Angel Arias Read Online Free PDF

she said to Long-Li. ‘We’ve been . . . threatened.’
    Long-Li glanced across the ballroom to where Rajka and Riss stared at each other. ‘Trouble?’
    ‘Yes.’ Naif looked back at her friends.
    ‘Markes and I will go to our room,’ said Charlonge.
    ‘Please, will you take them?’ Naif asked Long-Li.
    He scowled and nodded, flipping his long plait over his shoulder. ‘Follow me,’ he said to Charlonge and Markes.
    They followed quickly, after casting Naif warning glances.
    ‘Now we go!’ said Plank, and with a grip that brooked no resistance, he hustled her out.

 
    P lank took her up the still-grand marble staircase at the heart of La Galatea and along the broad corridors to the south wing. From there they took a creaking cage-lift to the turret where Ruzalia lived.
    Plank pressed Naif down into a chair in a circular anteroom.
    ‘Sit,’ he said, pointing a blunt finger.
    He went over to a set of scarred wooden doors and knocked.
    La Lobos opened one side and peered around. He stepped back to let Plank through and shut the door after him.
    Naif heard raised voices, muffled by the walls. She looked around, taking in the untidy grandeur of the suite: stuffed armchairs with silk covers, wall-hangings of velvet and tapestry and a shiny material she’d never seen before.
    Behind her, two beautifully carved wooden tables were jammed next to each other and littered with small chests and instruments of all kinds. Naif recognised some as compasses, and others as gauges for measuring rain and wind. On the largest table, the instruments were slightly rusty or broken. But on the smaller table, they glowed with polish and appeared to be in working order.
    Beside the tables was a half-finished object rather like a large, open wardrobe and more than twice Naif’s height. One side held an open box full of cogs, strange silver balls and strips of copper metal.
    Naif recognised its likeness to the Register on Ixion. This is what Ruzalia had been working on. She found herself drawn to the inside of it and ran her fingers along the wooden casing, remembering her experience when her badge was fitted.
    ‘I thought you were told not to move,’ said a familiarly gruff voice.
    Ruzalia stood in the doorway, her face tight still with anger.
    ‘In here.’ She inclined her head and disappeared.
    Naif left the booth and followed her quickly. Ruzalia might have saved them from Ixion, but she was neither kind nor warm. She was a woman plagued by determination and deep agitations.
    The chamber Naif entered was filled with instruments of a different kind. Heavy wooden frames studded with iron and chains, spikes and wheels.
    She had never been taken to the wardens’ Holding House in Grave but Joel had told her stories of the tortures that went on there – stories he’d heard from his whispered conversations with the loaders who brought food packs to the Grave warehouses. When Father realised that Joel had been talking with them, he sent Joel to the barley fields where he spent days bent over, cutting the barley heads with a scythe and stuffing them into sacks. It was not long after Joel began to work the barley that he ran away.
    Plank and La Lobos stood by a high bench with long leather straps along its side and a brace of spikes running in a frame over the top. Both men had buckets and cloths and were sponging the surface down. As Naif stepped further into the room she saw the colour of the water. Then she could smell it. Blood. Metallic and thick in its scent.
    Jud? She glanced nervously around, but there was no sign of the wiry pirate and neither Plank’s nor La Lobos’s face revealed anything.
    ‘In two nights you’ll go to Grave,’ pronounced Ruzalia. ‘I have a task for you.’
    ‘I-I . . . a task?’ Naif felt winded, off-balance because of the blood and the torture instruments and Ruzalia’s change of heart.
    ‘The beads did not come from Ixion, they came from Grave.’
    ‘J-Jud told you this?’ Naif had to