Pearl of Fire

by Deborah J. Ross

  “Ahhh, Kardith...”

  I fled into the shadows. I couldn’t face her, couldn’t show her my back again. Her eyes — the color of rain, the color of steel — were wide and dark. It was my own soul I saw in her eyes. Her throat moved, jerking up and down. No words, only that whisper, as weightless and persistent as a feather.

  “You forget I’m not Laurean,” I said slowly, searching for words. “On the steppe, to the east, we call ourselves the Tribes.”

  I don’t remember what else I told her — learning knife-forms with my step-father, wrestling and laughing in the alkali dust with my half-brothers, the water-plague that took them all. All except me. The endless, formless days lost in a fog of ghostweed and endurance while that old ghamel the priests whored me off to dreamed himself into permanent oblivion. And the son whose father I must never name — no! I didn’t tell her that. I don’t remember what else I couldn’t say, the years and deeds I had no words for, only that it didn’t matter.

  Mother-of-us-all, take away those memories. How she cried for me, me who never cries.

  I must think only of what I have come to do, of the man I must find.

  I lay in the tub, the back of my head resting on the wooden rim, staring up at the grille on the far wall. Biting my lip. Gripping the hilt of my long-knife until my fingers cramped. Hearing my blood race through my ears.

  Out, I had to get out of the water. It was the heat making me think crazy.

  I wouldn’t get out. Not until my mind was clear of everything but my purpose here. Tonight I would sharpen my knives to steady my nerve. Tomorrow I would find him, Pateros, the Guardian of Laurea. Then, then, it would be safe to remember.

  What happens next? More information at http://www.bookviewcafe.com/index.php/Northlight-by-Deborah-J.-Ross

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