Outlaw by K. Eason

Author:K. Eason [Eason, K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781503935907
Published: 2016-07-11T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Dekklis rested in a wrinkle of rock, her feet braced against one side of the stone crease, her back against the other. She flexed the fingers of each hand in turn. Breathed around the ache in her ribs. Ignored the burn and throb in her shoulders. She could march for days and leagues on Illhari roads, run the forests like a twice-cursed deer—hell and damn, she’d gone overland from Cardik to Illharek, dodging Taliri the whole way, in just over a week.

This climb—which had taken maybe two candlemarks, up a much shorter distance—might just kill her.

Snowdenaelikk would’ve been better suited to it. Snow would’ve laughed herself inside out if she could see Szanys Dekklis, highborn First Scout of the Sixth, clinging like a spider to the fluted stone columns between the First and Second Tiers.

Spider, hell. Spiders didn’t need handholds.

The top Tiers had been shaped pre-Purge, when blood feud and assassination had been both legal and common methods to bettering a House’s political standing. You wanted to stop traffic between them, you cut the bridges or barricaded them. But a blood feud didn’t end on account of lost bridges. An enterprising assassin—or a House trooper, because there hadn’t been a standing legion until after the Purge, when the Senate decided it wanted soldiers loyal to Illharek first, House second—who wanted to get from one Tier to the other cut holds into the stone. Spikes in some places, age-smooth depressions in others.

She supposed she shouldn’t be surprised that some of the spikes were unrusted steel. Highborn still died

of bad fish

out of time and turn, whatever the laws said. Snowdenaelikk had told her as much. But it was Sindri’s endless stories of forbidden lovers climbing across the Tiers that detailed where those handholds actually were.

In Sindri’s stories, the lovers died by violence. They never died falling down half a league of jagged black stone. Never spread themselves over ten paces of Suburban streets when they hit. And if soft highborn lovers didn’t fall, hell if she would.

Although it might be kinder. She still had to get down again. Maybe she’d just walk down to the garrison, bold as a rat in a midden. Let the praefecta wonder about it. Dare Dani to confront her as she came through the front gate. At least the cargo she meant to

kidnap

liberate wouldn’t take that trip with her. She intended to deliver him to a First Tier destination. She only had to get herself down.

Shee-oop ricocheted off the stone. A svartjagr’s hunting cry, which sank into bones and nerves.

Not Briel, hell and damn. Svartjagr, wild ones, whole toadshit pack. They’d spotted her. Sliced past the crease where Dekklis was wedged, keening. She heard the rattle of claws on the stone. The leathery whisper of wings.

A pair of hot orange eyes peered at her from the edge of the crack. Bigger than Briel, oh sweet foremothers. A second pair of eyes joined the first. She heard the third one scrabbling on the stone, hissing.

Her palms began to sweat inside her leather gloves.

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