Read Swordpoint for Free Online

clearly, for those nearby to hear. 'They should know to leave you alone.'
    He crossed to Alec by the fire, but a tiny woman, the one Brent had held, planted herself in front of him. Her eyes were red, her face pale and blotchy.
    She stared up at the swordsman and began to stutter furiously.
    'What is it?' he asked.
    'You owe me!' she exploded at last. 'Thhh-that man's ddd-dead and where'll I find another?'
    'The same place you found him, I expect.'
    'What'll I do for mm-money?'
    Richard looked her up and down, from her painted eyes to gaudy stockings, and shrugged. She turned her shoulder in toward his chest and blinked up at him. 'I'm nice,' she squeaked. 'I'd work for you.'
    Alec sneered at the little woman. 'I'd trip over you. We'd keep stepping on you in the dark.'
    'Go away,' said Richard. 'I'm not a pimp.'
    She stamped her small foot. 'You bastard! Riverside or no, I'll have the Watch on you!'
    'You'd never go near the Watch,' said Richard, bored. ‘They'd have you in the Chop before you could open your mouth.' He turned back to his friend. 'God, I'm thirsty. Let's go.'
    They got as far as the doorway this time before Richard was stopped by another woman. She was a brilliant redhead of alarming prettiness, her paint expertly applied. Her cloak was of burgundy velvet, artfully draped to hide the worn spot.
    She placed her fingertips on Richard's arm, standing closer to him than he generally allowed. 'That was superb,' she said with throaty intimacy. 'I was so glad I caught the ending.'
    'Thank you', he replied courteously. 'I appreciate it.'
    'Very good,' she pronounced. 'You gave him a fair chance, didn't keep him on the hook too long.'
    'I've learned some good tricks by letting them show me what they can do first.'
    She smiled warmly at him. 'You're no fool. You've got better every year. There's no stopping you from getting what you want. I could -'
    'Excuse me,' Alec interrupted from the depths of boundless ennui, 'but who is this?'
    The woman turned and swept him with her long lashes. 'I'm Ginnie Vandall,' she said huskily. 'And you?'
    'My name is Alec' He stared down at the tassels on her hem. 'Who pimps for you?'
    The carmined lips pressed into a thin line, and the moment for a biting retort came and went. Knowing it was gone, she turned again to Richard, saying solicitously, 'My dear, you must be famished.'
    He shrugged polite disavowal. 'Ginnie,' he asked her, 'is Hugo working now?'
    She made a practised moue and looked into his eyes. 'Hugo is always working. He's gone so much I begin to wonder why I stay with him. They adore him on the Hill - too much, I sometimes think.'
    'Nobody adores Richard,' Alec drawled. 'They're always trying to get him killed.'
    'Hugo's a swordsman,' Richard told him. 'He's very good.
    Ginnie, when you see him tell him he was perfectly right about Lynch's right cut. It was very helpful last night.'
    'I wish I could have seen it.'
    'So do I. Most of them didn't know what was happening till it was over. Alec, don't you want to eat? Let's go.' Briskly he steered a way back onto the street, through the blood-flecked snow.
    Sam Bonner rolled boozily up and past them, forgetting his objective at the sight of the velvet-clad woman standing abandoned in the doorway.
    'Ginnie, lass! How's the prettiest ass in Riverside?' 'Cold,' Ginnie Vandall snapped, 'you stupid sot.'

Chapter IV
    Lord Michael Godwin had never imagined that he would actually be escaping down a drainpipe, but here it was, the stuff of cheap comedy, clutched in his freezing hands. In fact, all of him was freezing: clever, quick-thinking Olivia, with not a moment to spare had flung all evidence of his presence - which was to say, his clothes - out of the window, and instructed him to follow. He was wearing only his long white shirt, and, ridiculously, his velvet hat, jewelled and feathered, which he had somehow contrived to snatch off the bedpost at the first knock on the chamber door.
    He made a point of not looking down. Above