Joel Rosenberg - [D'Shai 01] - D'Shai

Prologue The Way of the Runner
1 No Splendor, Some Ceremony
2 Dinner Party
3 NaRee
4 Highwire
5 Sore Points
Interlude The Way of the Warrior
6 Descent
7 Fall
8 Stormy Night
9 Breakfast and Burial
10 Tears on a Pillow
11 Trapeze
Interlude The Way of the Cook
12 Courting Disaster
Interlude The Way of the Servitor
13 Apprehension
14 Raising Kazuh
15 Sword Talk
16 Investigation
17 Kami Dan Shir
18 Many Farewells
Interlude The Way of the Ruler
19 One Last Farewell

Only twice before had I held a sword in my hands; I still didn’t much like the feel of it. I couldn’t think straight. None of this made sense. This wasn’t how an acrobat was supposed to die, cut down by a swordsman, with a sword in his hands. Of old age, perhaps, or killed by a jealous husband or father, or by a fall from a trapeze, or a broken neck when doing a high dive-and-roll wrong.

Dun Lidjun and I Squared off, him circling first to the right, then the left, me just holding the challenge sword out in front of me, hoping to block him ...

 

 

This one is for Mark J. McGarry: writer, reporter, editor, copyeditor, smartass, friend

 

 

This book is an Ace original edition, and has never been previously published.

 

D’SHAI

 

An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author

 

PRINTING HISTORY
Ace edition / February 1991

 

All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1991 by Joel Rosenberg.
Cover art by Darrell Sweet.
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.
For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group,
200 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016.

 

ISBN: 0-441-15751-3

 

Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,
200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.
The name “ACEâ€

Acknowledgments

I’m grateful for the help I’ve gotten with this one from Bruce Bethke, David Dyer-Bennet, Emma Bull, Peg Kerr Hunger, Harry F. Leonard, Victor Raymond, and, particularly, Pamela Dean. Particular thanks to Beth Friedman, for the last-minute proofreading.

Special thanks to my agent, Eleanor Wood (she knows why) and to both Beth Fleisher and Susan Allison, for the sort of patience that Job would envy.

-J.R.

 

B
EGIN WITH A
secret: balance is the Way of the Runner.

Attention to balance is all; the rest will fall into place. Balance is not just the Way of the Runner; it is the way of D’Shai.

It was time to be going.

“I thank you, Innkeeper of Oled,â€