Free Blightborn by Chuck Wendig Page A

teeth, and she suddenly feels very awkward trying to pull it off.
    “Let me,” Karya says, reaching in with too-long, bloodred fingernails to pluck it free from Gwennie’s teeth. Like a bird picking seed. Then her hand falls to Gwennie’s knee again and gives it a squeeze, the fingers doing a drunken waltz up toward her thigh—
    Gwennie coughs, clears her throat, and stands up suddenly.
    “I need some air,” she says, and quickly shoulders her way through the small balcony crowd toward the banister.
    Wind sweeps over her.
    She feels loose, unmoored, as if she might fly away at any moment. A fluffy seed from a ruptured pod cast skyward.
    Out beyond the balcony is the Heartland. A black blanket with a few pinpricks of light—towns maybe, or processing plants. Motorvators performing their tireless chores through the corn. The land below is black. The sky above is lit by a panoply of stars.
    Someone comes up behind her. A hand at the small of her back. A jab of fear sticks her along with, she has to admit, a weird worm-turn of excitement in the deep of her belly as she thinks it might be Balastair—
    But it’s the peregrine who speaks.
    “Karya’s a flighty one,” Percy says. “Is she bothering you?”
    “No. Ah. It’s—No, she’s fine.”
    “You Heartlanders are modest people. Simple folk.”
    She’s not sure if he’s being plainspoken or if he’s insulting her, but she nods anyway. “That sounds about right.”
    “Are you enjoying your time here?”
    “It’s fine,” she says, hearing the strain in her own voice.
    His hand remains at the small of her back. She can feel the cold of his palm through the dress.
    “You’re under Balastair Harrington’s care.”
    “I am.”
    “A smart man. How goes the Pegasus Project?”
    I’m cleaning up lots of Pegasus shit, if that’s what you want to know . “Great. I guess. I wouldn’t know; I’m just simple folk.”
    “You seem a tad hostile.”
    “I’m not good at small talk.”
    “Of course. Heartlanders like to be direct.”
    “We’re not all one person who likes one thing,” she snaps.
    “Yet I’ll do you the favor of assuming you like things to be direct. As a further favor, I’ll be clear: I know that you know her.”
    Her . “Merelda.”
    “La Mer, if you please. It means ‘the sea.’ ”
    “Yes, she said that. And I do know her.”
    His hand leaves her back, and he comes up next to her, and she realizes then how tall he really is—his elbow almost touches her shoulder. He leans forward and begins talking, never once looking at her, always keeping his gaze fixed on the darkness of the Heartland below.
    “Correction: you don’t know her,” he says. “You think you do, but you don’t. She isn’t a Heartlander. She’s from another flotilla. A flotilla far away, toward the coast.” The coast? she thinks. “Stay away from her, and all will be well. In fact, if you—”
    Gwennie narrows her eyes. “You’re the law, right? Might complicate your job if I told them who she really was. Might mess with this nice thing you got going.”
    “See, I was about to offer you a taste of honey, and you have to go and pour vinegar all over it.” He sighs. “Let me revise my sentiment. You tell them what you know, they’ll give me a slap on the wrist. I’m too entrenched in my work. The praetor likes what I do and will forgive my dalliance as just that: the sins of the flesh taken hold. But what will happen then is they’ll take your friend Merelda, and they’ll march her to the end of a gangplank, and they’ll push her off it. Maybe with a noose around her neck so she dangles, or maybe just so she plummets all the way down to the dry and dusty fundament you call the Heartland.”
    “You sonofab—”
    “—I’m not finished. What will come next is, I will be very distraught and blinded by anger, and I will go and find your mother, your father, and your little brother. I’ll hurt them very badly. I’ll hurt them personally if I