Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE

The Firebird

The afternoon thundershowers have left the ground steaming, and the last great droplets caught in the canopy above spatter down into muddy puddles. The ground is slick, sucking at my boots where I crouch beneath a spreading meria tree. I've crushed fallen blooms underfoot like white dead moths, and the scent rises sickly sweet. My nose itches, but I suppress the need to sneeze. Not now.

Too much rides on our mission; I cannot afford to be the cause of failure. My ebon-wood stave is heavy with shored-up power humming along its length. I fear I won't get to use it. Yet again. It rankles that Ally Melnas has set me to keep watch all the way back, near the gates of the estate, while the rest of our unit slips into the property on silent feet.

My view is of the red-mud wagon track winding down beneath its meria-tree canopy, a tunnel whose roof is spangled with star-like blooms. The estate is situated in a dell, high up in the foothills of Mount Ferion's range where the tree ferns unfurl their fronds and, if an idle wanderer is fortunate, they might hear, or even glimpse, ghost lemurs.

It's the lemurs' eerie, hooting calls that make me shiver despite the mugginess of the day. The bell-like tones echo in this narrow valley—perhaps a maiden in distress, but then the cry rises and ends on an ascending staccato exclamation. A threnody of nightmares, and a tremor passes through me when I recall the nights I lay abed as a child, the shutters pulled closed and locked despite the heat. What if it isn't a lemur, I'd ask Mama, and she'd hush me, tell me not to fear, that it's not the spirits of the dead come to fetch me.

It was my brother Ailas who relished the unearthly tales, of the lemurs infested with demons when other, more suitable hosts were yet to be found. If you slept with your mouth open, he would tell me with great relish, the beast would come during the night and stick his hand down your throat and place a demon there, with the night-whistlers sitting on his shoulders, shrieking further lamentations.

Too much here on the estate grounds reminds me of my past. I shift so that I am not so hunched. The blood flow eases to my left leg and the muscle cramps so I have to massage out the prickles. Not a sound, but for the lemurs' crying and the never-ending frogs—blue-lipped poison frogs and river toads. Little plinking sounds like drumsticks beaten together from the frogs, complemented by the squelching belches of toads. The chorus would be pretty, if we were here purely for the view and the fresh air.

But we're not.

The orchid farmer and his family have departed for the market, according to our agent. They've been gone since this morning and will only begin their return now that the afternoon showers are over. A convenient alibi, I suppose. They can claim ignorance while we close in on our targets.

The insurgents were using Three Bells Farm for the past month before the farmer's wife developed a conscience and reported them. Or maybe she just became too scared knowing what the insurgents are planning. Elder Saitas has been merciful. He will spare her husband who, at this point, has no idea that his wife has struck a bargain for his life. Idiots this close to the capital can only dream of keeping their treasonous activities secret. The Fennarin has eyes and ears everywhere.

My duty this day is to keep watch in case the farmer returns early or, in a worst-case scenario, more insurgents arrive with reinforcements. Either way for me, this mission has mostly been a case of hurry up and wait. Like the last one. And the one before. Apparently, despite my skills with the stave and in unarmed combat on the training grounds, I'm still a liability in the field. According to Ally Melnas, that is, despite me besting him and a generous handful of the other allies on more than one occasion.

I'd like to say that it's because I'm a woman, but in the eye of the Illuminant, all are equal within our order of the Fennarin. Or so it is said when our Most Esteemed makes his utterances. Yet I've heard what the others have said when they think I'm not within earshot. Shiwen peasant trash, that woman. Their jealous gazes slide over me, evaluating and finding a woman of common birth wanting because they're too afraid to admit they themselves might be less than worthy.

Jumped-up Shiwen, they say. As if the Binmah class of tradesmen, priests and soldiers is somehow one step above the peasantry and bondsmen. They like to forget that their Shiwen grandmothers and great-grandmothers spread their legs for our Oran slavemasters before the Emancipation. Just because the mixed-blood Binmah were never shackled like the native Shiwen doesn't mean we're not all Adari people—Shiwen, Binmah and Oran alike—of the island; just some have a little more of the old blood in us than others, old blood we should be proud of. Even the Ora nobles have a little dip into the mud somewhere along in their clans, though they like to hush that up while they powder their faces with cerussa.

The frogs fall silent, and I'm instantly alert, my breath pinched in my throat. Not even a bird stirs in the boughs above me, though some creature was rustling the foliage only a heartbeat ago. Another ululating lemur call, but this time from higher up in the valley. My skin prickles, my veins constrict.

The animals and birds know danger is afoot. I'm vigilant, ready for anything.