The Year of Our War by Steph Swainston

Author:Steph Swainston [Swainston, Steph]
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: 02 Science-Fiction
Publisher: HarperCollins e-books
Published: 2009-12-07T15:00:00+00:00

Insects were advancing into Tanager and Wrought manors. Tern told me that the Wrought people were packing and moving out along the coast to Hacilith. I directed ten fyrd divisions to Eleonora Tanager, and sent a letter from the Emperor advizing her to move west, and telling her how best to protect the people.

Next, I wondered how I could stop all this talk of caravels and fortunes. I wanted to stop Mist and Ata destroying each other when the Empire needed them both. And I would rather have a blow job from an Insect than go anywhere near a ship.

I sorted out clothes, soap, and a massive meal of inoffensive things that I would hopefully be able to keep down, and then went to court, where I discovered that San had no inclination to stop Ata’s Challenge. Then I flew to the Simurgh Passage and, hanging on a convenient breeze to the entertainment of quadrangle people, I figured out which windows were Lightning’s, and which one of those had the curtains drawn. I landed on its windowsill, and tapped on the glass.

Ata’s face appeared disembodied between the curtains. She swept them open and wrestled with the catch. One cheek was swollen and purple; her lower lip was split in the center, a wide red gash. The face that launched a thousand ships. She was pallid and looked ghostly, but the fire of resentment in her eyes would have fueled hundreds of phantoms. “Queen of Ships,” I said, looking with horror at the bruises her makeup could not conceal. “Did Mist do this to you? I’ll kill him myself!”

“Yes, he did, but there’s nothing you can do.”

Not face to face, perhaps, but I can put him and his fyrd in a bad position when we next fight Insects. I can talk Rayne into giving him some really nasty potions.

I produced the letter. “I’m just checking that you still want me to deliver this.”

“Aye,” she said, her mouth twisting.

“I just have a slight feeling—call it a hunch—that you might have been very angry when you wrote it.”

“How—?”

“In fact, never since you were a fledgling in gingham have you written such a furious letter.”

“I—”

“A letter so sharp you could gut fish with it. A note, succinct, but boiling with such execration and castigation that it would mean conflict between husband and wife, all-out civil war as well as Insect war in Peregrine, havoc and carnage and a fight to the death.”

“Come back when the drugs wear off,” she said.

“So you don’t regret it?” I asked. “You know him well, and you understand the effect that words such as might be contained in this letter would have on him. You’re calling his bluff, or mine; that’s fine, I only live here—” The platinum blonde reached out and pushed me off the ledge. My spread wings caught like hooks on the steady wind and I hung there, on a level with her teary eyes, slipping the note into my jacket.

“Give him it!” she spat. “You’re afraid of everything! Jant, the Emperor encouraged me.

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.