The Raven's Shadow Read Online Free PDF

The jagged hurt in her eyes was too private to share and she looked away.
    Gair covered his own face with his hands. Coming to Gimrael had been a mistake. A huge mistake, and he’d known it from the start. It had achieved precisely nothing. Now the books were destroyed, and Alderan was gone.
    You and those books can go to hell.
    Guilt stabbed at him. If he’d only kept his temper, maybe Alderan would still be alive. If only he’d managed to persuade him not to come to Gimrael at all . . . He raked his fingers through his hair.
    Damn it, Alderan! Why wouldn’t you listen to me?
    ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’ It was all he could find to say. ‘Your brother was a good man. A man of honour.’
    With a jerk of her arm, Tierce hurled the peach-pit at the wall and Gair had to duck as it rebounded off the plaster next to his head and rattled away across the floorboards.
    ‘Do not speak of what you do not know, Empire!’ Unshed tears shone in her furious, frozen glare. ‘After Uril, my brother was the finest man I have ever known. He deserved a warrior’s death, not to die for some ammanai books in a fight that was not even his.’
    She hopped down from her perch and stalked away. If she’d been a cat, her tail would have been lashing.
    ‘I meant no offence, Tierce,’ Gair called after her, but she kept walking and gave no sign that she’d even heard him.
    He let his hands fall into his lap. Even a shared grief only sharpened the woman’s hostility.
    Closing his eyes, he tried to make sense of it all. Inside his mind the fires had dimmed to embers, but the welts they’d left across his thoughts made it difficult to concentrate, especially when what felt like a hundred individual smaller wounds clamoured for his attention. Exhaustion didn’t help; he’d apparently been unconscious for some hours, but he hadn’t slept at all the night before and weariness dragged at his limbs like leaden chains.
    ‘She won’t hear you,’ said the Superior from nearby. ‘Not yet. Her grief is still too new, like yours.’
    Gair squinted up at her. He hadn’t heard her approach, had no idea how long she’d been standing by the grain sacks, Uril’s qatan cradled in her arms. Long enough to have heard at least some of what had passed between him and Tierce, anyway. He let his head fall back against the wall again.
    ‘You don’t know anything about me, Superior,’ he said and shut his eyes, hoping she’d leave him be. Saints, he needed to sleep.
    ‘I know what I saw in your face just now,’ she said. ‘In the eyes are the gates of the soul.’
    ‘Proverbs, chapter two, verse fifty-four. To find an honest man, look with the eyes of a liar.’
    ‘Abjurations four, thirty-eight. You know your Book.’
    ‘Ten years at the Motherhouse leaves its mark.’ He rubbed his thumb over the scar on his palm. In more ways than one.
    Her footsteps came closer. ‘I brought this from the square – I thought you might have need of it.’
    Gair opened his eyes again to see the nun holding the sword out to him. He took it and drew the blade a few inches. It had been cleaned and oiled by someone who knew how to care for a weapon. Tierce, perhaps? He slid it back into the scabbard and set it down beside the pallet.
    ‘Thank you. I owe my friend N’ril enough as it is without losing his brother’s sword into the bargain.’
    He kneaded his brow, trying to think clearly. Trying not to think about Alderan. Part of him was tempted to reach out for the old man’s colours, but remembering those rich hues turned muddy as an old tapestry, he pushed the power away again. The wound was painful enough without looking for reasons to pick at it. Still he was unable to silence the bitter hiss of vengeance at the back of his mind that said with the old man gone, there was nothing holding him here any more.
    ‘Did you see what happened, Superior?’
    ‘Some of it.’
    She hitched herself onto the sacks where Tierce had sat, feet dangling several