The Gantean (Tales of Blood & Light Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

you’ll prepare it.” Tiercel deftly poured liquid and mixed other foodstuffs into it. He picked up a flat white cake. “Try this.”
    I took a small bite, warily. Sweetness assaulted my tongue. I would have liked to shove the remaining biscuit into my mouth, but instead I set it back on the tray. I feared I would be forever tainted by rich southern food. In Gante we had been warned about the temptations of these strong flavors, so different from our seal meat and venison and mushrooms. Ganteans said that people who ate southern food never returned to the isle.
    “Tell me about those.” Tiercel pointed at my necklace. “I’ve seen such pendants on Ganteans before.”
    I assumed he meant the tormaquine, for surely he had never seen an anbuaq like Nautien’s. “No one in Lethemia ever has a tormaq?” He may as well have told me his people did not have hearts, that their blood moved through their bodies of its own accord.
    “No,” he said. “What is a tor-mack?”
    I debated what to tell him. “My tormaqis my guide in the Spirit Layer, in Yaqi.” That seemed safe enough—information that was self-evident to any Gantean. The Elders had always said we must never discuss magic with southerners, but a tormaq was hardly magic.
    Tiercel gave me a puzzled look. “Yah-kee? That’s what you Ganteans call the Aethers, isn’t it?”
    I nodded, though the Elders’ admonitions pounded in my head: If you are captured, your first duty is to keep our secrets. Do not speak of our magic. The sayantaq will not understand. They will try to seduce our secrets from you in any way they can, but if you are Iksraqtaq, if you are a real, raw Gantean, you will hold your silence.
    We called the southerners sayantaq, the cooked, as we called ourselves Iksraqtaq, the raw. Sayantaq used magic carelessly, wastefully, increasing the burden on us and the Hinge. They did not pay for their magic in blood, and it was left to Iksraqtaq to manage the necessary balance. So we had always been told. Ganteans had held themselves apart from the profligate southerners for centuries, ever since they had stolen pieces of our Hinge to manufacture a magic of their own.
    Tiercel batted the air. “I’d like to know more about your magic. This is why I wanted to procure a Gantean servant, particularly.”
    I recoiled. Was his kindness only a show to woo Gantean secrets from me?
    Tiercel did not appear to notice my distress or my silence. “Have you had enough to eat? Take another biscuit. You are far too thin, child.”
    I ate another slowly.
    “Come,” Tiercel said, rising. “You are expected in the Big House. Madame Rennet will give you a tour. I’ll go over your tasks here when you return.”
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    A s Rennet grudgingly walked me through the Big House—aptly named, it was so large I did not think I’d ever learn my way in it—I understood that a slave’s life on the Entila estate was easy. In Gante my daily duties had been much more strenuous. The conveniences of Lethemian life shocked me. Rennet showed me the ductwork system that piped water into the buildings; I did not have to walk to the river and carry it back bucket by bucket. The same was true for firewood—the estate had it delivered, and if I needed to lay a fire, I did not have to collect it myself. Even Rennet’s rules were easier to follow than Gantean ones. As long as I came to meals on time and avoided her notice, she’d happily ignore my existence.
    The sudden freedom from constant judgment—over my actions, over how I did my work, over how I performed my duties, felt oddly freeing. In Gante I had lived as though a great, all-seeing gaze tracked my every move, the gaze of the community around me, the gaze of The Elders, the gaze of the very land itself. Here in Lethemia, though enslaved, I had an unexpected freedom: the freedom of being unnoticed and half forgotten, the freedom to be left to my own thoughts and perceptions, which were entirely separate from the people around me.