His Cure For Magic (Book 2) Read Online Free

behind him.
    "Yes," he shouted back, over his shoulder. "In fact, I'm counting on it."
    Eryn smiled. She should have expected he would have a plan to get inside.

    ###

    "I'm not feeling very confident about this plan," Eryn said, from her perch on the back of a donkey. They had traded their horses for the less reliable mount three miles back, to a young couple who had come to Varrow in search of work. They'd also traded them for their clothes, leaving themselves in simple linens under ragged and patched wool cloaks.  
    Silas grunted as he set down a large burlap sack. They had hidden most of their supplies, including Aren's journal, beneath a tree near the road. The remainder was now disguised under fifty pounds of manure they had bought from a merchant who was carting it in to fertilize the Overlord's garden. Apparently, the numerous stables inside the walls didn't provide enough to tend to the immensity of the palace greenery.
    "Birthing pains?" Silas asked, pointing at her newly rounded stomach. It was part of their makeshift disguise, a man desperate to earn any coin he could to care for his pregnant charge. Fifteen may have been young for such a situation, but wasn't unheard of, and it added to the believability. Whether they were husband and wife or father and daughter was left to the imagination of the populace. "Your belly is crooked."
    Eryn looked down, seeing that the leaves she had wrapped in cloth and stuffed under the linen tunic had shifted. She wrapped her arms around it and shoved it back in place. "This is what I mean," she said.
    Silas smiled and stretched his arms, thankful that the weather had remained fair. Waiting in the taxation queue in the rain would have been even less comfortable.  
    Unlike Elling, the city had never outgrown itself, and didn't have a second class living just outside the walls. To make up for it, priests of Amman wandered up and down the lines, asking for donations, while merchants stood to the sides with offers of food, drink, and respite, and minstrels sang and played for coin. Eryn might have been more impressed with the whole thing, if she hadn't felt so exposed.
    The line shifted forward, and Silas bent down and lifted the heavy sack back up over his shoulder. He used his other hand to take hold of the donkey's reins, and ambled forward in time with the rest of the crowd. At the pace they were moving, they would reach the front just in time.
    "What is that smell?"  
    Eryn looked back at the traveler behind them, a man in a dark wool coat and a brightly colored shirt. He had been staring at her, but now averted his eyes. He hadn't been the one who'd spoken.
    "Disgusting."  
    She shifted around again, scanning the queue and the gathering of people around it. Whoever was complaining about their goods, they weren't making themselves known.
    "Reminds me of my mother. I hated my mother."  
    The speaker finally appeared, stepping out of the line a few feet ahead of them and moving back. He was a smaller man, with a narrow, trimmed mustache on a plain face, his head almost bald save for a scatter of black near each of his ears. He wore faded brown leather, caked and cracked from too much time spent in the elements without proper care. A scabbard hung from his hip.  
    "Get that offal away from me," he said. He didn't hesitate to get right up in Silas' face.
    "I'm sorry to offend you, my Lord," Silas said, bowing his head. "My poor child is unwed and pregnant, and this is all I have to barter with."
    Eryn had to fight to keep herself from laughing at his subservience.
    The man seemed unfazed. "Move back, peasant. I have no desire to continue being forced to take in your stench." He put a hand to the hilt of his sword, finishing the threat.
    "My Lord, please," Silas said, his voice little more than a whisper. "My girl is due at any moment, and if I don't get this fertilizer to the palace, I'll have no coin to trade for her care."
    Mustache looked back at Eryn, who did her best to