Free The Miscreant (An Assassin's Blade Book 2) by Justin DePaoli Page B

dreamless sleep.
    Whether we’d finally caught up to the sun, or it had caught us, I couldn’t say, but after several hours, the pinkness of a ripe grapefruit crested the horizon. Lysa eventually woke, lifting her chin from the indentation it’d made between my shoulders. Tylik hadn’t slept at all. Each time I looked at him, a pair of big white ovals stared back at me.
    Sometime before noon, the endless sea finally ended.
    “There’s Lith,” Lysa said, pointing at the haze of clumped structures far in the distance.
    Lith sat inside the bosom of crags, its rear pointed toward a shoreline of jutting gray rock that stabbed into unfurling waves. Some people have a romantic notion of the ocean, that it’s a blue wonderland edged with soft golden sand where happy thoughts proliferate. In some places, that’s true. But not here. Here, if you went for a brisk walk at the water’s edge, you’d sooner slip and impale yourself on an earthen spike, which is where unhappy thoughts proliferate.
    Once you got past the shoreline, though, the harsh landscape unraveled into fields of grass and colorful meadows. Well, at least when I was here last, that’s how it was. Now the meadows had dried up, the flowers a crisp brown.
    With a flick of my mind, the phoenix descended. “You see Patrick or Dercy’s men down there?” I asked Lysa, assuming they’d taken the city months ago.
    “No. It looks empty—Astul! Astul, look out!”
    I saw it coming from the corner of my eye. A blur. Moving fast, gaining speed. Rising from behind Lith.
    At the precise moment my mind registered the blur as a spear — an ungodly long, thick spear — it slammed into us.
    The phoenix cawed. A horrifying screech drenched in pain and terror. Like a capsizing boat, the bird wavered. Fire licked the sunburst sky as it rolled on its side.
    “I’m falling!” Lysa cried.
    “Hold on to me,” I hollered, looping my arms around the bird’s neck for better leverage.
    Straighten , I thought. Land. Go down. Land. Fucking land!
    The phoenix answered with a meager squawk. A glance to my right revealed a wooden shaft protruding from its belly.
    Singed grass vaulted toward me. The earth tilted sickeningly, as if I’d gotten pissed on some good wine.
    Another squawk, and the phoenix began righting itself, struggling against the air like an invisible hand was pushing it back.
    It arced its back and aimed its wings toward the sea. The wind rippled its burning plumage, a loud burble that filled my skull. With a twist of its head, the bird blinked its yellow eyes at me and cawed.
    My body went cold, and my skin shivered. “It’s saving us.” Astonishment muffled my voice.
    With the phoenix’s wings angled to provide a buffer against the speedy descent, the ground now crawled toward us instead of lunging. But when we hit it, crawl would have been one of the last words I’d have used to describe the landing.
    The malleable body of the phoenix crunched through the dry meadow, bouncing with a thud off the stiff dirt. The impact lurched me head-over-shoulders, possibly more than once.
    Lying flat on my back, I gasped for breath. It hurt, felt like something in my chest had caved in. Slowly, air seeped back into my lungs, and the feeling I might be dying subsided… slightly.
    Feeling that this wasn’t the proper time to take stock of my injuries, I jumped to my feet and surveyed the wreckage. The phoenix lay limp about fifteen feet away, its flames extinguished.
    Something roused in the bent stalks of grass. A headful of strawberry-blond hair.
    “Lysa!” I yelled, running to her. “Are you all right?”
    “Ow,” she said as I helped her to her feet. She bent over her knees and groaned. “What was that?”
    “A spear.”
    “I know that. I mean — wait, where’s Tylik?”
    With squinty eyes, I scoured the brush. Nothing moved.
    “Tylik!” I called.
    No answer.
    “Astul!” Lysa cried. “Over here, over here. He’s under the phoenix.”
    I took off toward