Read The Grave Thief: Book Three of The Twilight Reign for Free Online

like he’d forgotten he was a sergeant-at-arms of twenty years’ service. Merchant and Farmer couldn’t meet Isak’s gaze for long, so he discounted them, and he doubted any group chosen by Lesarl would follow a priest’s lead.
    And then there was one. So, Citizen it is, and doesn’t she look a formidable bitch? I doubt she even needs that fat lump on the door downstairs to keep control of her patrons.
    As if to acknowledge his conclusion, Citizen met his gaze. She showed no trace of deference as she replied to his unspoken question. ‘You’re worried about it all,’ she said in a rough local accent, her gravelly voice betraying a lifetime of pipe smoking. ‘Not even your da’s injuries are enough to take priority, though; it’s the sound of the city that’s got you troubled.’
    Citizen was a thickset woman with hair trimmed almost as short as Isak’s. Her face was a mass of laughter lines, and she had a jaw-line to make a Chetse warrior proud. She sported three thick gold rings in each earlobe, and even in his inexperience, Isak realised it was intentional that they bore a striking resemblance to the earrings of a duke.
    ‘Explain, please,’ he said politely.
    She shrugged and gave a smile, more than comfortable with the attention of the whole room. ‘Lived in this city my whole life - I know its sounds and its moods better’n any lord. You’re a white-eye, so you feel it too, though you mayn’t yet have recognised it as such.
    ‘Some days I can just hear there’s an ugly mood in the city, and those days the Cock don’t serve, ’cos it’s those days that there’s riots. The city ain’t like that right now, but it’s stinkin’ of men crammed together like too many bulls in a field.’
    Citizen raised a forearm as solid as a man’s calf and patted Prayer’s shoulder. The priest, who was sitting on her left, ignored her and pulled his cloak tighter around his body. ‘Then you got the fact that all this mob are actin’ even worse than the nobles, preachin’ war and whippin’ honest folk in the street for stupid reasons.’ She cocked her head at Isak. ‘My guess is whatever’s pissed on their mood - and I hear that’s the Gods bein’ so angry after Scree that their priests are feelin’ the effect - it’s done the same for you.’
    ‘So your conclusion is that everyone’s just a little bit tense?’ Isak said irritably.
    He had never been to the Cock’s Tail before. Not even Carel’s white collar would have stopped someone taking exception to a white-eye here, but the tavern - and Kepra Dei, its formidable landlady - were renowned throughout Tirah. She was tough, and could be heartless to anyone who wasn’t family; anyone working the docks knew it was asking for trouble to mess with anyone bearing the Dei name. Even her sons-in-law, big men themselves, had been glad to break with tradition and adopt the Dei name as their own. And those three earrings aren’t a joke with anyone but herself, I’ll bet , he thought . To the rest it’s a warning that round here her word’s law as much as mine - maybe more so, if it came to it.
    ‘Tense ain’t even the start of it, boy,’ she replied equably. ‘It’s the confusion in the air I’m talking about: no one’s agreein’ with anyone else, not the nobles, not the priests, not the soldiers. What’s gettin’ you concerned is the chaos this city’s in - can’t fight a war when you’re fightin’ yourselves, can you? And you’ve got it going at every level of society - as well as within yourself.’
    Isak didn’t reply immediately. The woman’s calm expression nagged at the swirl of frustration and anger inside him. He knew she was right, but he hadn’t wanted her to be quite so right. However the priests were being affected, he was too, albeit to a lesser degree thanks to the Skulls which were acting as a buffer for his mind - and that wasn’t information he wanted the Land to know.
    ‘It sounds like you’ve put some thought