her instruments 03 - laisrathera Read Free Page A

castle and the long spray of stones that extended out from it, crusted over with sea salt and streaked with rain and rust. “Did the army pull down the tower?”
    “No,” Belinor said, hushed. “On that matter all the records are clear.” They looked at him and he hunched into his robes. “The mind-mage did that, in his fury.”
    Which is when it really hit her, what Liolesa had done. Indignant, Reese exclaimed, “The Queen gave me the first mind-mage’s castle? Me? What, is she expecting me to die to keep Hirianthial sane? If she is, I’ve got news for her!”
    Irine covered her mouth with her hand but her giggles escaped her anyway. Reese glared at her and noticed again just how poorly her glares worked on her crew. “Oh, Reese,” Irine said, laughing aloud finally. “You think that woman thinks you’d roll over for anything?” She shook her head, eyes sparkling. “I bet it’s a joke.”
    “The Queen does not jest,” Belinor muttered.
    Reese glanced at the castle. “Not about something like this, no,” she said. Black towers against thick winter sky, the smell of brine, the slap and distant hiss of the sea on the shore. No, this hadn’t been meant as a joke. A correction, maybe, of something that had gone wrong. Maybe Liolesa expected them to re-write the story of this Corel, and give it a happy ending this time. And for that to happen….
    “Taylor,” she said. “Tell me there’s a way into this relic. And that you know how to cook a sheep.”
    The foxine looked up, bemused. “I don’t know about cooking sheep, Captain, but I can get us inside.”
    “That’s a start.”
     
    In the end, they didn’t go through the doors because they were so massive they had to be opened by chains that had locked up centuries past, with rust and age. So Reese entered her new home, the one she’d been given, the one that the Queen had written out a deed for, to make the transfer of ownership official… by climbing in through one of the windows.
    “This is not how I imagined this happening,” she grumbled.
    “Think of the story you’ll be able to tell your kits,” Irine said.
    Reese shot her a fulminating glare, and this one actually worked. A little anyway. “Fine,” the tigraine said. “Think of the stories you’ll be able to tell my kits.”
    They had landed in a narrow corridor, much taller than seemed necessary but close at the elbows. It reminded Reese of the corridors of the Earthrise : nice and claustrophobic. She could get used to castles, maybe, if they were built like spaceships. Trailing after Taylor, she drew in a deep breath and wondered why the air wasn’t thicker. Weren’t shut-in places supposed to be full of dead air?
    And then she found out why the corridor smelled so fresh.
    “Angels,” Irine whispered as they reached the corner, and stepped out of the rubble into a crumbled courtyard. It had been whole once, Reese thought, halting abruptly at the sight. There were filigreed gates in wilted ruin, evidence of gazebos and arbors, and the remains of low walls and benches. There had been entire buildings in it too, if the wreckage was any indication. But there was nothing there now, but a garden. A garden blooming in winter, a garden that had overgrown every boundary and flowed like the ocean to the interior walls, a garden that in places was as tall as a hedge maze and dense with black thorns as long as Reese’s palm.
    And everywhere, everywhere she could look, was a profusion of white roses, their perfume mingling with the sea breeze that swept in through the broken wall.
    “God and Lady!” Belinor whispered.
    “Do… do roses do that?” Reese asked. Before her the two Pelted women had flattened ears and low tails, and she was trying not to find the whole thing uncanny. “I thought flowers died in winter.”
    “Winter roses do not.” The acolyte stared, awed, looking toward the crumbled tower where the flowers were twining, sinking roots into the remains of the mortar.