Mourning Cloak Read Online Free

reaches the lip of the pavement, she falls to her knees, her ankles still sunken into the ground. Her hand falls limp next to my foot.
    I look down at the dark head and wonder again,
Are you Sera?
    Who else would fight for me?
    Flashes of light brighten the sky behind the roofline. Electric movement roils among the low clouds. The air thickens with static and tension.
    Wind swifts!
I grab the cloak by her shoulders, try to pull her out of the pavement. Her feet are stuck fast. Her head lolls.
    “Hey, you!” I shake her, gently at first, because her shoulders feel so thin and delicate under my hands, then harder. What do I call this mourning cloak who thinks herself human?
Eilendi?
And give in to her delusion? I can’t call her Sera, can’t see Sera in her features. “Hey, you. Flutter. Get yourself out of the road.”
    She opens her eyes, slowly. The insectile facets gleam, then soften. White creeps across the edges. “Kato Vorsok.”
    “In the flesh. Come on, the wind swifts are coming.” I glance up at the sky sparking with agitated swifts, the buildings around us, the swift rods glittering with gold foil, reflectors, and cheap shiny trinkets.
    It’s not a good idea to be around when a wind swift spends itself upon a rod.
    The cloak bobs her head. The pavement drips off her feet, then hardens into frozen wavelets and hairline cracks around her. A jagged green flash cracks the sky open.
    “Hurry.” I grab her hand and pull her up. Together, we break into a stumbling run. Swift light throws our shadows, sharp-edged and narrow, ahead of us as it swoops down. I fumble in my pocket, find a reflector, and fling it over my shoulder.
    Just in case the swift makes a last-minute course correction.
    We hit wall, just as the swift impales itself upon a rod. Flutter’s shoulders crush against mine. I push her face into stone and fling my other arm over my eyes. The air crackles, grows hot. Whips of electricity arc through it and lash against my skin. My spiders pounce, reroute that sizzling energy back out, to the wall, the ground.
    Flutter goes rigid beside me, her breath caught in the middle of a gasp.
    Nine hells!
    Cloaks are not immune to swift shock, obviously. Flutter jerks. Spasms ripple through her cloak. Sigils—almost-familiar—glow blue and white within its folds as she arches her back, head thrown back, rising on her toes.
    I smack her sharply across the face. My hand burns where it makes contact with her skin. Tingles run down my nerves.
    She draws in a great shuddering breath. Lets it out again. Inhales. Exhales. Now her breath is light and shallow, coming in gasps. Her muscles jump, she fades, grows solid again. The frayed edges of her cloak dissolve. A singed smell comes off her body, that fusion of skin and membrane and cloth.
    “Taurin’s veil!” I bite out. “You can’t disappear, Flutter!”
You haven’t led me to Sera yet!
    There’s only one place I can think of to go for help. For Sera, I will go even there. I would even go back to the broken plain and hammer on the bronze gates of Tau Marai for Sera. Losing her has taught me that much, at least.
    I swing the cloak back up in my arms, ignoring the way she mists against me. She has trouble controlling her form. If she slips inside my skin—shudder at the thought—would the spiders repulse her? “If you really are
eilendi
, Flutter,” I tell her, “you’ll like this place I’m taking you to.” As she fades in and out, I add, “Maybe not.”
    Taurin-worshippers do not like foreigners, or those of their own kind who deviate from their notions of acceptable. I had found that out in my last days as Taurin’s Champion and the bitter-ash years since.
     
    The rest of Highwind may ward itself with chimes and charms, build magic into the bones of its buildings, and run wires in the walls, but not so with the
ataura
. A plain square white-washed building, it is remarkable for only one thing—it has no protections against the deep creatures.