The Crimson League (The Herezoth Trilogy) Read Online Free Page A

different from the one I gave you. You’re right, your version was more accurate, and your brother did nothing wrong to call me out. I admit that now and only now. The fact is this, Kora, you know it as well as I do: that he speaks the truth won’t matter when they arrest him for public nuisance and torture him to convince him to shut his mouth.”
    “My family’s future is my family’s concern, not yours. Not yours, do you understand?”
    “Your brother could excel if he’d apply himself. He’s brilliant, and I want him to succeed. I wish him all the good that you do, Kora, but Zacry has to learn there’s a time and a place to vent frustration. Otherwise, I’ll be the least of his problems. God forbid he travel the same path….”
    Kora crossed her arms. “What path?”
    “My brother disappeared five months ago. He lived in Hogarane, got involved smuggling goods back and forth between the capital, mainly rice, beans, nuts: food that wouldn’t spoil.”
    “A black marketeer,” said Kora.
    “Well, he said some things in a tavern he shouldn’t have about the way the new government runs things. The taxes, in particular. Someone reported him and he disappeared. They dumped his body behind my house two weeks later. Let’s just say I…. It took me minutes to recognize him. Minutes.”
    Kora gaped. “They killed him? They killed him over some offhand critique of tax policy?”
    “No, dear. He broke under torture, admitted the smuggling. They killed him over the smuggling. They went a bit too far in their fun, actually. He should have hanged, that’s what the current law says. Zacry, now, he’s a bold boy, and curious. E xactly like my brother was. My brother had a spine, Kora. He took risks. That’s why he’s dead. Me, I don’t claim to be a brave man. I teach what I’m forced to teach, and it disgusts me. I disgust myself sometimes, but I’m doing these children a favor. They learn the truth at home, their families see to that. I teach them not to let themselves stand out, and well, your brother stands out. That’s a dangerous thing in Herezoth these days. Do you deny it?”
    Kora did not. She could not; after all, she had told her mother the same thing about Zacry the night before. Still, nothing her old teacher said appeased her. As for the man’s brother, everyone knew someone lost to Zalski.
    Kora forgot the respect she had always held for Mr. Gared, forgot how he used to stay late to help her with arithmetic. A blind anger shook her. She thought of Zacry’s inflamed back, and she stormed from the schoolhouse, spitting on the threshold. “Don’t do my brother any more favors, or I’ll tell the other kids’ parents what you did, and they’ll pull their kids from school. The army, don’t you think that would grab their interest?”
    “It would,” said Mr. Gared.
    “We’re clear, then?”
    “We’re clear, Kora.”
    Kora fumed all the way to the general store, unsure which made her more livid, what Zacry’s teacher had done to him or how powerless she felt when she tried to impress caution on her brother.
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    CHAPTER TWO
    To Hogarane
     
     
    The day after Zacry’s beating was Wednesday. When the sun was about to rise, Kora woke her mother to tell her she was leaving, then put on an old cotton frock and coat, pulled back her curls, entered darkness’s desperate struggle against the coming dawn, and took the dew-flecked dirt road into Hogarane.
    The Porteg cottage stood five miles outside the village. The last stretch of the path to town cut through a small but dense forest; this had always been Kora’s favorite part of the trip, for she felt sheltered beneath the trees and thought the towering oaks majestic. That day, however, she drew to a stop before entering the shade. Pensive, she shivered, though it was warm for mid-October. Her face grew somber, with a tinge of anger, of frustrated will. Then she plunged into the wood, stopping again on the other side, just