Steam and Glass by Kate Avery Ellison

Author:Kate Avery Ellison [Ellison, Kate Avery]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kate Avery Ellison
Published: 2016-04-20T05:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

I EXAMINED A bruise on my upper arm by the light of my window before dressing for the day. A few girls in ragged cloaks had thrown stones at me as I’d slipped past the fisheries to meet Adam, and some of the rocks had found their mark. The bruises were a deep purple, and they ached to touch. I brushed my fingers across them before I covered them with clothing. I felt no anger, only exhaustion.

Of course the people hated me. I dined with the enemy nightly while everyone else tightened their belts and watched their children cry with hunger. The arms of the girls who’d thrown the stones had been like sticks.

My father called me downstairs. “We have a visitor from Aeralis,” he said.

I avoided looking at him too long, because it made me afraid. He was like a man with a noose around his neck these days. Strung tight. Strangling. And yet, we played at normalcy.

“Who is it, Father?”

I could pass this information along to Adam.

“The consul from Aeralis,” he said, and his tone was brittle as kindling.

The dreaded consul. Fear was a knife in my belly. I brushed at my hair in the mirror and straightened my skirts before I folded my hands and followed him into the yard. A gleaming carriage with spikes on the wheels stood in the yard, drawn by four black horses.

I froze when I saw who descended from it, clad in gleaming boots and a long cloak with a purple stripe at the bottom.

Korr.

A sliver of lightning lanced me. I took a quick breath. I stood with my skin prickling, waiting for the moment when his gaze would light on me.

“Mayor,” he said to my father. His voice was smooth and cool as damp silk. He bent over my father’s hand, a nod of a bow, and snapped his boots together. Somehow, it seemed like a joke at my father’s expense.

Raine was at my father’s side, as he usually was. Korr bowed to him too, but the move was exaggerated, almost mocking.

“Officer Raine,” he said. “Charmed to see you.”

Raine’s lip curled. “Korr,” he acknowledged.

Korr looked at me, but his gaze didn’t linger. He turned his head, taking in the snow and the gardens and the village below, and then he snapped his fingers. “Shall we discuss matters inside?”

He was impassive as he swept past me for the house, and my father followed like a dog. I stood alone in the snow a moment, both relieved and unsettled to be wrong. This was a good thing. This man was perceptive. If he had grown bored of me, I was that much less likely to be detected. Yet I also felt naked in the snow at his indifference. If he ignored me, I could no longer claim any sort of protection from him. It had worked once, with the soldier in the quota yard. I worried. Would my rash words come back to haunt me?

I went back inside. Their voices came from the parlor in a dance of stiffly polite words.

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