Rags & Bones: New Twists on Timeless Tales by Melissa Marr and Tim Pratt Read Free Book Online Page B

was a curious pleasure to be derived when she was neither truly there nor entirely not. I believe she also found the time well spent, Sir Knight, so you can wipe that small smirk from your face. I have studied the works of the great lover Hiristo of Glaucus, and practiced much therein, up to page one hundredand seventy-seven, and there is a young widow who resides near me who has agreed that we shall together essay the matter of pages one hundred and seventy-eight to eighty-four—
    Yes! I am getting on with it. The blinds were drawn up, the Goddess sat opposite, the sun shone in, and we had got another dozen leagues closer to Durlal. I made a cup of tea, the black leaf from the Kaz coast, not thegreen from Jinqu, and made further inquiries of Yuddra, if indeed she was that sister.
    “So you wish to no longer be a goddess, but to become permanently mortal?”
    “I do,” said Yuddra, eyeing my steaming cup of tea with a wolfish, hungry look. “I have not, for example, ever tasted that drink you have. There are so many tastes, so many experiences that are beyond the purely energistic to savor,as I would do!”
    “But tell me, how is it that you will become mortal?” I asked. “Surely not by the imbibing of blood, for if two clavelins amounts to but an hour, then the supply required to maintain corporeality would be … monstrous, and not likely to be freely given.”
    She laughed and tossed her head back.
    “Pikgnil has found a way, or so she said in her last missive. I am to meet her at Halleck’sCross, and then we are to make our way to … but perhaps I should not tell you, for despite our embraces, I fear you are not entirely sympathetic to my cause.”
    There she glanced at the ring I wear, which, as you see, shows the sign of the compass, the mark of my order. I was a little surprised that she should be so worldly as to recognize the sign, and beyond that, have some understanding of thestrictures, yet only a little, else she would have understood that I would have no wish to stand in the way of a god who desired mortality, believing as I do that we mortals must be paramount over gods, that it is our works that will endure, when the last godlet is thrust back to whence it came. I believe this is a more extreme view than you share yourselves, for I understand you have fooled yourselveswith definitions, gods deemed beneficial or trivial, and gods malevolent and harmful, to be destroyed or banished. We consider them all a pest, to be gotten rid of at any opportunity. Though use may be made of them first, of course.
    “It is true I do not care for gods,” I told her. “But as you wishto become mortal, I shall consider you a mortal and not my enemy. Provided your aim does not requirethe desanguination of many people by trickery, for example.”
    “No, it does not involve blood,” said Yuddra. She shifted near the window, and looked out. “I think we near Halleck’s Cross and here I must leave you. Please, do not speak of our tryst, indeed even of our meeting, for we must remain free of the temple, and they have many spies and paid informants.”
    “I will not speak of it, nor writeof it,” I said. “I hope that one day we might meet again, when you are but a mortal woman and not a fleeing goddess. Should you wish to, my house in Durlal is easily found, it has a roof of yellow tiles, the only such in the street of the Waterbear.”
    There is little more to tell of that first encounter. As we drew up at Halleck’s Cross, she turned once more into that cold jade figurine and, ather instruction, I carried her from the platform and across the street, depositing her in the branches of the ancient harkamon tree that marks some ancient battle. I turned back after I crossed the street, and saw a cloaked and hooded figure swoop upon the tree, take up the figurine, and be gone, a person that though shrouded, I reckoned to be the sister goddess.
    And that, I presumed, was that.A curious encounter, a brief and no less