A Stranger in the Citadel by Tobias Buckell

Author:Tobias Buckell [Buckell, Tobias]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy, Historical, Alternative History
ISBN: 9781616963989
Google: k1ygzwEACAAJ
Published: 2023-10-17T07:00:00+00:00

We didn’t see the cleft at first because we had been walking at night by the stars and the moon. But on the eighth day, Ishmael had his spyglass out as we crested another set of warped hills as the sun rose. He handed the device to me and pointed.

“There. Do you see it?”

The foothills of the rim stretched up into the clouds. The great stacks, heavy with rain, constantly fetched up against the stone and ice, except in one place. Clouds spilled into a great gash in the rough shape of a V carved out of the rim.

“What do your griots say about that?” Ishmael asked. He had a book out, but the pages were all a soft yellow with no markings on them. He sketched the rim, with particular focus on the destroyed section of it, into the notebook. Then he added little markings, words.

“I’ve never heard of this thing,” I said.

It disturbed me. Maybe even scared me a little. It looked like a giant had thrown a rock through the rim. Debris and scorch marks, now grown over with trees or covered in snow, had been scattered in a great backsplash across the mountain.

Gods, the scale of it all.

I turned the spyglass around, back to where we’d come from.

Nothing.

Wait. A glint flashed in the setting sunlight.

A spear?

Or a librarian-obsessed, silvered creature hunting my companion?

“What do you see?” Ishmael asked, noticing I’d turned around.

I strained to look at the far-off morning shadows, until I finally caught a glimpse of green.

“Guardians.”

Something in me had hoped that they would stop at the last marker and turn back. It was as far as anyone from Ninetha had walked out into the wastes since Kira was a child. Or so she said.

Ishmael heard the despair in my voice. “She’s scared of you.”

That surprised me. “How strange, because I’m terrified of her.”

I thought of Kira fighting in the training room, unstoppable, unable to ever give up. I’d never beaten her, never outrun her, and never been able to match her.

“You still want to go back?”

“I will,” I said firmly. But as I spoke, I thought about the rock witch. I’d be another wild, dangerous woman who stumbled in from the wastes to throw myself against the citadel. “I just don’t know how I’ll do it yet.”

All I had was one musket and the pain that I clutched against the back of my throat. Was that enough to avenge my family and restore the citadel?

“There’s a whole world out here,” Ishmael said. “You don’t have to go back.”

“They murdered my family. I held Kame in my arms, Ishmael. I watched the life leak out of him because Kira decided to hunt us.” I trembled as pain whipped through my soul. “She has to pay.”

“And then what?”

“Everything goes back to the way it was. It goes back to normal.”

“After what happened, do you really believe that?” Ishmael asked.

I didn’t say anything. I knew he was right, but it wouldn’t stop that growing fire for vengeance that was burning deep inside me.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.