Forged by Fire Read Online Free PDF Page B

ground. Women stopped scrubbing pots and plaiting grass fibers and nursing babes. Children ran to their mothers.
I gagged at the sweetish reek of the decaying dragon co coons stockpiled in the arbiyesku brick warehouse to our left, hastily drew a corner of my bitoo cowl across my nose. Pain knifed across my torso and I gasped and froze. Broken ribs dislike sudden movement.
The dragonmaster scowled as the arbiyesku gathered about us. Like all the other serfs I’d glimpsed thus far in Xxamer Zu, the clan members of the arbiyesku were bare foot and ribby. Most of them had the pitted teeth, canker sores, and black-stained lips and tongues of the rishi we’d passed en route through Clutch Xxamer Zu. The drag onmaster had muttered something about slii fruitstones, sucked to dull hunger.
I was hard put not to gape at the women’s mode of dress, too, nor at the variation amongst the color of their skin, for I’d never before come across so many folk in whose veins ran Djimbi blood. Under the crimson-streaked sky, some folk gleamed like polished mahogany, the weird whorls upon their skin the color of patina on old bronze. Others had an umber pigmentation mottled here and there by dull olive. Still others were chestnut, their piebald markings a cinereous green. Not a single rishi had skin the color of mine, that tan that’s referred to as fawn when describing bayen, but is called aosogi, poorly cured hide, when de scribing a rishi.
Nor did any before me possess the pure ivory tones of the Emperor.
A Djimbi woman with a magnificent bosom and a hid eous scar that ran along her left jawline stepped out of the crowd. Her skin was the color of wet cinnamon mottled with sage whorls, lighter toned than some of those around her, darker than others.
“I am Tansan,” she said. Her voice was bold, the direct ness of her gaze challenging. She was taller than me by at least a foot. “I’m waiting for bull wings to bless the herd of Xxamer Zu.”
I looked from her to the dragonmaster, from the dragonmaster to her. But as if it were normal for a woman to ex tend the ritual greeting to a stranger while in the presence of men, and as if the name she’d used to describe herself were a typical Malacarite one, the dragonmaster did little more than scowl more deeply.
“May your waiting end,” he snapped. “May bull wings hatch.” He gestured brusquely at me to produce the dowrysword, and as I withdrew it from a sleeve, he tersely intro duced himself and said we wanted to join their clan.
Eyes locked upon the significant value of the dowrysword. Children gaped at us. The old folk champed their toothless gums, eyes bright, and exchanged mutters. A Djimbi man carefully took the dowry-sword from my hands to examine it and was at once surrounded.
But the tall, lush-limbed woman before me—Tansan, she’d called herself—wore a wary look. “Why us? Why here? Who are you, that you carry such a dowry and ap pear at nightfall, aosogi-via?”
Her distrust and acuity irked. Her confidence and close ness irked even more. She was directing the question at me, too, and not the dragonmaster, which was unusual and an annoyance.
I tried to play the part of a demure claimed woman and looked to the dragonmaster for him to answer her.
“You’ll either take us or you won’t,” he snapped.“There’s more coin on that sword than you’ll have seen in a long time; we can always join a more reasonable clan.”
Tansan’s gaze flicked to him, then fell back on me. Her eyes were opaque. “Why us, aosogi-via?” she repeated quietly.
I fought to keep irritation from my face, not to stare her down. Not to visibly withdraw deeper into the shadows of my cowl. “I’ll be honest, yes?” I murmured. “My claimer has run afoul of some First-Class lordlings over the years, in Lireh; no one will look for us in this Clutch, in this clan. No one.”
Lireh was the harbor city of our coastal capital, Liru. It was as far from Xxamer Zu as any place in Malacar could be,