A House Divided (Astoran Asunder, book 1) Read Online Free Page B

while eavesdropping on him, but her father had never had much skill in dealing with other people's emotions. He had enough trouble dealing with his own.
    The truth of the matter was that she had longed for the solitude of the space, but she had also chosen the tower room because of its ceiling. Beams and struts held up the pointed roof, like the spokes spiraling out from a nautilus's shell. The effect was lovely, if somewhat dizzying, but that hadn't been its main attraction for Cianne, who had recently begun a covert second life about which her father still knew nothing. Those struts and beams offered her a place to practice, away from prying eyes. When Lach had begun bringing the glass trinkets back for her, she had quickly determined that they made perfect additions to her practice regime, adding new challenges to familiar routines.
    Another thing all House Staerleigh children grew up with was a familiarity of ships. Boldly clambering up the masts and riggings, racing one another to the crow's nest, was a favorite game of House Staerleigh children, a pastime their parents encouraged. After all, while some of the children would spend most of their lives on land, serving House Staerleigh in other ways, the majority of them would be at sea. Thus, it had struck no one as odd that Cianne had taken to climbing up into the rafters and dangling her many glass objects from them.
    What they didn't know was that she darted, danced, and swung around those rafters, sometimes with a weapon and sometimes without, depending on which skills she was focused on practicing. The glass baubles presented her with a plethora of obstacles to dodge past and duck under, and the more she added the more challenging her practices became. Her skills had grown to such an extent that she rarely broke any of them anymore, even though the space she could navigate kept decreasing. Luckily for her, she was small, slight, and light on her feet, and her upbringing guaranteed her a certain amount of dexterity. But it was her dogged determination and her focused discipline that had led her to develop skills far beyond what any of the House Staerleigh trainers could have taught her. No one had any inkling of what she was capable of doing, and she intended to keep it that way.
    Skimming swiftly over a beam that was only a bit wider than her foot, Cianne found the perfect spot for her bird. She wound the line around the beam and took extra care with the knot, mindful of the value of the gift.
    She spent the next hour practicing her forms, flowing from one to the next. That finished, she drew her rapier and went through the forms again, the weight of the weapon forcing her to adjust her lines and balance. The blade flashed in the candlelight as she slashed right then left, darting her weapon in between the dangling lines and baubles, tumbling and ducking and rolling without brushing against a single one of them.
    When she finally shimmied down from the rafters, wiping the sweat from her brow with the back of her arm, the birdcage door still hung open.

 
     
    Chapter 4

     
     
     
    A mere four days passed before Kila was called to action. His new uniforms had arrived just that morning, and the cut of the high collar was different, chafing him. He might have looked the part of a Cearovan Enforcer, but he certainly didn't feel it. He forced himself not to pry his strangling collar away from his throat as he hurried to answer the Chief's summons.
    "Have a seat," she said in a brisk voice, and he hastened to obey. She closed the door behind him before perching herself on her chair. Her rigid posture and tense face told him that something serious was happening.
    "How are you settling in?" she asked.
    "Well enough," he said, nonplussed by the direction of the conversation.
    "Have you surveyed the lay of the land?"
    "I have," he said, the purpose of the conversation beginning to dawn on him.
    Flim hadn't assigned him a partner yet, instead instructing him to study their