The Princess Beard by Kevin Hearne & Delilah S. Dawson

Author:Kevin Hearne & Delilah S. Dawson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2019-10-07T16:00:00+00:00

Filthy Lucre felt a cold thrill shudder through his cloaca at the sight of that gryphon sail. That was a royal clipper ship, specifically designed to take down pirate ships like The Puffy Peach. Very little cargo space but a whole lot of sails and guns. Facing that would be enough excitement on its own—cause for equal measures of dread and drama, the very best of stress cocktails to remind one that living should be full of such stimulation and should not descend into comfort or downy nests or giant vaults filled with sunflower seeds. But there was more: They had a battle wizard on board! He was summoning a bank of gloomy gray storm clouds, touched with magenta and purples as the sun kissed them good night, white strands of electricity combing through them like fingers through poufy hair. Soon he would send the clouds over their ship and strike them with bolts of lightning, setting their ship aflame or punching holes through their hull, dooming them to death by either fire or water. It was a strategy Luc had seen before, but he had never been on the receiving end of it until now. Those Bustardian bastards meant business.

But that particular wizard made Luc’s gizzard wither, for he’d seen those exact storm clouds before. Once upon a time—not so long ago, really—Luc had perched on that very shoulder, back when said wizard was young and raw and itching to buck the system. Back when he could only conjure a tiny puff of a cloud. He’d been eager to listen and learn, eager to plunder the juicy cargoes of the rich and redistribute the spoils among the crew and give generously to the holy Cinnamonks, who lived on the fourth Toe Island and ran an orphanage and shelter for the wayward souls of Pell. That’s where Luc had found him, in fact. Had saved him. And now—Luc’s feathers flattened, crushed by hurt feelings.

He remembered well the day he’d visited the Cinnamonk Succor Shelter and met young Ramekin Cloudtalker. A grimy kid with warm brown skin, he’d lost his parents to giants in Corraden who had twisted them into meat pretzels and eaten them with horseradish. Ramekin had no other family, so he’d been shunted down to the Cinnamonk orphanage, where he learned to be grateful for their radical kindness and resentful of an unkind system. He’d worked on the monastery grounds for many years, and when he was all grown up, he had the strongest yet tenderest shoulder to perch on as a result of that manual labor.

Luc adopted him, and soon afterward young Ramekin manifested a talent for summoning storm clouds and lightning; his surname was no mere patronym but a magical heritage. Oh, the coastlines they’d pillaged! The squiffy mushrooms they’d bootlegged! The barrels of grog they’d gulped, the shanties they’d sung, the timbers they’d shivered! The chests of gold and silver they’d taken from greedy merchants and given to the Cinnamonks!

And then they’d met some

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.