Winterveil Read Online Free PDF

memory. The smell of burning paper . . . kneeling in a small space . . . someone beside her, whispering in the dark.
    â€œBeen traveling far?” Kate had not noticed the innkeeper walking up beside her, carrying a tray with a mug and slices of buttered bread. “You look as if you could do with this.” He put the tray down in front of her and refused to be discouraged when she did not speak. “We’ve had a few like you in here. Traveled in from Fume, I suppose. It’s not a place many people want to be right now.”
    Kate looked up. She wanted to ask questions, but knew that for the right coin this man would tell Dalliah everything about their conversation, so she stayed quiet instead.
    â€œEat up, then,” he said. “I won’t tell her upstairs.”
    Kate was too far from the fire to feel much more than gentle warmth, but it was enough. The herbal drink warmed her from the inside, and the food settled her stomach while the people around her talked among themselves, chattering about their lives and speculating about the “servant girl” and her mistress. They were so engrossed in this new subject that no one looked twice when one of the Blackwatch officers entered the inn. He had removed his warden’s robe and now looked just like any other traveler. He mingled perfectly with the villagers, laughing with them and even accepting an offer of a drink before he took a seat in the corner farthest from Kate. She tried to ignore him and turned instead to the company of the book hidden secretly beneath her coat. People glanced over at her whenever they thought she wasn’t looking, but the innkeeper made sure that she was left alone.
    Kate opened the book to a page near the back, and a black feather slid out from its place tucked against the spine. The feather was old and tattered. The place it had marked held details of a Skilled technique that could bind a dying soul to that of a living person in order to prolong its life, but what had begun as an attempt to save the life of a dying subject had become something far more sinister. Different writers had added to the book over the years, and those who had worked on that technique reported that it did not just prolong a life but also prevented the one woman who had been experimented upon from ever knowing the peace of true death.
    Dalliah was that woman, still living, centuries on, but her story was not what had drawn Kate to that particular part of the book. She had the feeling that there was something more there, something important that she had not seen, but no matter how many times she read that section, her broken memories would not tell her what it was.
    Kate remained alone at her table, sometimes reading, sometimes sleeping in her chair, until a loud thud woke her. Something had hit the window next to the inn’s main door.
    â€œWas that a bird?” A woman’s voice rose from a chair next to the fire, where she had been sleeping with a baby in her arms. “Are there more out there?”
    Two men scratched their chairs back and looked out the windows.
    â€œCan’t see nothin’,” said one of them.
    â€œWhere there’s birds, there’s wardens,” said the other. “I’m not lettin’ them take me!” He pulled the bolts across the inn door and backed away from it as if death itself were waiting for him on the other side.
    The innkeeper threw a spoon at the man’s back, making him jump wildly. “Stop scaremongerin’! No warden has ever put a booted toe across that threshold, so don’t you be frightenin’ people off with your talk. Hear me?”
    The woman rested her baby in a cloth sling across her chest and went to look for herself. “I was in Harrop when they harvested it last,” she said. “Some of us got out over the walls; lots of us didn’t. The wardens took half the town away that day. None came back.”
    â€œWe all have