Read Emissary for Free Online Page B

season’s sun nor the glistening Faranel Sea it lit and ultimately warmed. Instead all focus was riveted on the far distance and the glowing outline of the city of Percheron, blushing fiercely in the late-afternoon sunlight. High on the hill that overlooked the magnificent horseshoe-shapedbay was the Stone Palace, and it was to its quiet hallways and chambers that his thoughts fled. And although the twin giants who kept guard over Percheron captured his attention from time to time, as though trying to distract him from the lonely vigil, that gaze was always quickly drawn back to the dominating presence of the Zar’s palace.
    ‘You should move inside now,’ the old woman who had limped up urged gently. ‘And it’s time for your medicine,’ she added.
    ‘For whatever good it will do me,’ he replied.
    She didn’t mean it to but her tone still came out bitter. ‘It’s no good staring towards the palace, Lazar. She cannot see you but she is safe. Let that be enough.’
    They both knew that was simply her opening gambit for an old argument. He bit. ‘Don’t lecture me, priestess. At least you can go into the city freely. I am stuck here, as much a prisoner of this leper colony as Ana is of the harem.’
    ‘Well, blame yourself! You took too big a risk and set yourself back moons with a journey you were not well enough to make.’ She made a sound of disgust. ‘Attending Horz’s execution was madness.’
    ‘I told you, I needed to get the note to Pez,’ he replied, his anger stoking.
    ‘I could have taken the note to Pez, but of course you wanted to see Ana again. What good are you to us if you insist on speeding your own death?’
    ‘My life is my own,’ Lazar growled. ‘It does not belong to you, not anyone!’
    ‘Is that so?’ she said in a manner suggesting the opposite, but this time she had heard the fury and could feel only relief, for it was a good sign of his recovery. ‘You can try and fool us but I suspect you can’t fool yourself with such hollow words. Your life is already given—she owns it,’ she said, her crooked finger pointing angrily towards the palace where Ana lived.
    It was a cruel jibe but Zafira needed anger from Lazar. Where there was anger there was fight, and where there was fight there was surely life, for if his crushing despair won through—and it still could—they were lost. She hoped there might be something equally cutting spat in reply but there was only an echo of her own sigh. They both knew what she said was true, but they also knew the stakes of this strange battle they were now engaged in were high, and in truth risks were all they had to choose from.
    ‘I shall be in shortly,’ finally came the response.
    ‘Let me help you.’
    ‘No. I will manage.’
    ‘Lazar, you must forget her,’ she cautioned softly. ‘I suspect—’
    ‘Just a few more minutes, Zafira,’ he said, cutting her words off.
    He didn’t deny that it was the sad memory of the loss of a woman that was so destructive to his healing, and yet Zafira knew it was because ofthis woman that Lazar still lived, still bothered to wake each day and breathe, eat if she could get much down him, hobble around keeping his limbs supple, if not strong. It was so ironic. Opposing emotions pulling him apart, both good and bad for his health.
    His perilous trip into the city was seemingly to let Pez know that he lived and to summon the dwarf to come to Star Island immediately. This was his pretext for slipping away from Zafira, risking his life just hours after being revived from the unconsciousness that had followed the flogging and poison, when he was not nearly strong enough to make the journey across the water. But the note was his excuse—anyone could have delivered it for him. No, his true motive was that one final glimpse of Odalisque Ana. And that effort had nearly taken what little life had been left to this man.
    He had barely clung to existence after the poisoning from the whip that opened his