Read Thief for Free Online Page B

entrance.
    “Get on with you,” she shouted through the heavy plank door. “’Tis too late for business at this hour, and you’ll wake the babes.”
    The mention of sleeping children usually sent drunken patrons or seamen who stumbled home to the wrong door from waterfront taverns on their way.
    From the other side came a rich baritone Sorcha knew only too well: “My heart is sore, for I’ve been long from the bower of my fire-haired lady….”
    With a laugh, Sorcha unbolted the door and flung it open. Leaning against the frame, grasping a harp in a bag tucked under his arm and brandishing an incorrigible grin, stood her cousin Eadric. A raven-haired rogue, the illegitimate son of an Elmet chieftain and Aelwyn’s sister, Eadric had a voice and a charm that left maidens’ hearts broken and twined with longing in his wake.
    “Eadric!” Of Elmet, or Cumbria, perhaps Powys or Glamorgan. His home was where his harp was. So tonight …
    “You can come out from under the table, Wynnie, and meet your first bard. Children,” Sorcha announced, “may I present Eadric … of Bernicia.”

Chapter Three
    Leaf Fall took hold with the first frosts searing the foliage from green to shades of red, gold, and brown. Today the air was crisp enough to make a cloak welcome to some, but a nuisance to Caden as he looked over the fields from the dun at the top of Trebold Law. He’d lost most of September abed. To rebuild his strength, he’d insisted on helping around the tavern and making the climb daily to visit Malachy, Lady Myrna’s brother-by-law.
    Alyn had set off for Glenarden to visit their elder brother and his wife before returning to Llanwit to resume his studies, and Father Martin, too, had taken his leave. But not without one last sermon.
    “Ours is a Lord of second chances, Caden. Make good use of this one,” the priest told Caden before taking off in a northerly direction along the old Roman road toward Din Edyn.
    Never specific, Caden had grumbled to himself. But Martin read his mind like a tavern sign. “There’s an old proverb you’d do well to ponder, son. ‘Love of our neighbor is the only door out of the dungeon of self.’”
    Caden loved his neighbor … as long as said neighbor left him be. Yet his life was a dungeon, a chamber of endless torture, in spite of Trebold’s gracious treatment. Myrna had nothing but the highest regard for him. Her brother-in-law, Malachy, picked up where Martin had left off in fishing for Caden’s soul during their games of draughts and even suggested that Trebold Law might be Caden’s if he could charm the long-lost Sorcha.
    A decaying hillfort with half its surrounding fields lying fallow, Caden thought as he surveyed the land below. The old Caden would have leapt at the chance to have an adoring people and land of his own. The people of Trebold Law thought he was a hero, the warrior who saved the High King. But a man who’d nearly murdered his family for power wasn’t worthy of even this ramshackle place where the earthen works and the remains of a stockade were so overgrown, it was hard to tell where one ended and nature took over.
    Nay. The sooner Caden fetched Sorcha home, if the lady was to be found and fetched at all, the sooner he could return to the battlefront, where the enemy was clearly defined and deadly enough to suit him.
    A horn’s blast pulled Caden from his dour speculation to the north road from Din Edyn converging at the ford that was the tavern Trebold Law’s only hope for survival. As if in answer to his heart’s plea, the double eagles of Lothian fluttered in the wind above a large procession.
    “What is it?” Above Caden, Malachy ventured out of the patched hall, his cloak whirling about his scrawny frame in the fall breeze.
    “King Modred’s company approaches,” Caden replied.
    Malachy grasped at his chest in dismay. “The shame of it that we’ve no laird to properly greet him. I’ve failed my brother’s wife miserably.”
    Caden