Free The Shattered City by Tansy Rayner Roberts

been binding my breasts since they started to curve, and I’d only had a couple of bleeding times. They shouldn’t know so much. He leaned over me, the Silver Captain, blocking my view of the shiny boy. ‘Would you like to learn how to use a sword, demoiselle?’ he asked me.
    Oh. Well. If he was going to put it that way …
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    It was the Parilia, festival of shepherds, and the entire Basilica smelled of damp fleece and the entrails of sheep. Few were interested in a fortune-teller who used cards and crystals, not when there were bloodier auguries to be drawn. Heliora abandoned her Zafiran wig and costumes in her tent to go for a walk. Fresh air, and the summer sun. Nothing like the simple pleasures in life to remind you that you were going to die soon.
    After some time wandering around, Hel ended up near the Lake of Follies. A grand Palazzo had once been built on this spot in honour of the first Duc d’Aufleur:an edifice so ornate and expensive that it all but financially crippled the city at a time when they were struggling to convince the population it was safe to live above ground. Then the skywar came back, and the Palazzo was crushed by boulders of ice and fire. The Duc’s son bowed to the popular belief that it was his father’s hubris that had brought the disaster upon them, and he hauled down the wreckage in favour of a decorative lake. It was said half the riches of that fallen Palazzo were still buried in the lake bed, and many a drunkard had drowned trying to prove that myth.
    Of course, those of the daylight also thought that the skywar itself was a myth, or at least that it was a chapter of history that had been closed long ago. They all knew the stories, but they believed that the war had ended as mysteriously as it had begun.
    Only the Creature Court knew the truth. The Kings, the Lords and their courtesi, the sentinels … and the Seer.
    Not a day passed when Heliora did not wish she was as ignorant and blind as the rest of them. Imagine how blissful it must be to see only the everyday ugliness of the world. To not fear a burning, blazing, freezing, twisted death.
    There were other stories about the lake. Babies would be named here in simple family ceremonies, and old men came to swear their sins away. The water was supposed to have cleansing properties, and half the city drank nips of it as a tonic to ward off the Silent Sleep. A useless tradition, if ever there was one. The Sleep was only a mystery to those of the daylight. If only they knew how miraculous it was how many of themactually survived each nox that the city was knocked down around them, only to rebuild itself at dawn.
    It made Heliora shiver, to be this close to the lake. She had seen many futures in which her death was within sight of this place.
    A skinny fellow in spectacles sat on one of the wooden piers, his trews rolled up and bare feet dangling in the water. Heliora considered walking past, pretending she hadn’t seen him, but a familiar voice called her ‘coward’ in her own head. So she walked out on to the pier, lowering herself on to the planking to sit beside him. He looked quite normal without his gaudy clothes and the theatrical cosmetick he often sported.
    â€˜Burdens weighing on your soul, Poet?’ she asked him. ‘Or is it something more fleshly that you need cleansed?’
    â€˜Sharp as ever, Heliora my dove,’ Poet drawled, splashing her with his feet. ‘You know me — always looking for somewhere innovative to hide the bodies.’
    As if she could ever get a straight answer out of him. No, it always had to be riddles. ‘Is the noxcrawl still bothering you?’ she asked, shifting imperceptibly away from him so that her hip did not brush his.
    Poet looked at her with a flicker of amusement. He was not fooled. ‘Noxcrawl,’ he repeated, as if he’d never heard of it. ‘You have been paying attention, haven’t you?’
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