The Bone Palace by Downum Amanda

Author:Downum, Amanda [Downum, Amanda]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: FIC009020
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2010-11-30T18:30:00+00:00

She dreams of black wings.

Wings spread wide to catch the wind, the dying sun warm on her back. Wings folded tight against night’s chill, pressed close to her mate in their nest. Wings shredding cold fog with every stroke, moisture beading on iridescent feathers. A dozen birds, a dozen images, all of them her.

The air is cold, but the last of the sunlight soaks her feathers. She has flown far and farther still, and the setting sun calls her to roost, to tuck her head and sleep, but her mistress’s will overrides those instincts. The light fades and she flies on.

By the time she reaches the human camp she is merely a darker shadow in the night, blotting the stars as she passes. The humans take no notice—the air is foul with their dust and smoke, their mammal sweat and waste, thick enough to clog even her dull nose. Death rolls off them in a cloud, visible to her carrion sympathy and the alien magic with which her mistress has infused her.

The latter sense leads her to her quarry, one tent among the hundreds sprouting like fungi from the field. A man sleeps within, his fire banked but heat still glowing from the coals. Gaunt-cheeked and sunken-eyed, hands gnarled and scarred. He twitches with restless dreams.

Another raven, still her. Now she glides above narrow alleys, searching the harsh stone streets below for prey. She is no owl meant for night flying, not made to fall ghost-silent from the sky. But it isn’t mice she hunts tonight, and humans are deaf and dull, blind to the skies above them. The one she follows now never looks up, though it twitches rabbit-wary at every sound. Pale, this one, and underfed, as are all those her mistress hunts. She doesn’t understand it—the streets are full of plumper quarry, slower and easy to catch. But hers is not to question, merely to stalk as she is bidden and wait for the scraps her mistress will share.

Another image—

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