Michelle Sagara by Cast in Sorrow Read Free Book Online Page A

she been at home, she probably wouldn’t have made it out of her clothing first. Severn joined her and slid an arm around her shoulder. He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to speak. She accepted what he offered, leaning against his shoulder; letting him carry some part of her weight.
    From there, she could watch.
    She could watch as the bed of this modest stream began to widen, to stretch away from the Barrani on all sides. The stream itself could be crossed with a simple leap—or a running leap, in Kaylin’s case; the river it had become was far too wide.
    While thinking that, she saw the Lord of the West March take a step forward, into the moving current.
    His foot never hit water. It hit air instead, and that air obligingly became a bridge. It didn’t rise out of the water. That would have been too simple. No, it appeared in broad strokes, as if painted in place by an insanely fast, insanely good artist. It was brighter than the rest of the landscape; brighter than the moonlight should have made it, and it appeared, to her eye, to be made of glass.
    Given that most of the Barrani were wearing armor, this was not comforting.
    The Lord of the West March then turned to Teela. “An’Teela.” He did not offer her an arm; she couldn’t take it and continue to bear her burden. But she inclined her chin and preceded him. If material composition of the bridge concerned her, it didn’t show. She climbed what appeared to be slope without stairs until she stood at the midpoint of the bridge; there she paused to look out at the currents of the river.
    Kaylin, following, stopped beside her. “Teela?”
    The Barrani Hawk looked down her perfect nose. “Home,” she said, wearily. She turned then, and walked down the incline that led, at last, to the city at the heart of the West March.
    * * *
    The Barrani did not appear to favor stone—at least not underfoot. Elantra had roads. Even in the fiefs, where the roads were broken and undermined by weeds and water runoff.
    But the Barrani of the West March had lawns instead of roads. Grass gave way to stairs, many of which went down, rather than up; it gave way to doors and to trees. There were flowers, as well, but the flowers didn’t seem to grow in specific, boxed beds; they seemed artless and wild—but for all that, they didn’t get in the way of the High Court, or anyone else who walked the green.
    The trees that had been the only constant during the overland trek were everywhere, but they grew in more ordered rows; they were at least as tall as the trees on the other side of the bridge. But there were no fallen branches, no hollow, standing trunks; here, the trees were like lampposts, without the lights.
    In fact, the trees seemed to mark what passed for road here; they formed explicit boundaries in rows, opening up or ending, as if they were the walls of a maze. Mazes were the province of the monied. Warrens—like mazes made of buildings—were the province of the wretched, but Kaylin had no sense that she’d find slums in the West March.
    The Lord of the West March glanced at her, the corners of his eyes and lips crinkling. She’d amused him again.
    “It is seldom indeed that I see my own home from the vantage of a visitor entirely new to it. It is...engaging. We will follow this road, as you call it, and turn to the right; the trees—the type of trees—are indicators.”
    “Of what?”
    “Ah, forgive me. They would, in your parlance, be street names, I believe.”
    It wasn’t a short walk. Kaylin, who had always known that Teela was physically strong, was more than impressed when they at last reached the home of the Lord of the West March. If stone wasn’t favored as a general building material, it wasn’t absent here. The building reminded Kaylin very much of the High Halls in Elantra—at least from the outside. The stairs that fronted it were flat and wide, the columns that held the roof almost the height of the trees that stood to the right and left of the