Shadows of Asphodel Read Online Free PDF

constructing the magic of the Hex.”
    Ardis leaned forward in her chair. “The entire Ottoman Empire?”
    “Almost! We’re fortifying it here and there, like along the Dodecanese.”
    Shaking her head, she leaned back. “Amazing.”
    Konstantin ran his finger along the borders of the Kingdom of Serbia.
    “Everyone can keep fighting like dogs,” he said, “over the scraps of the Ottoman Empire. We will muzzle them until they obey.”
    The Hex did deaden gunpowder and render guns useless, but that hadn’t ended hostilities.
    “Hopefully,” Ardis said, frowning.
    The waiter returned with Konstantin’s gin and tonic. Ardis glanced around the dining car. Her gaze locked with Wendel’s. He stood in the doorway behind the archmage. His face was shadowed, his body tight like a cat about to spring.
    “Have you been to Vienna before?” Konstantin said.
    Ardis nodded and opened her mouth to invite Wendel over to their table. But the necromancer shook his head, and she glimpsed a look of loathing on his face before he backed out of the doorway and disappeared again.
    Why did he look so repulsed? Did he have a history with the archmage?
    “Ardis?” Konstantin said.
    “I have been to Vienna,” she said. “Believe it or not, I work for the archmages.”
    “Is that so?” he said.
    The waiter delivered their plates with a flourish. On each, a tiny filet of trout rested in a sea of sauce, with no more than six grilled spears of asparagus on the side. Tender white asparagus, the kind they called spargel in German.
    It was hardly a dinner. Ardis resisted the urge to grimace.
    Konstantin shook his napkin loose, and inclined his head in her direction. “Please, tell me more. Are you one of the peacekeepers?”
    Peacekeepers. Now she couldn’t stop thinking of how scornfully Wendel said that word.
    “Yes,” she said, and she impaled a spear of asparagus on her fork.
    “The rebels in Transylvania really are troublesome, aren’t they?”
    Ardis chewed for a minute. “Not so much after you behead them.”
    Konstantin laughed nervously. “Beheadings are hardly proper dinner conversation.”
    “You asked.” She finished her trout in one bite.
    “It was a rhetorical question.”
    Ardis stared at her empty plate. “If I can speak freely, I’m not sure we’re winning. More and more of the Transylvanians have learned how to fight with bows and spears. I’m even seeing decent swords out there.”
    Konstantin dabbed at his mouth with a napkin. “An unfortunate consequence of the Hex.”
    “Unfortunate consequence isn’t how I would put it,” she said.
    The archmage looked directly at her, his eyes keen with interest. “And how would you put it? As a peacekeeper?”
    Ardis knew how close she was to insulting one of the very architects of the Hex.
    “There will be a war,” she said, “and all the magic in the world can’t stop it.”
    Konstantin sipped his gin and tonic pensively. He peered out the window as they rocketed through the dark forests of Transylvania.
    Ardis dropped her napkin on the table and stood. “I think I’m done for tonight.”
    “No dessert?” Konstantin said.
    She shook her head, since she suspected it would be equally miniscule.
    “Then good evening,” he said, “I hope to see you again.”
    She mustered a polite smile. “Thank you for the company.”
    On the way back to their cabin, the train rattled over a bridge, and Ardis’s meager dinner squirmed in her stomach. The lights in the cabin were on, and the train’s staff had converted their seats to berths, folded down the blankets, and even left a mint on each of their pillows. She shrugged and swallowed her mint whole.
    The door to the tiny bathroom stood ajar. She rapped on the wall.
    “Yes?” Wendel said.
    “It’s me,” she said, and she peeked inside.
    Wendel was bent over the sink, bracing himself with his hands, breathing shallowly. He glanced at his reflection in the mirror, his face etched with pain. Then she saw why.