The Guild of the Cowry Catchers, Book 1: Embers, Deluxe Illustrated Edition by Abigail Hilton Page A

long time. Acts of mercy
have a way of coming back to haunt you. If you question a
shelt—frighten him and hurt him—and then let him go, he will not
thank you for your mercy. He will hold a grudge. His family and
friends will hold a grudge, and they’ll have a name and face to go
with it. If you kill the shelt and you do a good job of it, his
family and friends may never even find the body, and they can never
be certain what happened.” He sipped his drink morosely. “There
were a few shelts on Sern who should have never let me go. They regretted it
very much in the end.”
    “Was the magister one of them?” Gerard knew
he was treading on dangerous ground, but he was curious. The
magister had seemed as nervous as a cat in a cage when Gerard met
him. His hands fluttered like frightened birds, and he kept bowing
and simpering.
    Silveo laughed. “No. But I put him where he
is, and I could take him away. He knows he’s here not because I
like him, but because I hate him less than any of the others
qualified for the job.”
    So that’s it. Gerard wondered whether the fear in Ocelon Town
had been fear of the Sea Watch in general or of Silveo in
particular.
    “I left Sern a mess,” said Silveo, “but,
then, Sern left me a mess.” He spoke lightly, but Gerard detected
an undercurrent of pure rage. “I would set fire to the entire
island if I thought I could get away with it. Gods, I hate this
place.”
    Gerard decided he’d better change the
subject. Silveo was suddenly drinking much too fast, and the little
ocelon servants kept refilling their glasses. Silveo spoke again
before Gerard could think of anything to say, “Do not think that
just because I’m talking to you you’re safe, Holovar. You should
not trust me. You really shouldn’t.”
    Gerard watched Thessalyn re-tune her harp for
a new song. “You keep saying that.”
    Silveo shook his head. “Yes, I must like you.
I’ve given you more than fair warning.”
    Gerard surprised himself by saying, “You
didn’t give me much warning the first two times you tried to kill
me.”
    “Half-hearted experiments—poking a rat in a
cage to see how hard it bites. But when I decide to break its back,
I won’t just poke.”
    “Your own officers,”
continued Gerard, “are nothing exceptional.” Because you don’t trust anyone who’s as smart as you
are.

    “Of course they’re not,” said Silveo.
“They’re obedient, moderately intelligent, un-ambitious, and
ruthless—exactly the traits desirable in an officer.”
    “And good in bed?” asked
Gerard, and then he knew it was time to put down his glass.
    Silveo, however, took the insolence in
stride. “Well, it never hurts,” he said with a smirk. “But it’s not
a prerequisite. Look at Arundel.” He shuddered. “You, on the other
hand, are none of these things—well, the first things, anyway. I’d
have to ask Thessalyn whether you’re anything other than
pretty.”
    I suppose I earned
that, thought Gerard. “My point is: for all you keep sniping at me, I’m better than
what you’ve got to work with. The Priestess was right. We could
eradicate the Resistance if we worked together.”
    Silveo rolled his eyes. “Holovar, the
Resistance is something to be controlled, not eradicated. As long
as we make faun pies on Wefrivain, there will be fauns—and some
other shelts, too—who object. The only way to eradicate the
Resistance is to kill every single faun in the islands. We won’t do
that, so we’ll keep controlling them.”
    “But you’re not controlling them,”
said Gerard. “They are getting better, more organized, more
dangerous. The average lifespan for a Captain of Police in the last
ten years is less than a year.”
    “Noticed that, have you?”
    “Unless you’re killing them all, I’d say the
Resistance has become very efficient.”
    Silveo spread his hands. “Not me. The Police
are land-based, which means they have potential to come into
contact with a lot more hidden dangers.