Legacy of the Claw Read Online Free Page A

palace’s western side. A scar of smoke damage from the fire that had burned down half the building almost thirty years ago still showed on the tower’s outer wall.
    The owl settled on the sill of an open window, which overlooked a narrow, twisting staircase. At the bottom of the stairs was an archway that let in a shaft of light from the hall. Around the corner, a group of officials talked loudly about Parliament business. In a moment so quick that only the owl saw, a foot in a canvas shoe appeared in the shaft of light from the door, then was quickly pulled back into the shadows.
    The owner of that foot, a thirteen-year-old girl named Gwen, stood very still in the dark corner by the archway and waited breathlessly for the Parliament members in the hall to move on. The owl on the windowsill cocked its head, but made no noise. The officials in the hall at last ambled away.
    Gwen exhaled for the first time in what seemed like entire minutes. The members of Parliament were used to Gwen—she was apprenticed to the Elder, who had been in Parliament since the time of King Melore. But tonight, she needed to remain unseen. The Elder was leaving on a secret mission, and she was determined to go with him. She hoisted her rucksack onto her shoulder and ran her pale fingers through her short, flame-red hair. She’d tried to give up the habit a thousand times, but she couldn’t help it. She felt jittery, as though feathers were rustling in her belly.
    The owl hopped once on the windowsill as she passed it on her way up the stairs, and then took off again into the night. She could feel, however, that it had not gone far. She was learning (slowly) to distinguish individual members of her kin when there were several of them around, even getting so close as to intuit their names. She felt a warmth, a kind of buzzing in her chest as she sensed the group of owls in the tower room above her, and one flying, buoyed by the wind, just outside.
    At the top of the steps, Gwen lingered in the darkness by the open door to the tower room. Sure enough, a cluster of owls sat together in the rafters, looking down at the shelves and shelves of dusty old books, and at the room’s only human occupant: Elder, an old man with wild gray hair and shrewd eyes. He was busy stuffing objects into a canvas sack. His worn jacket and waistcoat had once been carefully embroidered with the patterns of wings, but those patterns were now an almost illegible tangle of loose brown and silver threads.
    The Elder had known her since she was just another ratty orphan of the Gray City. He was Animas Owl, like her, and when he’d caught her trying to pick his pocket one day in the Gudgeons, a grimy, crime-riddled slum in the Gray City, he hadn’t gotten angry. Instead, he’d taken pity on her, and brought her back to the palace to be his apprentice. Apprentices slept in clean, warm rooms downstairs near the kitchens, and attended morning classes until the age of twelve, after which their only charge was to serve a member of Parliament. But apprentices had fallen out of fashion since the days of Melore, and her classmates had been few and far between. Most of her learning came from the Elder himself. Before he took her in, she had been dirty, alone, and half-starving, with no companions except a small band of other child thieves. She’d known then that she was Animas Owl, but had never known how to connect to her kin, how to slow her breath and clear her mind so she could sense them and learn from them. The Elder had taught her that. He was the closest thing to a father she had. If he was leaving, then she would go too, even if it meant following him out of the palace in secret.
    The Elder sighed. “Gwendolyn,” he said softly, without turning around, “if I were a pair of hardy boots, where in this study would I be hiding?”
    Gwen exhaled. How could she have thought she would remain undetected? The Elder must have known she