Expatria: The Box Set Read Online Free PDF

buildings here were low and in need of repair, the streets uneven and unpaved. Bonfire smoke clung to the air.
    There was a sudden shout in the street ahead and, with a chilling clarity, Mathias realised that the sounds were not those of an ordinary Dumandee party. A sudden scream confirmed his intuition.
    He stopped in the shadows, peered ahead.
    Figures moved quickly at the next junction, throwing things on to a huge fire—no ordinary street bonfire—and yelling hoarsely at each other. The smell of smoke was now bitter on the night air as Mathias crouched behind a trader's stall, upturned in the disturbance. A nearby shop had been broken into, its double wooden doors smashed through, its contents looted and vandalised. For the second time he was aware of how little he knew of the real workings of the city.
    He let himself give in to an almighty shudder and then he looked all around.
    His head was clear now and he looked back along the street. He had to get clear. Quickly, he retraced his steps, cautiously at first and then more boldly, heading for the shore. He needed somewhere to think.
    ~
    The waves barely made a sound as they half-heartedly crept a metre or so up the beach and then sagged back. He thought of the disturbances on the Lincolnstrasse, but that was too fresh, too confusing. Instead, he tossed pebbles into the water and thought of Greta, of holding her as close as he had at the ball. That had felt better than he had ever dreamed it would. It was less than a year—fourteen months, he counted—until their wedding. Things would be calmer then. He would have had time to settle into his role, if March ever forgave him for his behaviour this evening.
    He moved up the beach and followed the cliff path out along Gorra Point, towards the Pinnacles. Small creatures scuttled in the darkness. Burrowers. He had listed them all when he was younger. The native furworms and gnaws and footies, the terran voles and gophers and jerboas. Each to its own niche, his list had grown long and complex in its details of breeding and possible evolutionary connection. But the list had gone out with his books, locked in some dark cupboard or maybe even dumped in a bio-converter in one of the valley farms.
    The Pinnacles loomed against the night sky, brightened by the stars and the almost-set moons. He sat with his back against the rocks.
    He stayed like that for a long time, staring out to sea, spotting the occasional night-sighted cutterette and, after a time, the skipping forms of a school of terran porpoises. He smiled, then, and rose and headed back along the cliff path towards Newest Delhi.
    He followed the deserted ramparts of West Wall around to near the Manse, cautious in case the disturbances had spread. Up on the Wall he could still hear the sounds of the Dumandee Ball, quiet but persistent.
    To get to his suite he would have to pass through the corridors by August Hall. Despite—or maybe because of—his calmness of spirit, he did not want to face that; he wanted to preserve his inner peace.
    When he was younger he had often left the Manse without permission. March would never have let him out to play with the common folk, not with Mica Akhra, daughter of a lowly engineer, not even with Idi and Rabindranath Mondata, sons of the finest fish merchant in all Newest Delhi. When March grew wise to his son and posted servants to watch over the doors of his suite, Mathias had simply refined his route. It was a number of years now since he had climbed the pillars outside his balcony and he doubted if he could still manage. But there was only one way to satisfy his curiosity and, all of a sudden, he was filled with the adventurous spirit of a child.
    The handholds he remembered were too close together for an adult, but there were others in the ancient masonry that were just as good. The two-storey climb made him breathe harder than he had expected, the life of an heir had been too soft on him. His hand caught the top of the balcony