The Girl Who Fell From The Sky - Rebecca Royce Page 0,19

Torrin’s intended. She has never been and never will be that. The same way that Nox will never be Dreama’s. In that case, neither one of them want a relationship, and in this case, Torrin has flat out rejected the idea every time it is brought up. Seems he preferred a life of solitude and a childless, loveless existence to dealing with her.”

She stomped her foot once, then twice. “How dare you speak to me like that? My father is Baron the Great. He is—”

“Overrated.” Astor yawned. “Out with you, girl. Baron the so-called Great would be horrified that you came in here, yelled at Her Highness, and spoke to Torrin’s brother like this. If I tell him, I imagine you’ll be sent to clean out the stables for a week, and boy, after the warring party comes back, will that place stink to high heaven.” He nodded toward the door. “Out.”

She paled as he spoke before turning to flee from the room.

My chest tightened, and I ignored the pain. I had no medicine to take here, nothing that could help, and Astor was the closest thing they had to a doctor. For the first time in my life, if I were to have an attack, I would die. There was nothing anyone would be able to do.

I turned my attention to Astor. “Thank you. I think. I’m not sure what would have happened if you hadn’t shown up.”

He tilted his head. “That depends. How well do you fight?”

“Never.”

“Ah, then that might have gone badly for you.” He held out his hand. “You’re pale. Mattis is keeping you in this place too long. Come. I have something to show you.”

He linked our hands together, and I let him lead me out the backdoor of the kitchen to the street. I hadn’t been out here since I’d come to the pub. Cooler weather had swept in, blowing some of the dust from the air.

“Don’t be worried,” he said. “Although I choose to play a different role than a soldier, I assure you that should I be called upon to do it, I could defend us quite well.”

“I hadn’t thought about that at all. But…great.”

His smile answered my declaration. Did Astor worry that I thought it was a problem he wasn’t battling? I needed to continue learning how they did things here. They fought. They worried. They farmed. They spied. They sat on bones and hung heads from the ceiling. They drank. A lot.

We reached Torrin’s quarters, and Astor took me around past the throne of bones to a back room. It had more books piled on the side. “My brother discovered you can read the old language and then didn’t have you do it.” He picked up a book and handed it to me. “Would you? Read it? And then maybe some time teach me to do so? I know numbers, yes. And I can make electronics bend to my will. I experiment on nature. But none of us can read. A few generations ago, the decision was made to stop doing so. I would like to know how, though. It eats at me.”

I took the book he handed to me and looked at the title. Winter Plants. Actually, this one would be perfect for Astor.

“Yes, I can do that. I teach people to read. It’s one of the few things in my life I do really well.” I smiled at the book. “This one is about plants.”

His eyes lit up. “You do many things really well. I can’t imagine anyone adjusting as you have. And really? Plants?”

The old book’s spine creaked when I opened it, and the pages were so brittle, I worried they’d come apart in my hands. This wasn’t an expensive bound book, just a run-of-the-mill library antiquity. We’d had dozens like this, restored of course, in the archives of the school where I’d taught. Our everyday, working manuscripts had been all digital, but I had always loved the feel of a book in my hands, the smell of old paper and binding glue.

My heart had been stuttering on and off ever since Sorcha had come into the pub, but it settled now. On a planet full of strange things, here finally was something familiar and comfortable.

“This book is old, but the language is modern enough, post-universal lexicon at least. The whole writing system is phonetic.” I pointed to the first character in the title. “The common tongue we all use now is a mish-mash of a bunch