SEASON'S READINGS
-FROM THE- 
ANNURIAN EMPIRE

-Excerpt 1-

The bridge is empty.

A dozen times they’ve circled the bird back around, flying in fast and low and silent over the wide canal. The first time, Gwenna Sharpe expected to see her Wingmates there—Talal and Qora—waiting for the extract just as they’d planned. She expected to see them the second time, too. Shit goes wrong, even on simple missions: a road block, an unexpected patrol, some kid awake in the middle of the night who happens to glance out her window and see two figures—all in black, twin swords sheathed across their backs—and call out to her parents… The world is a mess, even in the best of times, and these are not the best of times. There are a thousand reasons to be late to an extract, and so Gwenna doesn’t start worrying until the fourth or fifth pass. By the twelfth, she feels a sick knot twisting her guts.

The bridge is still fucking empty. Something has gone wrong.

-Excerpt 2-

Tonight, the hatred is hard to find. 

Ruc blocks a jab, slips a right hook, gets off two quick shots to the ribs. Snake grunts as the blows connect, drops his elbow to cover. Ruc steps back, waits for the savage rush of rage and hate to wash over him, to lift him, to buoy him beyond himself, but tonight there’s nothing. He’s slicked with sweat, but there’s no fire in the heat. The crowd is screaming—hundreds of dark faces washed red with the light of the swaying lanterns—but there’s no music in those voices. Or maybe there is, but Ruc has gone deaf. 

His right cheek is split open—Snake’s not all that strong, but he’s fast—and sweat burns in the wound. Sometimes the pain is clarifying, like a bright light in the darkness, or a drenching with cold water. In most fights, the pain is a beacon, leading him to the hate. Tonight, however, the pain is just pain. It hurts. Tonight he is tired. He doesn’t want to fight any more. Tonight he wonders what he’s doing here, Ruc Lan Lac, a priest of Eira, the goddess of love, stripped to the waist, hands balled into fists, trying to stave in the skull of a man he barely knows.

-Excerpt 3-

“What is your name?”

This question terrifies the girl, in part because it is being asked in the first place, in part because she does not have an answer. She fastens her gaze to the floor, hunches her shoulders, tries to make herself dull as the furniture, utterly without self. No one wants to hurt furniture. 

“It is not wise, child, to ignore me when I ask a question.”

The girl shakes her head. 

“Don’t have a name.”

The Queen of the Streets shifts in her chair. Fat people, the girl has always thought, come in two types—those slowed and enfeebled by their extra weight, and those made mightier by it. This woman is the latter. She looks like she could walk straight through a wall carrying a cow on her shoulders. Not that she is dressed for the carrying of cows. She wears a dress of some fabric that looks smooth as water. Silk, the girl realizes. She has never seen an entire garment made of silk. Even in her panic, a part of her wants to reach out, to run it through her fingers.

“A nameless killer,” the woman says. “How intriguing.” 

-Excerpt 4-

The brand doesn’t hurt any more. It hasn’t hurt for years. Akiil traces the circle on the back of his hand absently, running his fingers over the slick, glabrous curves: the rising sun of Annur burned into his brown skin. It’s always seemed to him like a strange decision, branding the seal of the imperial family into the backs of the hands of thieves. Like forcing the city’s whores to wear corsets cut from Annurian flags. If he were in charge he’d be more inclined to maybe save the famous emblems of empire for the good shit—the prows of ships, graven tops of towers, that kind of thing. No need to have his family’s crest tattooed on the dick of every drunk. On the other hand, having no family and no crest, the question has never vexed him all that much. He figures the emperor can do pretty much what the emperor wants, and anyway, it’s not as though Akiil himself is about to go down in the chronicles as a maker of brilliant decisions. The stealing—sure. He was a kid at the time—six or seven and starving. What else was he going to do? The stealing made sense. What doesn’t make sense is what he’s about to do now.

-New Fan Art-