A Day of Dragon Blood Read Online Free

"Let us see the Blind Beauty. Dance for us, child."
    She closed her eyes and she danced.
    Old Peras played his lute, but the soldiers—who had clapped and pounded the tabletops—were now silent. She could hear the patter of her bare feet and the flutter of her silks. Her body swayed. She felt his eyes on her skin, skin dyed gold to hide her northern paleness. She was as rushes in the wind, as smoke rising from the desert.
    When her dance ended and the music died, she bowed her head. Deathly silence filled the winehouse. General Mahrdor stared at her—stared through her scarf, stared into her skin, stared into her deepest dreams and fears. His eyes were bottomless and clutching.
    Without a word, he stood up and left the winehouse.
    Lyana felt like an empty bellows. Her limbs began to tremble. Around her, the soldiers breathed out shakily, emptied their mugs, and cried for more wine. Soon cheer and song filled the winehouse again, but iciness lingered inside Lyana.
    This is what I've danced a year here for , she thought. Stars, let him remember my dance! Let my painted body linger in his mind! Let him return. Let me learn what I can... if there is anything to be learned from icy, clutching eyes.
    Night fell, wine flowed, and music swirled. Platters of roasted fowls, served on beds of leeks and mushrooms, filled the winehouse with their scents. Men cracked open pomegranates and greedily scooped out tiny jewels of seeds. A few men began playing mancala, the great game of the desert, dropping seashells into pits in a board, then howling after every round. Lyana was standing in the corner, singing soft desert tunes to an old soldier with one leg, when a Gilded Guardian returned to the winehouse and approached her.
    "Dancer," he said, voice echoing inside his ibis helm. The beak swooped, long and sharp as a dagger. "The General Mahrdor, may the Sun God bless him, has invited you to his villa tonight. He requests a private dance. In return he will pay you a handsome reward. Will you accompany me through the dark streets to his home of light?"
    Around them, soldiers smirked and hooted.
    "A private dance for the general!" one called, a man who wouldn't have dared breathe around Mahrdor. "I'd say you've charmed the old man, girl."
    Another brayed laughter. "He'd like a private dance in his bed, I'd wager."
    Lyana barely heard the laughter. Her innards leaped and her breath stung in her nostrils. She would enter the villa of General Mahrdor himself, chief of Tiranor's armies! Her head spun. In a year of work, listening to these drunken soldiers chatter, she had not achieved half so much. Her fingers trembled. What dark secrets would she learn in his home? Memories rushed through her: rumors of bronzed fetuses, severed heads, and parchments of human skin. But she dreamed of other treasures: of maps, of battle plans, of secrets whispered in darkness when her flesh intoxicated him and loosened his tongue.
    Tiranor planned a second invasion of her home; Lyana did not doubt that. If anyone could reveal its time and location, it was General Mahrdor.
    "I accept," she whispered to the Gilded Guardian.
    They left the winehouse and walked through the night. On the night of the new moon, when the sky was darkest, the Tirans lit fires across the city and praised the Sun God, the banisher of darkness. Great braziers crackled atop the Palace of Phoebus, which rose to her left across the square. Torches blazed upon the columns of the Sun Temple, which rose upon a hill to the east. People crowded the streets, holding candles and chanting prayers to banish the night. Smoke rose and sparks swirled like fireflies, filling the darkness. Light and fire ruled; shadows fled.
    We are shadows to them, Lyana thought. We, the children of Requiem, who worship the stars and can fly as dragons—we are creatures of darkness for them to burn. She swallowed a lump in her throat. These people who marched the streets, holding candles before them, did not lust for blood