Liavek 7 by Emma Bull

Author:Emma Bull [Shetterly, Will]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CatYelling
Published: 2016-11-27T00:00:00+00:00

"An Act of Love" by Steven Brust, Gregory Frost, and Megan Lindholm

1 THE PLAYERS

ONCE THERE WAS a man called Imman Toriff Curihan Denbar ola Vedneigh, Vavasor of Heartstone and Bluesprings, Count of Dashif.

He was born in the main house of the Dashif estate. The household consisted of: A cheery-eyed wet nurse who was his first playmate, although he hardly remembered her later; a pretty dark-haired cook and maid who spoke only in whispers; a butler with huge sideburns, who wasn't fast enough to keep the child Tori out of things he ought not to have been in; a bald-headed dark-skinned gardener who taught him hundreds of interesting things about weeds and willows; a mother who spoke less than the maid, but hummed a lot; and a father who sang him to sleep at night.

Some three hundred and fifty years earlier, the land had been given to the first Count Dashforth for services rendered to the Levar. For generations before that, the ola Vedneigh family had been sorcerers. Tori's father continued in the tradition—devoting most of his energies to the sorts of small magics that would make his farmlands more productive. That is, he wouldn't destroy the locusts, but he would make his lands less attractive to them. He wouldn't force defective seeds to germinate, but he would discover which seeds were defective. He wouldn't control the weather, but he would determine the best time to plant.

When Tori was fifteen, he invested his luck into a sterling silver belt buckle. When he was seventeen, he joined the Levar's Navy, where he learned something of the destructive ends of magic, and where he spent a brief stint in Tichen making reports on the size and composition of the Tichenese fleets.

When he was nineteen, stationed at Minnow Island, he fell in love with a local girl named Erina. His father didn't approve of the match, so they made plans to leave for Gold Harbor together. The Count of Dashif died then, so the plans were changed from elopement to a public wedding, with the announcement to occur as soon as a decent interval had passed.

Before the announcement could take place, the new Count of Dashif's heart—or at any rate his eye—was stolen by Neelya, daughter of the Margrave of Foxhead. Dashif left Erina and married Neelya. Dashif didn't understand the blood of the ancient S'Rian race that ran almost pure in Erina's veins. He also didn't know that Erina had stopped chewing Worrynot. Erina never told Dashif that she was with child, or, later, that she had borne him a daughter, whom she was unable to support.

Dashif and Neelya had two children. It was several months after the birth of the second, a boy, that Erina succeeded in stealing Dashif's silver belt buckle and destroying it exactly six months from his luck time.

Dashif sickened, but did not die. When he recovered, no longer a sorcerer, Neelya had taken their children and left him. He made no effort to find them. Instead, he procured

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