Bone Palace, The - Amanda Downum Page 0,156
rose up as the guards’ boots rang on stone, taunts and pleas for attention, protestations of innocence. After the silence of his cell, the noise drove spikes into his skull. The smell of his captors’ sweat and leather and garlic-and-paprika-steeped skin dizzied him after the unchanging stench he’d grown accustomed to.
The guards didn’t speak. A small mercy. It took effort enough making his legs work. No sun in these halls, no wind or seasons or any hint of time, but Adam knew he’d never been confined so long before. To die like this would be a miserable joke—the gods’ favorite kind.
Down the hall and up a flight of stairs. The guards carried him by the top of the steps, bruising his arms and stubbing his toes as they dragged him. The slighter one cursed and Adam nearly laughed—all the weight must have wasted off his bones by now.
He dreaded more stairs, but instead they unlocked a door—bronze-bound wood instead of rusting iron—and shoved him inside. He fell with a rattle of chains, scraping hands and knees on the cold stone floor.
The guards spoke and a woman answered—the timbre of her voice sent prickles of familiarity across his nape. He couldn’t see her face, though there was nothing in the room to cast the shadow that hid her. “Leave us,” she said, her Skarrish heavily accented.
“Are you certain, effendi? He is dangerous—” Adam could smell the man’s nerves. They couldn’t be afraid of him, not like this.
“Does he look like a threat now?”
Adam couldn’t decide whether to laugh or snarl at the dryness in her voice, the casual dismissal.
“As you wish.” The door slammed shut as the guards retreated.
He knelt, head down, letting his eyes adjust to the candlelight. The sight of his hands sickened him: bone-gaunt talons, ragged and embedded with grime. Soft where they had been hard with sword calluses. The manacles hung loose around the knobs of his wrists. Matted cords of hair fell in his face; he was crawling with lice, and for once glad he couldn’t grow a beard.
“I know I’m pretty,” he said when the silence stretched, “but did you have me brought up here just to stare?” His voice cracked with disuse and he spat thick phlegm.
She laughed and stepped closer. Her scent cut through his own stench: clean skin, cool and bittersweet, threaded through with poppy oil and cloying myrrh. Recognition came with it, quickening his pulse.
“Isyllt?”
“Saints and shadows,” she said, in Selafaïn this time. “You look like you crawled through all nine hells, and a sewer besides.”
“Or a war and an Iskari prison. What are you doing here?”
“Rescuing you.”
The light was unkind when she cast aside her shadow—she’d lost weight where she had none to spare, and bruises darkened her cool grey eyes. With her white skin she looked like the bardi beyaz—the white jackal women who prowled cemeteries and sang for those about to die. Small wonder the guards feared her.
He hadn’t seen Isyllt Iskaldur in years—in all his dreams of rescue, freedom had never worn her face. But now she knelt before him and unlocked his shackles.
“I’m not dead, am I?” He could imagine her gaunt, aquiline features on the Lady of Ravens all too easily.
She laughed, but her smile twisted sideways and fell away. “Not yet. We’ll see how long you survive my company.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Not here,” she said, helping him stand. The room blurred and spun as he rose. Isyllt reached to steady him and he flinched away from her hand, from the shock of human contact. He shrugged apologetically, leaning against the wall.
She smiled wry understanding. “Come on. Bath first, then news.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I could never have finished this book without the help and support of so many people. These include but aren’t limited to: Elizabeth Bear, Jodi Meadows, Jaime Lee Moyer, Leah Bobet, Celia Marsh, Liz Bourke, and everyone in the drowwzoo chat, for endless brainstorming and commiserations; the Partners in Climb, for moral support and getting me out of the house on a regular basis, and for never dropping me on my head; all my blog readers who listen to me bitch and look interested and sympathetic; my fabulous agent Jenn Jackson and equally fabulous editor DongWon Song, and everyone at Orbit.
Thank you!
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Adrastos Agyros - the king’s seneschal
Anika Sirota - an ingénue
Aphra - an elder vampire, Spider’s maker
Ashlin Idaran Alexios - crown princess of Selafai, wife of Nikos Alexios
Azarné Vaykush - a vampire
Cahal - a lieutenant in Ashlin’s retinue
Ciaran - a musician and friend of Isyllt
Dahlia - an urchin
Ferenz Darvulesti - a Sarken margrave, Phaedra’s husband
Forsythia - a prostitute
Ginevra Jsutien - a courtier, heir of House Jsutien
Hekatarin Denaris - captain of the prince’s guard
Iancu Sala - steward of House Severos
Isyllt Iskaldur - necromancer and Crown Investigator
Kebechet - a perfumist, proprietor of the Black Phoenix
Khelséa Shar - police inspector
Kirilos Orfion - sorcerer and spymaster, Isyllt’s mentor
Mathiros Alexios - king of Selafai, Nikos’s father
Mekaran Narkissos - owner of the Briar Patch
Mikhael Kurgoth - captain of the king’s guard
Nadesda Severos - archa of House Severos, Savedra’s mother
Nikos Alexios - crown prince of Selafai
Phaedra Severos Darvulia - a sorceress
Savedra Severos - Nikos’s mistress
Sevastian Severos - Savedra’s father, Nadesda’s husband
Spider - a vampire and rabble- rouser
Tenebris - an elder vampire
Thea Jsutien - archa of House Jsutien, Ginevra’s aunt
Varis Severos - sorcerer and member of the Arcanost, Savedra’s uncle
Whisper - a vampire, Forsythia’s lover
Various other citizens, courtiers, vampires, and redshirts
Table of Contents
FRONT COVER IMAGE
WELCOME
DEDICATION
EXTRAS
MEET THE AUTHOR
A PREVIEW OF THE KINGDOMS OF DUST
PART I: Crepuscule
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
PART II: Nocturne
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
PART III: Aubade
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
APPENDIX I
APPENDIX II
BY AMANDA DOWNUM
COPYRIGHT
BY AMANDA DOWNUM
The Necromancer Chronicles
The Drowning City
The Bone Palace
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 Amanda Downum
Excerpt from The Kingdoms of Dust copyright © 2010 by Amanda Downum
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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First eBook Edition: December 2010
ISBN: 978-0-316-08400-0