Free Honor Among Thieves by Elaine Cunningham Page A

knew him.
    He suddenly remembered the locket she’d handed him
days earlier. A quick pat-down of his pockets yielded nothing but a
stab of panic.
    The green tunic he wore for his Gatherer disguise
came to mind. He tossed the meat into the hearth and hurried to the
little stone-walled room where he slept and stored his things.
    A bit of rummaging in his chest yielded the gaudy
tunic. To his relief, the locket was tucked in the hip pocket.
    He flipped it open and looked inside, expecting the
usual lock of hair or miniature painting of some long-dead
relative. Instead, a design of intertwined runes surrounded a name
everyone in the northlands knew:
    Eldreath.
    Eldreath, the sorcerer whose long and brutal reign
had given way to the age of adepts and alchemy.
    In Fox’s opinion, the new regime wasn’t much of an
improvement. This belief stood at the core of his work, his life.
He’d never thought to question why he felt as he did.
    Until now.
    He had grown up hearing stories of the sorcerer’s
atrocities. But those were just stories. No matter what Vishni
said, no story could be as powerful as experience.
    Fox had seen the work of the adepts and their
Gatherers with his own eyes. He’d seen his village attacked, his
home burned. He and his mother had been captured, dragged to the
city, questioned, tortured. What became of his father was something
he might never learn.
    He didn’t remember much from those terrible days, but
he doubted anyone could forget the tall, blond-bearded Gatherer who
kept asking about a bloodline.
    Fox had always assumed these questions sprung from
his mother’s reputation as a green witch. Magic tended to run in
families, so of course the adepts would want to round up her
relatives. But the locket opened a new door of possibility.
    His mother told him it had been passed down in the
family. Eldreath had lived long past the normally allotted span. If
he gave the locket to some lady as a token, she might have passed
it down through several generations before it came into Fox’s
hands.
    “A sorcerer’s bloodline,” Fox murmured, unsure
whether he should be appalled or thrilled.
    This explained Rhendish’s abiding interest in
capturing Fox, and the near-captivity his mother endured within the
walls of the adept’s domain. It also explained Fox’s passion for
magic.
    It might even explain his personal vendetta against
the adepts and his determination to take part in their overthrow.
According to Vishni’s stories, and for that matter nearly every
other tale Fox had heard, blood and destiny were inseparable.
    The only outlying fact was his total lack of any
magical talent.
    This revelation was too big for one mind to
encompass. Fox pushed himself out of the chair and went looking for
Delgar.
    The heat hit him while he was still several paces
away from the dwarf’s workroom. He plunged through a cloud of steam
and stepped into the stone chamber.
    In the center of the room, flames danced in a stone
fire pit. The dwarf sat in a stout wooden chair, his stocky form
draped in a protective leather apron.
    Delgar picked up a narrow bar of glass with an iron
tong and dipped it into the fire. He drew one of several long,
slender tools from the coals, wiped it clean on the damp rag draped
over his leather-clad lap, and began to shape the blade. A few
strokes, then back into the fire went the glass and the iron. Back
and forth, bit by steady bit, the dagger took shape.
    “This is like watching a river eroding stone,” Fox
said.
    Delgar glanced up. “I’m about to add the handle.
Watch if you want, but don’t expect scintillating
conversation.”
    “In this workshop?”
    The dwarf snorted and reached for a delicately etched
cross guard. He lowered a metal dropper into a beaker sitting amid
glowing coals and measured a few drops of clear liquid onto the
hilt. Before the glass could cool, he pressed the heated blade
against the guard and held it in place.
    “Looks like that would break easily.” Fox