Souls in the Great Machine by Sean McMullen

Author:Sean McMullen [McMullen, Sean]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Dystopias, High Tech, SteamPunk, General, Science Fiction, Adventure, Fiction
ISBN: 9780765344571
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 1999-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

"But you do not even like to speak Austaric, Ilyire. Your grammar is all over the place, yet your sister can now speak Austaric as well as the Overmayor." "I fix."

"It's not just grammar," she signed with impatient flourishes. "It's jealousy and Alspring protectiveness. All that I did was go out for a drink with the Merredin envoy and there you were, smashing up the tavern and beating him senseless."

"You not tell me about official business. Seem like funny business." "You should have trusted me."

"I not trust him!"

The gesture for "him" was a violent, slicing stroke, and had a saber been in Ilyire's hand, the movement would have been no different. "Ilyire, I am leaving. The Overmayor's wind train departs tonight and my berth is reserved. You are violently overprotective. I cannot stand it." "Wrong. Am restrained."

"No. You will not accept me for what I am: a fully grown woman. Men have slept with me, have made love with me--"

"You tell who, I kill them!" Ilyire bellowed at the top of his voice, abandoning sign language. Several other patrons spilled their drinks in alarm. Ilyire held onto a stay beam beneath a shelf while he fought his temper back under control. Darien drummed her fingers on the table until Ilyire sheepishly made a gesture of apology.

"So that is an example of your new restraint," she signed. "I have accepted the position as Overmayor's aide, Ilyire. I go where she goes, or where she sends me. Just now she is going east, so goodbye."

The other patrons had their hands on their swagger sticks as Darien stood up and dropped a copper beside her pewter goblet, but Ilyire did not attempt to stop her as she walked out. The vintner sighed with relief as Ilyire left a minute later.

"The Constable's Runners can have 'im if he's wont to raise hell in the streets," he said to a serving boy.

"Skinny sort of shadow lad but strong as ye'd never think, Fras," the boy replied. "That stay-beam's splintered where he gripped it." The vintner whistled as he scratched at the slivers of wood. "Ee, that be kauri, too. Still, a bullet would stop 'im, and if he carries on like that again it's a runner's bullet he'll be getting."

Ilyire did manage to control his behavior, however. He went to the stables around the corner and got his horse, then set off to the west for the Calldeath lands. He rode slowly, knowing what awaited him there.

The landscape below the red upland cliffs was laid out like a scatter of colorful cloth scraps on a Northmoor carpet of pink-and-olive designs. From their vantage on the cliff top three riders observed the aftermath of a battle and made their own judgments about what had happened between the armies of two Alspring cities. They were dressed as Neverlander nomads, swathed against the pervasive red dust in robes, veils, and head shrouds of ochre, light orange, sienna brown, and dappled olive.

"Glenellen is again victorious," said Overhand Genkeric as he lowered his brass-inlay telescope.

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