The Flames of Deception - A Horizon of Storms: Book 1 Read Online Free PDF Page A

Rina’s famously thick and impenetrable stone wall. The downside
to the plan was that the city had literally piled buildings on top
of itself, one another, layer upon layer, seemingly with no plan or
design, until all around the skyline scaffolds of houses rose from
the ground in staggered tiers, stretching higher and higher until
they seemed to reach the clouds. And yet, somehow the chaos of its
ad-hoc structure produced a city that was a wonder to behold, with
no two houses alike, no roads the same and a world of discovery
waiting around every corner.
    The more impressive looking establishments of the
nobility of Rina had found a way around the inherently eccentric
nature of its upward construction by building their own little
pathways, crafted from wooden beams that sat atop scaffold
supports, where they peered down on the world below then, held
together with an array of ropes, chains and cables. Who maintained
the scaffolds was anyone’s guess, but it all seemed to work,
including the precariously crafted plumbing and drainage system
that spiralled down to earth and filtered itself, rather
unceremoniously, into large, sulphurous ditches at points around
the edge of the city, where the pile-up was then gathered up onto
carts weekly and used as both a manure for fields and as an
unhealthy swill for pigs and the less picky of livestock.
    Matthias had what he felt was a misfortune to have arrived on
one of the three weekly trading bazaars, and the sheer number of
people who crowded the area made it difficult to move. He picked
his way clumsily around a crowd of people who had gathered to see
one of Rina’s resident jesters flailing around on a hastily erected
plinth.
    Do these people never sleep? Matthias thought, as he glanced
up at sky, which was really only just beginning to colour with
daylight. It can’t have been later than seven, and yet it seemed
the entire population of Rina had spilled out on to the streets. As
he stared upward, his eye was drawn to the shape of a blackened
body, dangling from a bloodied beam outside a pub a few paces away.
The skin was a mix of dark hues, and a gaping hole sat where their
features should be. It had clearly been there a
while.
    “ Excuse me,” Matthias said, stopping a middle-aged woman in
her tracks as she passed him. “Do you know what they were hung
for?”
    She
smirked, and the dimples in her considerable cheeks stood out like
great potholes in her face. “You mean James Maston?” she answered,
indicating to the body. Matthias nodded. “He stole a loaf of
bread,” she said.
    “ Was that all? ” Matthias exclaimed.
    “ That’s someone’s livelihood!” She frowned, shaking her head.
“That could feed a man for a week if he managed it right!” She
looked him up and down. “You aren’t from around here, are
you?”
    Matthias smiled and shook his head. “It is that obvious?”
    “ You have the tan of a foreigner alright,” she
said, as she looked back up at the hanging body. “Well, if I were
you, I’d stop asking questions like that. That boy warrants no pity. If you ask
me, he deserved every second of his strangling!” She nodded to him, and then
moved on her way.
    “ A loaf of bread,” Matthias repeated. “And they
call us barbaric,” he whispered, shaking his head, before he set
off again through the crowds.
    He
emerged into a gap in the throng, completely flustered, as the warm
sun beat through his thick coat upon his back. His eye caught the
glint of light on water from a large fountain bubbling away happily
ahead of him, and he made for it, dipping his hands in the cool
water that fell into the pool from marble amphora above, and
splashed his face gratefully. He stopped a moment to gather his
thoughts, and then as people began clambering atop the fountain's
rim for a better look at the jester, who was pulling more and more
people towards his display, he moved again, weaving his way again
until, eventually, he made his way out from the courtyard