Mourning Cloak Read Online Free Page A

Night after night, the few
itauri
in Highwind gather there to chant the Invocations and dance the Rakayas, with only their vigilance and their uncertain prayer-magic to keep the cloaks and eerie men away.
    It is, to them, a test of faith.
    One of these days, a swift-strike will obliterate the
ataura
. But then, I’d been predicting that for three years and it hasn’t happened yet.
    Itauri
keep to themselves, but they won’t refuse me. Even when I kick the thick wooden door repeatedly, even when Toro opens the door and recwondoor anognizes me. I shoulder my way in, to save myself from his questions or—worse—his blessing. Flutter’s wings sweep the stone steps down into the circular room. Dark-eyed faces look up at me, pooled, deep, secretive. The faces of my people, who I no longer understand. I swallow a growl of frustration as I take in the room, devoid of the technological comforts that Highwinders take for granted. The cook fires, the lanterns, the small children, the circle of
eilendi
, novices all, intent upon their worship magic. My people, still stuck in the past, still putting themselves and their children in unnecessary danger.
    No, it’s me. I have changed. I left, not them.
    I put the mourning cloak down on an empty pallet, more roughly that I intended to. My hands come away sap-sticky with her blood and blackish-red from the pigmentation in her wings, seeping at their torn edges. She lies tumbled where I left her, eyes closed, chest barely moving.
    The
itauri
lean closer to look, suck in an involuntary breath. I swear there’s a vacuum in the room.
    I point at Flutter, but look at Toro. At his gentle, fine-featured face that I can no longer read. When did that rift happen, Toro on one side, me and Sera on the other? And why in nine hells didn’t I see it
before
the disaster at Tau Marai? “She’s one of yours. Heal her.”
    A few of the
itauri
make warding signs, thumb and forefinger of the left hand circled, held up to the eye, then covered with the remaining fingers.
    Toro doesn’t. He kneels at Flutter’s side, takes up her delicate, elongated arm, trailing cloak, and checks her pulse. He puts his ear to her chest, peers under her eyelids, just as if she were one of his own.
    He is kinder to a cloak than he was to me, one of his closest friends. The questions burn in my heart still.
Why, Toro? Why didn’t you and the other
eilendi
stand with us before the city gates? Why did you let the Dark Masters’ creatures destroy my men?
    Ah, but he’d already given me that answer, slowly, patiently, as if explaining to a dim-witted child.
It was not in Taurin’s will.
    An answer that answers not at all. I grind my teeth and think I feel grains of desert sand between then still. I wait for Toro’s pronouncement, his condemnation of Flutter, but he will not give me the satisfaction.
    Not quick to speak, that Toro, and not one to rush into judgment. I hate that about him, because when he is on an opposing side, it means he has thought things through, not reacted from emotion, but after examining his own prejudices.
    He denied Sera her last rites and he was right to do so—based on the precepts of Taurin’s faith.
    It doesn’t mean that I loathe him any less for it. No prayer flags for Sera, no incense, no
finality.
    Sera had come to Highwind because of me. If not for the fact she entwined her life with mine, she could have been back in Jalinoor even now, dressed in the gold robes of office, pronouncing judgments from behind the ceremonial mask.
    Her lightning-bright mind, her quicksilver wit, her sun-bright heart—all had been lost because she chose to follow me into exile.
    Curse Taurin for the day Sera crossed paths with me. And curse Toro for the way he turned his back on her when she was only trying to scrape a life of meaning for herself here.
    Let him deal with the problem of a mour a em of aning cloak who claims to be
eilendi.
What theological knots he’ll be tangled into trying to explain