The Bone Palace by Amanda Downum Read Free Book Online Page B

Savedra glimpsed the peach-pale curve of her back as Ashlin dropped her shirt. “I want to fight the Ordozh emperor,” she called over her shoulder. “Lacking that, I want to see a vampire. Your demons sound much more interesting than ours back home.”
    Nikos rolled his eyes. “Your desire is my duty, Your Radiance.” Splashing drowned Ashlin’s retort. She swore in Celanoran, anyway.
    One of their rare moments of easygoing humor. Savedra’s throat closed. Neither of them tried to shut her out, but they didn’t need to. Fate had done that well enough.
    She stood, shaking her skirts with a practiced fillip, and poured the rest of her cooling coffee back into the pot.
    “Where are you going?” Nikos asked.
    She leaned in to kiss his cheek, sliding deftly away when he tried to pull her close. “To visit my mother.”
    Savedra and Nikos’ relationship might not be the most impolitic the Azure Palace had ever seen, but she was hardpressed to think of many others. Their houses had been bitter rivals for decades, ever since Thanos Alexios led the rebellion that overthrew the last of the Severoi kings. Not that Ioris Severos had been what anyone would call a good ruler, but that hardly mattered to the family. The last thing the Alexioi and their allies wanted was a Severos worming her way near the throne, especially the daughter of Nadesda, an archa known for her ruthlessness and wide-flung web of influence. Since Savedra moved into the palace she had narrowly avoided three poisoning attempts. Had she been able to bear Nikos any bastards she would be dead by now, no matter how careful she was or how powerful her mother.
    Instead she was hijra; the third sex, in old Sindhaïn—men born in women’s bodies, women born as men, and the androgynes who were neither or both. The hijra veiled themselves with ritual and mysticism, keeping mostly to their temple in the Garden. The curious paid to see the faces of their priestesses, and paid more for their prophecies and their bodies. So Savedra’s rivals called her freak and whore—never mind that she had never taken the mark of the order—and made cruel jokes where Nikos couldn’t hear, but she would never be queen or mother to a usurper, and so wasn’t a permanent threat.
    Savedra tried to let the hiss and splash of rain and wet streets drown her thoughts as the carriage bore her to the Octagon Court, but it was no use. Murder and sleeplessness left her maudlin, and the weather didn’t help. The grey veil, autumn was called, for the storms that swept down from the mountains; the same name was given to the listlessness and depression that took some people when the light and warmth vanished.
    She had the use of Nikos’ coach, but it was simplerand quieter to pass the gate and hire one of the dozen that always waited to carry visitors and courtiers to and fro. The ride was short—less than half an hour before the horses stopped under the covered walk of Phoenix House and the driver scrambled to help her out. His quick appreciative glance might well have been as much for her cloak as for her face, but he didn’t hesitate over the polite
milady
. Her bolstered pride earned him a gracious tip, and she nearly laughed at herself.
    Eight houses brooded at one another from eight sides of the court, and at the tall bronze statue of Embria Selaphaïs that stood in the center. Severos, Alexios, Konstantin, Aravind, Jsutien, Hadrian, Petreus, and Ctesiphon. Eight houses, eight families, constantly squabbling and backstabbing over land and position and trade, a web of enmities and alliances that shifted every year with deaths and births and marriages. The rain turned all the houses into glowering grey hulks, but windows in only six glowed against the gloom. The Petreoi had retired to their estates in Nemea last month to elect a new archon, and the Ctesiphon house had stood empty since the family’s head had plotted against King Nikolaos twenty-eight years ago—the attempt had cost