City of Fire (City Trilogy (Mass Market)) Read Free Page A

Flying carpets are extremely rare,” Kles said reverently. “They say that the threads are woven from griffin wool. Some of it might even be from a distant ancestor of mine.”
    Scirye leaned forward to read more of the placard. “I think some fast-talking merchant invented that story. This says that flying carpets are only myths and not based in fact.”
    Kles pointed a claw at the border with the intricately woven gold thread. “That’s because the museum people think that’s just a design, but it’s a very ancient script.” It was the same script in which the griffin’s commandments were carved into the rock walls of the eyrie and which every griffin had to learn. “And I suspect you not only have to read that script, but you also have to be of the Old Blood.”
    Kles would have liked to puzzle out the spell, but his mistress turned to the huge statue of Nanaia who was seated upon her companion lion. The goddess carried out many tasks for her children, which was why the sculptor had shown her with four hands. In her upper right hand, Nanaia held the bowl of water that never emptied because she made the crops possible. Despite that, Scirye was not sure she would want to meet the goddess even when she was feeling benevolent. Divine flames rose from her shoulders and wreathed her head in a halo that suggested she could unleash a terrible power if she became displeased.
    “Did you ever see her, Kles?” she teased. “The Consul told me she wanders the palace hallways at night. I think it’d be fun.”
    “No.” Kles shuddered and then bowed his head to mighty Nanaia, loving Nanaia, deadly Nanaia. “And be glad you haven’t either.”

Scirye
     
    “Guilty conscience?” teased Nishke. Like Lady Sudarshane, she, too, had been keeping a watchful eye on her little sister.
    Because both sisters had their father’s sharp nose and broad chin, they were pretty rather than beautiful like their mother. But those same features lent them an air of strength, which was especially useful to Nishke.
    The tall, dark-skinned Nishke looked every inch the Pippal guard in long trousers, and armor of iron plaques that looked like the scales of a dragon. Embossed steel disks, which doubled not only as decoration but as for defense, hung from crisscrossed straps over the armor. The face of Salene, god of the moon, was engraved on each disk. Nishke’s rich, black hair was hidden by a helmet decorated with golden griffins.
    All through Scirye’s early years, Nishke had been more of a mother to Scirye than the Lady Sudarshane, who was often busy with her consular duties. It was Nishke who read to her and put her to bed, Nishke who had played with her, Nishke who had taught her the secret ways a careful girl could have fun within a consulate. Even after Nishke had left to join the Pippalanta, she had sent back long letters to her little sister about the places she was seeing and the interesting people she had met. Scirye missed her sister terribly so she had been ecstatic when Nishke had been assigned to escort the treasures to San Francisco and then guard them here.
    In general, life in the San Francisco consulate had been far kinder than any other place her mother had been posted. And even better now that Nishke was here for a long stay.
    “Whose conscience,” Kles inquired, “my mistress’s or mine?”
    “Both of you delinquents,” Nishke joked.
    Scirye liked her sister’s laugh. It reminded her of small bells on the harness of a griffin as it flew through the sky. In the privacy of her own room, she had even practiced that laugh.
    The Lady Sudarshane came through the archway, having left an enraptured Mrs. Rudenko by the griffin display.
    Scirye felt her throat catch as it did sometimes when she saw her mother. Lady Sudarshane had red hair like Scirye’s but it was so much fuller and curlier, falling like foaming waves to her shoulders. Her skin was as pale as alabaster, and her eyes, which had Asian folds at the corners,