City of Blaze (The Fireblade Array) Read Free

pondered, of throwing a pitch log on the fire and watching as the newly agitated flames blossomed around the sides.
     

 
     
    Chapter 1
     
    The fourteenth day of the ninth month, 3210 P.D.
     
    It was a fine day in Cadra, the heavily built-up capital city of Calidell. Some have described it as a feast day layer cake of green limestone houses and streets. In the very richest areas there were only two levels, in the poorest there were six. The streets curved between these levels with bronze guardrails skirting the sides and channels for rain driving clear blood down to the ground.
    Life on the lowest levels was a rather gloomy affair; the only daylight came from foot-wide wells that bore their way to the surface. Orange paraffin lamps shed their own, weak light here and there. The noise of cart traffic, footfalls and chatter was constant even at night as it tended to reverberate down the raised roads and through the fabric of the stacked houses.
    Cadra had long been a city of war and the outer walls were beyond vast. Their height seemed to caress the clouds while their width took a full minute to traverse. A thousand years earlier the city had outgrown its massive walls and no one had the money or inclination to rebuild them or add extensions. And so new residents had set up home on the outskirts, only to be obliterated with each successive assault on the city. One day, following a particularly vicious attack, a brilliant Cadran mason hit upon the idea of building up instead of out. King Rugosa ordered that each new resident would finance their own construction and consultation with the mason. In the early days, the poorer district suffered numerous collapses and the lower residents charged extortionate rents. Murder rates in the city rocketed as developers vied to buy the best base properties.
    A millennium had quieted the controversy and had seen the construction reach its zenith. At the centre lay the castle, a giant black urchin now deeply embedded in the surrounding stone network. Only its spine-like towers protruded above the other buildings.
    The castle boasted two open-air courtyards and some heavily shaded gardens. In one of those courtyards there was a broad fountain, cut from white marble. Water spouted from the top at high pressure and tumbled down over depictions of mysterious sea creatures where, at the bottom, it filled a wide pool of several yards in diameter. The afternoon’s yellow sunlight skittered off the white marble lip, across the water, to where Morghiad and Silar stood mocking each other over the previous night’s events.
    Lord-Lieutenant Silar Forllan was one of those men, often seen with beautiful women and on several occasions observed suffering the pangs of nalka . But Kahr Morghiad did not socialise much with females, which only served to add to the gossip about him. The kahr’s father, King Acher, had repeatedly insisted that he should take a benay-gosa in order to prove his masculinity. In truth, Morghiad had as much desire to sleep with one of those as he did a viper. He also found the noblewomen to be shallow and manipulative harridans. Oh, it might be fun for a few nights but when it was over he’d have to go through the horrors of separation. Too many men depended on him now that he was captain. He couldn’t afford to be crawling around on his hands and knees, helpless and in agony while his men died. A good army could not sleep around. There was already too much of that. Worse, his cast-off women would become property of the king. And King Acher’s cast-offs usually ended up without a head.
    Morghiad stripped off his sweat-soaked shirt. It had been a tough session lasting the entire morning, working through every move in the book. He was sure it was much harder leading the formations than following them. Even though the leader repeated them fewer times, one still had to walk between the men: checking, correcting, shouting and instructing. It surprised him how some had been fighting