The Kingdoms of Dust

Free The Kingdoms of Dust by Amanda Downum

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Authors: Amanda Downum
winced; her fingers came away smeared red.
    “We should go,” Adam said. “You’ve been framed for murder before.”
    Her mouth twisted. “I remember.”
    She would find no sympathy among the caliph’s agents, nor a comfortable house arrest. And neither her king nor Kiril was waiting to ransom her safely home. Pressure swelled in her chest, a sharp hitch of panic.
    I can’t do this alone .
    She quashed the thought. She had no choice. Every wirewalker learned to work without a net one day. Or died broken.
     
    The sky glowed orange and violet when they returned to Mulberry Lane, and the last light slanted warm and heavy across the rooftops. The aftermath of violence left Isyllt stretched taut and brittle. They had to leave town, but whether that meant the docks or the northern road she couldn’t decide. First she had to retrieve Moth and their luggage.
    Her unease grew as they neared the ochre house. The street was much too quiet for the hour. Adam paused with her, nostrils flaring. “Trouble.”
    She stopped in her tracks at the gate, boots scuffing heavily on paving stones; a man sat on the doorstep. Lean and hawk-nosed, dressed in professionally nondescript clothing. She might have run, but other ordinary-looking men drifted from shadowed nooks along the street. The caliph’s Security Ministry. The euphemism on the streets was “the friends of the family,” or more simply the Friends.
    “Hello, Lady Iskaldur.” The man rose, the westering sun gleaming on his shaven scalp. “Or is it Kara Asli?”
    The name under which she’d entered the city and rented the house. Isyllt sighed; so much for that set of papers. “Either way,” she said, “you have me at a disadvantage.”
    The man bowed low. “My name is Ahmet Sahin. I would be delighted if you would come with me.”

CHAPTER 6
     
     
    S he ought to feel something.
    Melantha stared down at Corylus’s slack face and waited to feel regret, sadness, even anger. Nothing came. They had been…perhaps not friends, but she had enjoyed his company once. Now a fly crawled across one half-open hazel eye and she felt nothing but confusion.
    He should have known better. He should have listened to her.
    She hadn’t meant to do it—to stop him from killing Iskaldur, yes, but not like that. Then the necromancer’s companion moved from sun to shadow and she’d seen the copper-green flash of his eyes, and the sense of familiarity that had nagged her all day snapped into place.
    Adam.
    It shouldn’t have mattered. She’d been another person when she knew him, and that woman was dead. He would bear no love for her memory. But when Corylus attacked him, she’d moved like a person possessed.
    The thought chilled her. She was warded against spirits and specters, but what defenses did she have against the ghosts of people she had been?
    She couldn’t leave Corylus here, no matter what she did or didn’t feel. The dust of Iskaldur’s footsteps had barely settled when she came down from the roofs, but she didn’t have long. Already a brindled dog circled at the mouth of the alley, licking its muzzle hopefully.
    “Sorry,” she muttered, bending down to grab Corylus’s ankles. She wasn’t sure if she meant it for the dog or for him. The smell of cold blood and waste rose up as she tugged him, and her nose wrinkled. His left hand bounced in the dirt, claw-curled. Her breath came hard through clenched teeth by the time she dragged the corpse into the deeper shadows at the back of the alley. Mages and scholars speculated on the weight of the soul, but as far as she could tell the lack thereof had never made a body lighter. Especially when she was the one disposing of it.
    Melantha dropped Corylus and laid a hand against the warm bricks, catching her breath and gathering her magic. This would be easier at night, or at the height of the noon—the brighter the light, the darker the shadow—but the fading afternoon would suffice.
    Many mages learned simple skiamancy or

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