Dust and Light Read Online Free PDF Page B

these last ten years. Those far older than I shook their heads and murmured of a universe out of balance, of the bowl of the sky slid askew, of angry gods or the lost Danae, mythic beings who once tended Navronne’s fields and forests. Every baker filled his shelves with feast bread at the turn of the seasons, ready for those who would set it out to lure the Danae back to heal the lands of men. No such beings ever showed themselves, of course. The land grew more ill by the season.
    My back itched; sighs teased at my ears. I hitched my cloak higher as we trudged down the hill.
    No need to worry about risky impressions. My escorts were but Registry servitors. Purebloods with bents too weak to garner contracts were frequently employed as Registry guards, clerks, or messengers—positions where the presence of ordinaries would be unthinkable. It was respectable service. Leander de Corton-Zia and his comrades were likely skilled swordsmen and well trained in defensive magics.
    The blizzard seemed to have calmed the city this morning, chasing thepanicked refugees under cover. As we left the broad avenues of the upper city and the sprawling, bright-painted Temple District, hurrying down the sweeping turns of the Riie Domitian into the poorer streets, we spied them crowded into abandoned warehouses or huddled around fires in cramped alleyways. Until the war, Palinur had been an orderly place.
    I dipped my head into the wind, wishing our family custom mandated a full mask of wool in winter. Better yet if discipline mandated a lock on the thing when one was young and stupid. It had been a sunny afternoon in Montesard when slim, sure fingers had tugged off my mask so that the most astonishing green eyes in creation could look upon my face.
Morgan
 . . .
    An aching heat flooded my belly.
    In my first year at the university, my youthful eye, craving knowledge of the manly experiences I’d heard whispers of, had fallen on another student who was also reading history. She was a tall young woman of strong opinions and an incomparable eloquence in their defense, of deceptively plain features that took on a deep golden glow when she spoke of the tides of war, conquest, peace, and lawgiving that had made Navronne a model for all kingdoms in the middle continent. Morgan was her name—an ordinary—though the word failed absolutely when applied to her. Against all rule and discipline, I had spoken to her, laughed with her, touched her, and, in time, allowed her to remove my mask . . . kissed her . . . worked magic for her. . . .
    “This way,
Domé
Remeni.” A firm hand on my shoulder dragged me to a halt. Leander, breathless, pointed back to a lane of deserted alehouses where his men waited. I had raced right past my escorts.
    I bricked up the bitter memories in the vault where I’d prisoned them. “Thoughtless of me,” I said, and followed him.
    The fertile fields and rugged scarps of central Ardra had been occupied for a thousand years, city upon city layered on Palinur’s heights, comprising at least four enclosing walls. The two most recent yet stood. The outermost wall, Caedmon’s Wall, had been built by the great king himself at the unification of Navronne. The innermost, the Elder Wall, had gone up at least five hundred years before that.
    Leander halted at an arch of broken bricks. A steep path led down into an ill-favored warren of rickety houses, sheds, stables, and sop-houses grown up between the two standing walls at the lowest end of the city.
    “Traversing the hirudo is our best route,
domé
. Every other way takesus outside the city gates, an hour longer at best, especially in such a wind. Unless you say differently . . .”
    He sounded as if he was hoping I would say differently, but a terse message from Pons had told me to report to my new master at eighth hour, and the second quarter bells had already rung. Contracts left no choices. We headed down.
    The hirudo was a dangerous, unhealthy place. In