The Burning Shadow Read Online Free PDF

over. She spotted a window in the wall directly below her. If she leaned a bit farther, maybe . . .
    A familiar voice shouted her name.
    She glanced over her shoulder.
    Userref her slave stood in the passage, frozen with horror.
    â€œPirra what are you
doing
?”
    Furiously, she motioned him to silence, then turned back to plan her escape.
    Down on the rocks, the magpie was gone. In its place stood a woman with unkempt brown hair and a startling white streak at one temple. Her tunic was ragged and dusty, but she was staring sternly up at Pirra.
    Pirra recoiled, slipped, and suddenly she was clinging to the horn and her legs were dangling over the passage. Her sandals scrabbled for a foothold, but the wall’s polished gypsum was lethally smooth.
    â€œ
Hold on!
” cried Userref. “I’m beneath you now, let go, I’ll catch you!”
    Pirra struggled to heave herself back onto the wall. She couldn’t.
    â€œPirra!
Let go!
”
    She clenched her teeth.
    She let go.

    â€œThis has to
stop
,” hissed Userref as he marched her back to her chambers. “Think of the trouble if the Great One found out!”
    â€œ
Trouble?
” retorted Pirra. “How much worse can it get? In three days she’s sending me to the edge of the world to wed a stranger!”
    â€œIt’s your duty—”
    â€œDuty!” she snarled.
    They reached her room and she flung herself onto her bed and plucked savagely at the covering. It was fine red wool embroidered with blue swallows, and it smelled of lampsmoke and captivity.
    â€œYes, duty,” insisted Userref. “Your mother is High Priestess Yassassara. Everything she does is—”
    â€œFor the good of Keftiu, yes I know. Last year she tried to barter me for a shipload of copper. This year it’s tin. All for the good of Keftiu.” She was nearly thirteen, and she’d spent her whole life shut up in the House of the Goddess. In three days, she’d be sent far across the Sea and shut up again, in a stranger’s stronghold, until she died.
    Userref was pacing angrily up and down. “These ridiculous attempts to escape! Bribing a water-carrier. Hiding in an empty olive jar. Clinging to the webbing under a
chariot
!”
    Savagely, Pirra attacked another embroidered swallow. Userref made it sound so childish; and he hadn’t even mentioned her preparations for surviving in the wild. Haunting the cookhouse to learn how to gut fish. Hoisting her big alabaster lamp over and over, to make herself stronger. Stomping barefoot on a pile of oyster shells to toughen her feet. She’d even bribed a guard to teach her about horses . . .
    For what?
    Her one success had been preventing her mother from marrying her off to a Makedonian Chieftain. Pirra had greeted his emissary smeared in donkey dung, with a crazy grin and the scar on her cheek picked out in henna. Her mother had punished her by forbidding a fire in her room all winter, and—which was much worse—by giving Userref twenty lashes.
    â€œ
Why
can’t you accept your fate?” cried Userref. “Why can’t you be content with what you have?”
    Pirra glanced about her, and the familiar panic sucked the air from her lungs. The cedarwood roof beams weighed down on her and the windowless walls pressed in on all sides. The green stone floor was cold as a tomb, and the broad-shouldered columns flanking the doorway looked like tall men standing guard.
    â€œNone of it’s real,” she muttered.
    He flung up his arms. “What does that mean?”
    â€œThis lily in my hair isn’t a flower, it’s just a piece of beaten gold. The octopus on that jug is made of clay. Those dolphins on the wall are painted plaster. They’re not even proper dolphins, the painter got their noses wrong, he made them look like ducks. I bet he’s never seen a real dolphin. I bet he never . . .” She broke off.
    I