things that she could do, but an officer of the lawkeepers could afford to live somewhere decent, and she decided that she would seek out better rooms than her current bolt hole.
    Finding rooms was a simple enough process in the old town. Most taverns had a board outside where renters nailed up places for rent. There was no shortage. Samara had once held twice the number of people it did today, and it still had the same number of buildings. Some were in poor repair, it was true, but there were plenty of fine rooms to go around for those that could afford them.
    Arla walked from tavern to tavern, browsing. It was a pleasure she had never experienced. Choice. As a guard her quarters, her duties, almost everything about her life, had been assigned, chosen by others, and she had never railed against it. That was how it was. Now she had an alarming and unprecedented freedom of choice, and she wallowed in it.
    She read the descriptions, the sums demanded, perused the handwriting, looked at the addresses. One or two were in streets she didn’t know, and she amused herself by walking around the old town asking folk where King’s Boon Street lay, or where she might find Island Lane. In the end she found them all, and the renters were glad to show her what they had, which told its own story.
    In the end it was place on Riverside that took her fancy. The rent was posted as seven silvers a week, which she thought exceptionally high, but the address was equally exceptional, and when she stood outside the building and looked across the river she found that she was close enough to the harbour for the odours of commerce to be swept away by the romance of the sea.
    The renter, a stout woman of middle years, looked her up and down a few times before showing her the property. It was above a bread shop, which was a bonus. The smell of baked bread hung about the place, and Arla thought it among the finest aromas in the world.
    She climbed the stair behind the renter and stopped briefly at the door. It was a strong door, and had both a bolt on the inside and a lock on the outside. Past the door she stepped into a spacious room with a large bay