Ecko Burning by Danie Ware

Author:Danie Ware [Ware, Danie]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Sci-Fi & Fantasy
ISBN: 9781781169087
Google: lqlmnQEACAAJ
Amazon: B00H6J6IUY
Publisher: Titan Books
Published: 2013-10-25T07:00:00+00:00

They didn’t arrest him.

Mael had found his glasses and he’d peered at the soldiers, carping and grumbling like some herb-addled elder. Disgusted, they’d searched the place and then gone on to bully the rest of the building.

By the time they’d moved further down the road, he realised that he was fighting the urge to pace. Selana, it seemed, had been bright enough to flee safely, and he could shove his pince-nez higher up his nose and retrieve a piece of his precious parchment.

He sat back down at his window, watching the moving tan through the slats of the shutters. His fingers retrieved his charcoal and started to draw.

In his head, though, there was another picture - a picture that was coming swiftly together, but that he had to take apart into its individual lines.

Phylos - hauling Rhan before the Council on drugs charges. The citizens of Fhaveon could be very pious about some things, and Rhan’s unsuitable behaviour had offended certain circles for many returns. All Phylos had done was make that knowledge much more public. He’d also gained a large amount of the drug for himself.

The Merchant Master was as sharp and as merciless as a white-metal axe. He had held his peace, and held his peace, until all of this could happen at once - too fast for the city to gather its history and think, too fast for anyone to react. One moment, there was the Council, there was Rhan and Demisarr, and the next...

Mael was becoming increasingly convinced that Rhan’s murder of his sworn protectorate, the rape of his wife, were a carefully crafted fiction - though he was not sure how. But what more flawless a set-up could there be? Valicia had watched her husband die, had been unable to save him, had been unable to save herself. And who would doubt her as an eye-witness?

And with the Foundersson and his wife gone, it left only Mostak - Valiembor-blooded, commander of the military, one of the most powerful men in the Varchinde. The harvest tournament, the event that had killed both Cylearan and Saravin, had been the Merchant Master removing his last real obstacle.

But why?

The one question that Mael still couldn’t answer. “I hunger for power because I was bullied as a child” just wasn’t holding any water, here. Phylos was Archipelagan, he’d been born elite. Or thinking he was.

For a moment, Mael’s thoughts turned again to the scarred woman, Jayr, and to the madman she’d guarded. He wondered if they were a part of this picture, and if so, where they fitted.

But the picture in Fhaveon was too big, and he could not slot them into the image. Not yet.

He looked back out at the road.

The birds had come back, and they were pecking at something on the stones. He watched them absently for a moment, his mind and hands still sketching.

Phylos’s manipulations were utterly flawless, equal parts calculated and savagely opportunistic. By controlling both the harvest and the soldiery...

Mael paused. The birds continued to peck.

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