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.’ Her laughter subsided, but there was still an amused glimmer in her eye.‘I know of a merchant who smuggles fine art and literature, most of which I suspect he steals from the Weaver-held territories where they have scant need of it.I asked him to look out for your mother’s works.’‘I cannot thank you enough, Asara,’ Mishani said, looking up.‘Consider it a fortuitously-timed reward for helping us achieve what has passed today,’ Asara returned.‘At least now you will have something to read on your way home.’Asara caught somebody’s eye then, and excused herself to go and talk to them, leaving Mishani alone with the book.She stared at it for a long while without opening it, thinking about her mother.After a time, she left the courtyard unobtrusively and made her way back to her rooms.Her appetite for celebration had suddenly deserted her.Reki and Asara made love in the master bedchamber of the Muia residence, mere feet from where Asara had killed a man the night before.The silver light of the lone moon Iridima drew gleaming lines along the contours of her sweat-moistened back as she rode him to completion, gasping murmurs of affirmation.After they both had peaked, she lay on his stomach, face to face with him as she idly twisted his hair through her fingers.‘We did it.’ she said softly.He nodded with a languid smile, still luxuriating in the satisfaction of the afterglow.She could feel his heart thump a syncopation to hers through his thin chest.‘We did it,’ he echoed, raising himself up on his elbows to kiss her.When he had laid his head back on the pillow, she resumed stroking his hair, her fingertips tracing the white streak amid the black, then down his cheek to where the deep scar ran from the side of his left eye to the tip of his cheekbone.‘I like this scar.’‘I know,’ Reki said with a grin.‘You never leave it alone.’‘It is interesting to me,’ she offered as an explanation.‘I do not scar.’‘Everybody scars,’ he returned.She let it drop, and for a long while she just looked at him, enjoying the heat of their bodies pressed together.He was no longer the boy she had seduced back in the Imperial Keep years ago.The loss of his father and sister, the sudden impact of responsibility upon him, had broken the chrysalis of adolescence and revealed the man inside.No longer able to hide from the world in books, nor under the repressive disapproval of Barak Goren or overshadowed by the vivacious Empress Laranya, he had been forced to cope and had surprised himself and everyone else with how well he had done so.The boy whom most had perceived as a weakling, while still not physically strong, had a fortitude of will beyond that which anybody had expected; and all his time spent in books had made him crafty and learned.His confidence in himself had multiplied rapidly, helped not least by the breathtaking woman who – to his bewilderment – had stayed with him through all his trials and supported him tirelessly.He was wondrously, madly in love with her.It was impossible not to be.Of course, he still had no idea that she had murdered his sister Laranya and, by doing so, precipitated the death of his father Goren.Nobody knew that but Asara, and she, wisely, was not telling.Blood Tanatsua had always been one of the strongest of the Tchom Rin high families, even after the slaughter in the Juwacha Pass that had claimed Barak Goren’s life.The small advance force that had lost their lives there had not crippled the family, for the bulk of their armies had still been in Jospa, unable to respond fast enough to the news of Laranya’s death.But under Reki’s astute guidance, they had risen over the space of four years to the prime power in the desert.It was not, however, all his doing.Circumstance had worked in his favour.The desert had remained a hard territory for the Weavers to conquer because the Aberrant predators that formed their army were not adapted to the sands and were at a great disadvantage there.But in recent months, a new type of Aberrant had appeared, one which might have been born for the desert, and it had begun decimating those territories near the mountains [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.’ Her laughter subsided, but there was still an amused glimmer in her eye.‘I know of a merchant who smuggles fine art and literature, most of which I suspect he steals from the Weaver-held territories where they have scant need of it.I asked him to look out for your mother’s works.’‘I cannot thank you enough, Asara,’ Mishani said, looking up.‘Consider it a fortuitously-timed reward for helping us achieve what has passed today,’ Asara returned.‘At least now you will have something to read on your way home.’Asara caught somebody’s eye then, and excused herself to go and talk to them, leaving Mishani alone with the book.She stared at it for a long while without opening it, thinking about her mother.After a time, she left the courtyard unobtrusively and made her way back to her rooms.Her appetite for celebration had suddenly deserted her.Reki and Asara made love in the master bedchamber of the Muia residence, mere feet from where Asara had killed a man the night before.The silver light of the lone moon Iridima drew gleaming lines along the contours of her sweat-moistened back as she rode him to completion, gasping murmurs of affirmation.After they both had peaked, she lay on his stomach, face to face with him as she idly twisted his hair through her fingers.‘We did it.’ she said softly.He nodded with a languid smile, still luxuriating in the satisfaction of the afterglow.She could feel his heart thump a syncopation to hers through his thin chest.‘We did it,’ he echoed, raising himself up on his elbows to kiss her.When he had laid his head back on the pillow, she resumed stroking his hair, her fingertips tracing the white streak amid the black, then down his cheek to where the deep scar ran from the side of his left eye to the tip of his cheekbone.‘I like this scar.’‘I know,’ Reki said with a grin.‘You never leave it alone.’‘It is interesting to me,’ she offered as an explanation.‘I do not scar.’‘Everybody scars,’ he returned.She let it drop, and for a long while she just looked at him, enjoying the heat of their bodies pressed together.He was no longer the boy she had seduced back in the Imperial Keep years ago.The loss of his father and sister, the sudden impact of responsibility upon him, had broken the chrysalis of adolescence and revealed the man inside.No longer able to hide from the world in books, nor under the repressive disapproval of Barak Goren or overshadowed by the vivacious Empress Laranya, he had been forced to cope and had surprised himself and everyone else with how well he had done so.The boy whom most had perceived as a weakling, while still not physically strong, had a fortitude of will beyond that which anybody had expected; and all his time spent in books had made him crafty and learned.His confidence in himself had multiplied rapidly, helped not least by the breathtaking woman who – to his bewilderment – had stayed with him through all his trials and supported him tirelessly.He was wondrously, madly in love with her.It was impossible not to be.Of course, he still had no idea that she had murdered his sister Laranya and, by doing so, precipitated the death of his father Goren.Nobody knew that but Asara, and she, wisely, was not telling.Blood Tanatsua had always been one of the strongest of the Tchom Rin high families, even after the slaughter in the Juwacha Pass that had claimed Barak Goren’s life.The small advance force that had lost their lives there had not crippled the family, for the bulk of their armies had still been in Jospa, unable to respond fast enough to the news of Laranya’s death.But under Reki’s astute guidance, they had risen over the space of four years to the prime power in the desert.It was not, however, all his doing.Circumstance had worked in his favour.The desert had remained a hard territory for the Weavers to conquer because the Aberrant predators that formed their army were not adapted to the sands and were at a great disadvantage there.But in recent months, a new type of Aberrant had appeared, one which might have been born for the desert, and it had begun decimating those territories near the mountains [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]