Naamah's Curse Read Free

them, tilting the cup this way and that. She set it aside and poured a measure of rice-wine for both of us, motioning for me to drink.
    “So?” I obeyed. “What did you mean by the twice-born one, Auntie?”
    “Born once into life, twice out of death, or so they are saying.” Her brow furrowed. She drank her own rice-wine, then picked up the teacup again and bent her head over it, a straight white line delineating the part in her hair. “Hints of your fate are written here. Do you see? Here and here?”
    I peered at the tea leaves. Despite Snow Tiger’s best efforts, I was fairly illiterate when it came to reading Ch’in characters. During that last week I had lingered in Shuntian, she had teased me about it, wielding her long, braided hair like a ticklish brush and drawing characters on my bare skin.
    Surely you recognize
that
one, Moirin
.
    The memory made me smile. I saw the shape of that character echoed in the pattern of the tea leaves. “Desire?”
    “Desire, yes.” Auntie Li nodded. Her forefinger moved, pointing. “But you see here, it lies in conflict with judgment. Does that mean anything to you?”
    I thought about it before shaking my head. “No. I don’t know. Whose judgment, Auntie? Mine?”
    She shrugged. “I can only tell you what the leaves say. I cannot tell you what it means. Desire in conflict with judgment lies ahead of you.”
    “To be sure, it lies behind me.” Raphael de Mereliot’s face surfaced in my thoughts, his grey eyes stormy with anger. Even though there were untold oceans between us, it made me shiver. I had been very young and very foolish. I’d let Raphael use me to summon fallen spirits. If it hadn’t been for Bao and Master Lo, a terrible force would have been loosed into the world. “But that is not a mistake I will make again.”
    Auntie Li smiled wryly, refilling our cups with rice-wine. “There are no end of mistakes to be made, dear.”
    “Am I making one now?” I asked her.
    Her face softened. “Ah, child! I cannot tell you that, either. Do you love the boy? Is that why you seek him?”
    A hundred memories of Bao cascaded through my mind: Bao staring insolently at me as I sought to master the Five Styles of Breathing, Bao shouting at me as he drove the demon spirit back, Bao helping Master Lo tenderly to his feet, Bao sporting his battle-grin as he sparred with Snow Tiger.
    It should have been simple, only it wasn’t.
    I
did
love him. I remembered the moment I had realized it. When I had first fled Shuntian with the dragon-possessed princess and a handful of loyal ruffians, Bao and Master Lo had gone ahead to lay a false trail. They had been late in returning, and I’d begun to fear they weren’t coming.
    I would not let that happen, Moirin
.
    Those were the words Bao had spoken when they did arrive and I confessed my fear to him, the closest he’d ever come to a declaration of love. My heart had leapt.
    And yet…
    It wasn’t why I was following him. I was following him because he had half of my
diadh-anam
and I couldn’t do otherwise.
    “I don’t know, Auntie,” I said truthfully at last. “It’s a question I’m hoping to answer, and I cannot do it alone.”
    “Poor child.” Auntie Li patted my hand. The look of kindness in her shrewd eyes nearly undid me. “Don’t pay too much heed to an old lady’s rambling. If the boy’s got a lick of sense, he won’t run far.”
    I smiled despite the sting of tears. “I’m not sure he does.”
    She sipped her rice-wine. “That probably makes two of you.”
    I laughed. “You’re probably right.”

THREE
     

     
    S o began the pattern of my days.
    For the most part, it was a lonely time. I thought I was accustomed to solitude. I’d grown up in the Alban wilderness with only my mother’s companionship. But she had been a constant in my life; and later, there had been Cillian, my lost first love, killed in a foolish cattle-raid.
    Here, I had no one.
    Oh, there were folk I met along the way, though