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.Gendak stirs in his chair.Unobtrusively, I test my restraints, but I’m strapped in tight.I wait for more.‘There is a long history of antagonism between our people,’ he says.‘Nobody living can remember a time when we were not at war or engaged in a precarious stand-off.It has become accepted as the natural order of things.I do not think that is so.I think the key to making peace between our people is to understand one another.’I’m not sure I believe what I’m hearing.‘You can’t erase people’s memories.Understanding is one thing, but too many people have been hurt by the war.There are too many grudges.’‘It has to start somewhere.’His reasoning is sound, even if I don’t agree.I don’t think there can ever be lasting peace between us, and I wouldn’t want there to be.I’d be happy to see every last one of them dead for what they’ve done to me.I’m remembering how they’ve been taking people away for dissection, how they beat me and threw me in a pit.How they killed my husband.Nothing can make me forgive them, ever.But my anger grew cold long ago.It doesn’t control me.‘Your Elders say the destruction of my people is demanded by Maal’s Laws.Wouldn’t working towards peace mean defying them?’He spreads his hands.‘Maal’s wisdom was great.I am only seeking to understand you.How my studies are used - for war or for peace - will be out of my hands.’‘Does studying us include cutting us open?’‘There are other scholars who work towards other goals.Eskaran and Gurta physiology is very similar.You make excellent test subjects for new medicines and poisons, or as practice for our young chirurgeons.Gurta soldiers do not take prisoners as a rule.The only reason any of you are alive is because of your potential usefulness to us.When that usefulness ends, you will die.’At least he’s honest.And I don’t miss the implied threat.Stay cooperative, or join the experiments.‘Your turn,’ he prompts.I pause for a time, thinking.‘I don’t speak to the other prisoners because I don’t care about them.I don’t care what they have to say.I don’t care about this place.’‘Is there anything you do care about?’My son.My son, whom I’ll never see again.Out there somewhere, fighting this fucking war.‘No,’ I reply.‘There’s nothing I care about.’They put me back into my cell.The other prisoners watch me climb down the ladder.As I descend I can see Charn glaring through the muddle of bruises and cuts that constitute his face.His paralysed arm is in a sling.I can feel his hate, but it’s impotent.Even battered as I am, I’ve sent a message to everyone here.Nobody will fuck with me now.The ladder is pulled up and the grille overhead slams shut.I walk to my corner to sit down, saying nothing.As I go I notice the SunChild boy.He’s watching me, like the others.As far as I can tell, he hasn’t been harmed.I don’t know why that’s important to me, it just is.32The city hid deep in the earth, far from the day.It sprawled across the vastness of the cavern, innumerable lanterns and softly glowing windows crowding the swells and dips of the stony landscape.A plague of lights crept up the cavern’s sides, and hung from the ceiling in clusters of stalactite dwellings, grim chandeliers of rock.Dimly reflective veins of metal and patches of ghostly, luminescent lichens shone like distant nebulae, occupying the void which the lights had not yet overtaken.Here in the endless dark, the tribes of Eskara had created a starfield, and they called it Veya, the Underhome.I knew the city well: its plazas and alleys, its bridges and monuments, its bars and dens and secret societies.I knew where the pitmen brought their exotic beasts to fight for money; I knew where a person could sell a little of their soul for a skinmark of subtle power; I knew the cut-joints where they made dirty fireclaw potions for the dweomings in the slums.I’d visited the clubs where the aristocracy smoked and drank and made their deals.I’d walked through the sculpture-graveyards in the Greyslopes, their forms heavy with meaning, incomprehensible to anyone but the secretive race that created them.I’d watched a starving child give up his life in his mother’s arms while she was too insensible to care.The city cradled me.Here, among the many, I could be as alone as I wished or as involved as I liked.I stalked Veya like a predator prowling its territory, seeking to know every part.I investigated restlessly, sometimes silent and aloof, sometimes plunging into the society of others.To know the city was to have control over it.The riverbank was bright and busy, even at this time, when most of Veya was asleep.Sharp-featured men and their elegant consorts sat in the forecourts of expensive bars, sipping from delicate goblets.Courtesans haunted the tables of those men and women who dined alone.The air was full of the scent of cooking fish and the perfumed oil of the lanterns.I leaned against the rail that separated the promenade from the steep embankment to the river
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Christine Wood [Life Plan 01] A Life Plan Without You (epub)
Hieber Leanna Renee Percy Parker 02 Walka œwiatła i mroku o Percy Parker
Cheryl McIntyre [Infinitely Infinitely (epub)
Clair Delaney [Coral 01] Coral (epub)
Christine Cody [Bloodlands 01 Bloodlands (epub)
Christina Ross [Unleash Me, A Unleash Me, Vol 3 (epub)
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