Spinspace: The Space of Spins (The Metaspace Chronicles Book 2) by Matthew Kennedy Read Free Book Online

found herself thinking about it.  “Aren't you going to kidnap me, then?”  She couldn't help quirking a smile.
    “Don't tempt me,” he laughed.  “No, I admit I was pissed myself, at first, when Xander took me, but I got over it.  We need you, but I won't do that.  I won't force you.  You can just say no and stay here.  Please don't.”
    “I don't know anyone in Denver,” she said, wavering.
    “You know me.  It won't be so bad.  And it'll be good to have someone from home up there with me.”
    She sighed.  “You're going to have to help me tell Dad.”
     
     

Chapter 13
     
     
     
    Kaleb: The Assignment
     
    “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao
    the name that can be named is not the eternal Name”
    – Tao Te Ching, the Book of the Way, by Lao Tse
     
    He feet were bare, his hands empty as he shuffled toward the Palace.  This is the end, he thought.  I've tried my best, but apparently it wasn't good enough for her.
    The guards escorting him showed no sympathy.  They couldn't afford to.  At least they weren't dragging him.
    He had heard that when you were about to die, you whole life flashed before your eyes.  That was, in fact, happening to him now...but he still wished it was a longer show.
    He went between the two stone guardians and, just before he opened the gleaming golden doors, he took one last look above them at the dragon, with its fantastically long fingers and claws, its many horns and those weird tendrils or mustaches that Eastern dragons always sported.  Its expression, seen in profile with its face turned toward his left, seemed to him a mixture of happy and sad. 
    He had always loved that dragon.  It reminded him that there was more to the world than this city.  The dragon told of lands across the Pacific, a great land with a long history of conquest and civilization.
    He knew he carried the heritage of that land in his own body.  Somewhere, across the ocean, his ancestors had lived and died.  Some of them had sailed up and down the coast of their land, fought in wars, and schemed in Imperial courts.  Others had come to this land, refugees seeking work in the American mines and on the railroads that no longer ran.
    “Stop stalling,” said one of the guards. 
    He sighed and opened the golden door.  They followed him to make sure he didn't try running away.
    Once he was inside it, the throne room was cavernous.  Hundreds  of seats sloped down to the dais.  Working his way down an aisle, he wondered what the building had been in the old days, before the Fall.  Clearly, it had been a place of gathering, and the Queen, for her own reasons, preferred it to some of her other palaces. Perhaps it was because she, like him, had ancestors in distant China.
    There were marble steps that someone had placed before the elevated dais.  For some reason, they seemed out of place, as if they were not part of the original structure.
    He raised his gaze, and there she was, reclining on her golden throne, speaking to two of her advisors.  At his approach she looked up and gestured negligently with one hand. A tube of carpet at the head of the stairs unrolled down toward him, an invitation and a reminder of her power.
    “Approach me, Dog.”
    Inwardly he grimaced, though he was careful to keep his face from changing.  When he had been selected for service, she had renamed him, as she usually did her servants.  It amused her to give him the name Kaleb, an old Hebrew name meaning dog, so that she could insult him merely by referring to it.  He knew that some of her ancestors had eaten dogs.
    “Yes, your majesty.”  Feeling numb he plodded up the stairs.  He knew perfectly well that she could kill him anywhere in the room.  One of his first tasks as a Palace servant had been to mop up the blood of some of her visitors.  She never seemed to tire of killing.
    Apparently she wanted to see him die close up. He wondered if she would tell him why before she slew him.  He