Page 25 (1/2)

I pull o"

"Scorpion Fountain Anise" He hurries away through the es

10

Jes! There you are!" A how the fashionable sheath gown makes it so hard to climb or run But if I’d escaped the soldiers, Kalliarkos wouldn’t have rescuedof the way he casually treated me as just another adversary e

"Thank the oracles!" Aht actually have been worried "How did you get separated froet home"

"It was stupid to stop here!" I say as we clamber in

"It’s stupid of you to run the Fives in defiance of Father Do you want to have this argu than Aunore her The vieard is stunning froht The city has two harbors that are almost perfect circles, their rocky rioods froold, spices, and cloth that our enemies covet Between the harbors rises the peninsula that houses the City of the Dead and the tombs of the oracles The deep blue sea stretches to the horizon to the south and west, its waters glittering under the sun

Far away to the south, much too far to see from here, lies the land of Saro, where my father was born, the sa and queen fled during a terrible civil war a hundred years ago, as Lord Kalliarkos has just reminded me With their army and their priests the newcomers established a royal dynasty here But even so, it wasn’t far enough away, because the deadly hostilities they left behind plague us still

My gaze drifts back to where Coriander waits like a person drugged by shadow-smoke I wonder what terrible crime her brother coe

"What are you looking at?" Alances toward Coriander but then turns to look forward for so long that I wonder what she is looking at Finally she sits back "Hoish I could trade places with Coriander! Then I could walk anywhere I wish in the city instead of being trapped by Father’s honor!"

"As if Coriander ever gets a day free" The hts