Grave Mercy Read Online Free PDF Page A

calls out. Her voice is low and musical and as soothing as I imagine a mother’s caress would be. The fey girl falters, as if that voice has some power over her. with an effort, she leaps to the next bed, but her movements are slower, clumsier.
“If you stay,” the lovely voice continues, "We will find a way to give you back your life.”
The girl turns and anger flares in her eyes. “You lie!” She takes the last three beds in as many leaps and arrives at the window. without knowing why, I am afraid for her. I am certain that if she goes out that window, her madness will burn her up and leave nothing but bitter ashes behind.
"Wait!” I add my voice to the others. She stops, and the nuns grow still. everyone holds her breath. “Don’t you wish to learn the arts of Mortain?” I ask. “How to kill those who have done this to you?” I do not know why I am so certain someone has caused this insanity in her, but I am.
She is quiet so long I am afraid she will not answer, and then she does. "What are you talking about?”
“She has not yet spoken to the abbess,” the musical-voiced nun says. “She was too wild when she first arrived.”
“May I tell her then? If it will keep her here?”
The nuns glance among themselves, an unspoken conversation in which options are weighed. Finally, one nods. I turn to the girl. “Are you so eager to go back to where you came from? To your lord father?”
In the darkness of the bedchamber, the shadows on her face seem to deepen. “No,” she whispers. “But I will not be held prisoner by a clucking passel of busybodies who pry and poke.”
I glance uneasily at the nuns, but they are unperturbed by her assessment of them. “They mean well,” I assure her.
Her quiet laughter is so full of scorn it nearly curdles the air between us. “Good intentions are only lies the weak tell themselves. I will not be caged.”
But where else will she go? “They have promised to teach me of poison,” I say, hoping I am not getting Annith in trouble by revealing this. “And other ways to kill a man.” I share what the abbess told me, her words still bright in my mind. “They will train us in stealth and cunning and give us such skills that no man will ever be a threat to us again.”
Sybella turns toward me, a glint of interest in her eyes, but that is all I know of this new life I’ve been promised. I look helplessly at the nuns.
Annith steps easily into the opening I have made. “They will teach you of all manner of weapons,” she says, coming more fully into the room. “They will show you how to wield a dagger and a stiletto. How to shoot an arrow and draw a sword.”
“That is a lie,” Sybella says. “No one would teach a woman such deadly skills.” But I can see how much she wants to believe.
“It is not a lie,” Annith swears.
It is working. with her eyes on Annith, Sybella steps down from the bed. “Tell me more,” she demands.
“They will teach you how to caress a man’s throat with a garrote so that when he expects your soft lips, he will feel the deadly bite of wire instead.”
Sister Serafina speaks next. "We will teach you to make poisons.” Her voice is as gentle as the lulling waves. “Poisons that grip the gut and force a man’s life to dribble from him into a slop pail. Poisons to stop the heart or squeeze the humors from the body. Bloodwort to congeal the blood so it can no longer move through the veins. we will show you subtle poisons that take days to fell a man, and those that kill within seconds. And that is just to start.”
There is a long pause and we all hold our breath, wondering what Sybella will choose. when she speaks, her voice is so faint I have to lean forward to hear it. “Is there a poison that will make a man’s member shrivel and fall off?” she asks.
When Sister Serafina answers, her voice is full of a grim determination that makes me love her. "We will create one, you and I. Now, come. Get back into bed and we will tell you of all