Children of Earth and Sky Read Online Free PDF

outdoors behind the house on hot summer nights, she used to fall asleep trying to count them. Numbers went on and on, apparently. So did stars. She could almost understand how Asharites might worship them. Except it meant denying Jad, and how could anyone do that?
    Tico was motionless at the prow, facing out to sea as if he were a figurehead. She wasn’t able to put into words how much she loved her dog. There was no one to say it to, anyhow.
    Wind now, a little
: her grandfather, in her mind.
    I know
, she replied quickly, although in truth she’d only become aware of it in the moment he told her. He was acute that way, sharper than she was when it came to certain things. He used her senses now—sight, smell, touch, sound, even taste. She didn’t understand how. Neither did he.
    She heard him laugh softly in her head, at the too-swift reply. He’d been a fighter, a hard, harsh man to the world. Not with his daughter and granddaughter, though. His name had also been Neven, her little brother named for him. She called him “zadek,” their family’s own name for “grandfather,” going back a long way, her mother had told her.
    She knew he was worried, didn’t approve of what she was doing. He’d been blunt about it. She had given him her reasons. They hadn’t satisfied. She cared about that, but she also didn’t. He was with her, but he didn’t control her life. He couldn’t do anything to stop her from doing what she chose. She also had the ability to close him off in her mind, shut down their exchanges and his ability to sense anything. She could do that any time she wanted. He hated it when she did.
    She didn’t like it either, in truth, though there were times (when she was with men, for example) when it was useful and extremelynecessary. She was alone without him, though. There was Tico. But still.
    I did know it was changing
, she protested.
    The freshening wind was north and east, could become a bura, in fact, which would make the sea dangerous, and almost impossible for a bow. These were her waters, however, her home now, since her first home had burned.
    You weren’t supposed to be angry with the god, it was presumption, heresy. Jad’s face on the domes and walls of sanctuaries showed his love for his children, the clerics said. Holy books taught his infinite compassion and courage, battling darkness every night for them. But there had been no compassion from the god, or the hadjuks, in her village that night. She dreamed of fires.
    And the proud and glorious Republic of Seressa, self-proclaimed Queen of the Sea, traded with those Osmanlis, by water routes and overland. And because of that trade, that greed, Seressa was starving the heroes of Senjan now, because the infidels were complaining.
    The Seressinis hanged raiders when they captured them, or just killed them on board ships and threw the bodies into the sea without Jad’s rites. They worshipped golden coins in Seressa more than the golden god, that was what people said.
    The wind eased. Not about to be a bura, she thought. She stopped rowing. She was far enough out for now. Her grandfather was silent, leaving her to concentrate on watching in the dark.
    The only thing he’d ever offered as an explanation for this impossible link they shared was that there were traditions in their family—her mother’s family, his—of wisewomen and second sight.
    Anything like this?
she’d asked.
    No
, he’d replied.
Nothing I ever heard
.
    She’d never experienced anything that suggested a wisewoman’s sight in herself, any access to the half-world, anything at all besides a defining anger, skill with a bow and knives, and the best eyesight in Senjan.
    That last was the other thing that made tonight possible. It was black on the water, only stars above, neither moon in the sky—which was why she was here now. She’d been fairly certain that if the Seressinis