Five Lords of Dusk by F. Malbeck

Author:F. Malbeck [Malbeck, F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub

CHAPTER 20

Shye stood on the highest terrace of the gardens on the south side of the palace, before the levels returned to assembly rooms, parlours, and libraries, or turned inwards towards the imperial wing or the central and crown’s wing on the other side. A waterfall ran off the side of the terrace to a pool. Greenery ate into several different levels in the exterior, with a view of the mountains and the back districts of the city before them, curling around railings and creeping along walls, sprouting up from rock-carved basins and draping down from balcony to balcony all around the Brightspir. The air was fresh with mist and the smell of earth, and the sun warmed Shye’s face where he stood on the edge of the balcony, attempting to call a storm across the mountains.

By the time he willed himself out of bed that morning – temples pounding distantly – he licked his teeth and resolved to leave night-thorn wine to the nobles who knew how to drink it. Someone had discreetly laid a breakfast spread out on the dining table while he’d been sleeping. A delicious mix of breads, fruits, and jams, which Shye tasted with spoons or fingers, smearing the preserves over warm bread, and licking up fruit juices as they ran down his wrist. The only thing he couldn’t bring himself to touch, let alone taste, was the pastries. The idea of that betrayal coated his mouth in ash and coiled his stomach in knots.

On the Oathbreaker, pastries were a special treat to mark the day they’d picked him up from the floating encampment of Aura, where he’d been raised on the dockside by the ocean tide, playing with the Nain, from his earliest memories. Before they tried to drown him the day the captain made shore there.

Despite the bargain he had struck, there were places and parts of him that Cassius and his kingdom could not have and, ridiculous as it seemed, not having one now made bitter sweetness roll through him.

Shye cringed at the cloying feeling it brought to his chest.

Night-thorn wine might have the smoothness of silk, the charms of a rose, the wiles of a rake, and the bite of the briar, but, apparently, its hangovers made you maudlin.

Abandoning the food along with that train of thought, he picked up the top book off the pile Cassius had left behind on the side table and skimmed through it. A third of the way into his light perusal, he found that anything concerning the folk from the human perspective was almost entirely theoretical, and unless the prince had been hiding some books actually written by the Blooded, the ones he had left were not going to be much help.

Shye’s education had been cursory, his element a slumbering whisper, his disposition for truth hated by the crew. The Blood Manifest was a dream, broken by thin folkness. He was as informed about his kind as the useless book. And considering the esteem under

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