The Great Rift by Edward W. Robertson Read Free Book Online Page A

warrior-band in the middle of town strike you as unusually aggressive?"
    "The kind of thing you'd do when you wanted to provoke answers from someone who doesn't want to give them?"
    "Exactly."
    "Maybe." Blays skipped another stone. "Can you really see them turning on each other?"
    "I don't know. The norren aren't exactly a unified people."
    "But they've hardly been clawing at each other's throats the last few years."
    Dante glanced upstream, where Mourn was kneeling, butt on his heels, and staring out over the water. "Still, if waiting around is their only goal, there is plenty of non-town space for them to occupy instead."
    "So let's go feel the mayor out for ourselves."
    "What about our shadow?"
    Blays knew better than to glance at Mourn. "Point your finger at him and make him fall down."
    "That isn't how it works."
    "Yes it is."
    "All right, that's basically how it works." It was, in the scheme of things, a simple task, with no need for theatrics or even any blood to feed the nether. Dante squinted at the mossy rocks, the waves slurping through them. The nether pooled in his hand like the shadow of quicksilver. For Blays' benefit, he pointed at Mourn as one would point out a thief. The kneeling norren leaned forward like a toppling tree, spilling facefirst into the grass. "Wait. Do you even know where the mayor's house is?"
    "Of course. When somebody tells me I can't come with them, the first thing I do is watch where they go."
    They headed back for the plaza. Light and laughter poured from the windows of the public houses; a longboat had pulled in during their walk along the shore, its crew beelining for the likeliest sources of liquor. It provided more than enough cover for any noise Dante made skirting the square. Was he being paranoid? Orlen and Vee wouldn't let them up to see the mayor themselves. They'd assigned Mourn to follow Dante and Blays wherever they went, presumably as much to keep tabs on them as to ensure their own safety, but why let the pair of humans come along at all if the norren chiefs didn't consider their presence useful? As usual when dealing with the norren approach to outsiders, Dante felt like he'd nodded off in the middle of a carriage ride and been dropped off in strange streets with no idea which way was north.
    He started up the switchback at a swift but unremarkable pace. Cave-houses sat in the rocky face of the hill, doors cut to fit the irregular contours of the caves' natural mouths. Torch sconces projected from each side of the doors, some lit, illuminating the path ahead and the family names painted in gorgeous runes above the entries. They climbed until Dante was panting and Cling lay below them in the haze of the river-mist. Torches flickered around the salmon-mosaic in the central plaza.
    "Just ahead." Blays nodded to a cave-door little different from the dozens below it or the handful above. It wasn't that late, perhaps an hour past supper-time, but Dante was suddenly aware of the questionable etiquette of barging in on a city official under dark of night. Blays promptly resolved this dilemma by planting himself in front of the cherrywood door and knocking like the hand of Death himself.
    Faced with the sudden prospect of confronting the mayor, Dante wished he could run right back down the hill instead. Positions of leadership in the norren territories were filled through a process that baffled human commoners and horrified the nobles. In contrast to the process of power-accumulation typical to human government—birthright, nepotism, wealth, and well-paid armed killers—norren men and women were promoted to chieftancies, mayordoms, and regional stewardships based solely on the public perception of and appreciation for their opinions. Not their political opinions, either. Nobody cared what a man had to say about taxes or trade or the distribution of the commons. Or anyway, if they did care, it wasn't over the political positions themselves, but rather for the theophilosophical