Heaven's Needle by Liane Merciel Read Free Book Online Page A

her ankles, but she wasn’t ready to stop. Another set. Another after that, if exhaustion failed to claim her.
    She reached the full extension of her arms. Her toes would touch the ground if she let her legs straighten. She didn’t. Instead Asharre tensed her wrists and pulled herself up again, forcing herself through the burn until her chin came over the bar once more.
    Fourteen.
    As many as it took to reach oblivion.
    â€œAsharre. Asharre!”
    She ignored the call. The voice was a gnat trying to disrupt her concentration. There was nothing worth comingdown from the bar. There hadn’t been since Oralia died. Everyone at the Dome of the Sun knew that, and left her to her misery.
    Fifteen.
    â€œAsharre!”
    Everyone except this gnat, evidently.
    Asharre shook the sweat off her face and tilted her chin so that she could see the speaker. He was a young man, conventionally handsome, with strong shoulders and a square jaw beneath a fall of red-gold hair. Not Blessed; he wasn’t wearing a Sun Knight’s white tabard or an Illuminer’s yellow robes. No doubt he cut quite a swath among the ladies of Cailan, then. What was his name? Heras—no, Heradion, that was it.
    â€œWhat?” she snapped, keeping her arms flexed and herself suspended in the air. She could still work toward exhaustion, even if she had to waste time talking on the way.
    â€œThe High Solaros wants to see you.” The youth was out of breath; he must have run to get her. Of course he had. Thierras d’Amalthier, Anointed of Celestia, stood highest among the goddess’ servants in Ithelas. His voice spoke for the entire faith. Kings quailed before his displeasure; the Emperor of Ardashir sent gifts of spices and carved ivory to curry his favor. No one kept the High Solaros waiting.
    Asharre didn’t straighten her arms. “Why?”
    â€œI don’t know.” The boy was not good at hiding his anxiety. “But you must come at once.”
    She grunted and went back to ignoring him. Only after completing her count of twenty did Asharre lower herself to the ground. She stripped the weights off her ankles and stretched through a modified version of the dawn prayer to keep her limbs from tightening, then mopped her brow with a towel from a nearby bench. “Well, let’s go.”
    Heradion stared at her sleeveless, sweat-soaked tunic and loose cotton breeches. After an impressively short pause he mustered the courage to ask: “Do you need a moment to ready yourself?”
    â€œNo. He wanted me to come at once.” And Thierras d’Amalthier did not deserve that much respect from her. He was one of the reasons her sister was dead.
    It was a credit to his good sense that Heradion did not protest again. He closed his mouth and took the lead, setting a swift pace through the chalk-dusted gymnasium and the baths beyond. Bathers crowded the communal pools of hot and cold water, soaking in the lassitude that came after hard exercise. Their conversations dwindled to uncomfortable silences as the pair passed. Asharre could feel their stares, curious and pitying, on her back. As tall as Heradion was, she stood a head taller, and her arms were thicker muscled to boot. There were no women like her in the summerlands. Southerners never knew what to make of sigrir .
    She walked faster. Past the honey-veined marble arches that led to the baths, through the summer gardens that Oralia had loved and Asharre now avoided. The gardens lay dormant after a long winter; the rosebushes were gnarled brown sticks, the fountains dry. A thread of perfume from some early-blooming flower caught her, and she quickened her step to escape it.
    The Dome of the Sun rose up before them. Its namesake dome glowed with the warm light of late afternoon; its ornate rose windows sparkled like gems. To the north, the spire of Heaven’s Needle gleamed pink and gold against the clouds. The smaller buildings that serviced the