Read Master of Crows for Free Online Page A

at him again.  The open shirt revealed smooth brown skin and something she’d missed at their first meeting—something hidden behind formal robes.  A rope of white, pinched flesh circled his neck, cutting across the hollow of his throat and disappearing behind his nape.  A garrote scar.  She stared, shocked.  Sometime in his life Silhara of Neith had survived a strangulation attempt.
    He rested his chin in his hand.  The hint of humor briefly softening his austere features was gone.
    “You are excessively contrite over the mundane, especially for a young woman under the protection of a wealthy household.”
    The casual suspicion, with its leading questions and observations, threatened her composure, unused as she was to such scrutiny.  Cumbria had either placed too much faith in her ability in overcoming a lifetime of servile behavior, or he’d grossly underestimated Silhara’s acuity.
    A sly intelligence gleamed in his dark eyes.  Had he guessed their game before she and the bishop ever sat down with him and discussed her apprenticeship?  Did the mage just wait to see what she might reveal before using it against her?  She gripped her spoon and took a slow breath.  It was disconcerting dining with leopards.
    “My family was socially prosperous but poor,” she lied.  “When I came to live at Asher, I soon learned deference.  I am a dependent relation and have no wish to be more of a burden, especially to the bishop and his wife.”
    He reached for an orange, taking his time in his selection.  “Ah, the mistress of Asher.   Cumbria’s penance for sins unconfessed.  I wondered if he was still married to that harridan Dela-fé.”  His smirk matched his nonchalant tone.  “Were he more intelligent and less avaricious, he’d find a way to murder her.  Her riches are attractive.  Her madness is not.”
    The statement, so cold-blooded in its matter-of-fact observations, left her speechless.  She stared at him as he stripped his orange of its peel with long, nimble fingers.  It was true Cumbria’s wife was madder than an imprisoned falina bird, but Martise was startled to hear someone acknowledge the fact aloud.  She’d wanted to murder the woman herself, usually after Dela-fé delivered an undeserved beating.
    She glanced at Gurn who winked and went on placidly eating his breakfast.
    “Do you want an orange?”
    She eyed the fruit Silhara held out to her, wondering what deadly deception an innocent-looking orange might hold.  He watched her with an unrelenting regard.
    Bursin’s wings, she was becoming as suspicious as Conclave.  She clamped down on her paranoia and plucked the orange out of his hand with a murmured “My thanks.”
    “You don’t like oranges?”  He sounded more curious and amused than offended.  “My grove produces some of the sweetest.”
    “You don’t seem like a farmer,” she said, failing to keep the doubt out of her voice.  She still found the idea strange—this mage, notorious for snubbing Conclave and delving in the dark arcana, pursuing a livelihood so mundane and laborious.
    His eyes widened.  Even Gurn paused in drinking his tea.
    "It's how I keep us fed and this hulk from crumbling around us."  Sarcasm sharpened his tongue.  "What?  Did you think I lounged on my couch all day, reading tomes and muttering incantations while Gurn fed me grapes?”
    She knew better.  Twenty-two years of servitude should have kept her silent, made her apologize for her impertinence, but some small demon goaded her to respond in a like manner, despite her upbringing and every instinct warning her otherwise.
    “It would explain the dust.”
    Gurn choked into his cup before setting it down on the table with a thump.  His face and bald pate turned an impressive shade of pink, and his eyes brimmed with tears.  Martise didn’t know if they were tears of laughter or asphyxiation and was too mortified to care.  Humiliation scorched a path from her chest to the back of