Shield and Crocus Read Online Free Page A

little easier, but whenever she saw someone change, she wondered if she would be next. The fear never went away, but she was a Shield of Audec-Hal, and she had to be greater than her fear. And if not for First Sentinel and the Shields, she’d be in Omez’s cages still, or she’d have been put down when she got too large to control.
    Instead, she had friends, a home, and life. Her brother had a family. Her people had their freedom because of the Shields. It was a debt too huge for one woman to repay. But she tried anyway.
    Sapphire took wide steps to land between jagged scraps of refuse and the sinkholes in the street, weaving her way through the storm.
    The smoky-sweet smell of burning flesh hovered over the sensory mish-mash. A hundred Shields wouldn’t be enough for disaster relief. There were at best six on-site, if all of them answered Blurred Fists’ summons—and Aegis hadn’t make his last check-in. They were too few—and too late for many.
    But they aren’t here. It’s just me and the chaos.
    She ripped an awning off a ruined storefront and stopped for a moment to lay it over a pile of bodies to give them at least a shred of dignity. Undertaker had become a very profitable profession since the tyrants’ reign began.
    Several people thrashed in an alleyway, arms moving between thick leaves and plant stalks. What is happening in there?
    She ran up a storm-made mound in the street, leapt from the peak and landed soft, her bare feet sinking into what had looked like solid ground. She waded through the liquid stone, slogging her way toward the alley.
    The narrow alley was shaded by a nest of trees growing out of the roofs and up from the concrete between the buildings. They made a canopy over the gap between the buildings and a jungle in the alley.
    Screams for help echoed from within.
    Sapphire cupped her hands around her mouth. “Hold on! I’m coming!”
    The alley was barely five feet wide, designed for Ikanollo and the smaller races, not the statuesque Freithin. She turned to shuffle sideways, tearing up roots and breaking branches. Don’t bring the building down on yourself, Rova. Be careful. wildlife she couldn’t name scrambled and flapped through the sliver of misplaced jungle. She breathed shallowly, trying to weave through the thick stalks and broad leaves.
    She found a wounded Pronai clutching his arm beneath a huge fly-trap plant. The man scrambled on his back, trying to push through the thick brush to escape the carnivorous plant. Its spine-bristled mouth gnashed hungrily, stretching toward Sapphire’s hands.
    “Stay down,” she said, stepping over the Pronai to bat the mouth aside. When it snapped back at her, she slammed it into the side wall. The crushing vegetation made a satisfying crunch. She reached around to the stem and pulled, tearing it off at the head. Sounds just like the one serving of vegetables we got back in Omez’s pens. We only had to be healthy enough for labor, not healthy enough to keep our teeth. The sound was just as rewarding now as it was then.
    Sapphire tore off one of the broad leaves and used it to make a tourniquet, then carried the man out of the alley and left him on a stoop. All the while, more pained voices called to her from the alley.
    She snapped a sapling in half and ripped it from its cobblestone roots to clear her way. Sunlight from the far street started to break through the dense cover as she cut through the alley. Sapphire picked out two more people from the alley jungle: a young Qava girl who she found huddled in a ball inside the trunk of a tree and an Ikanollo man who was being pecked at by a swarm by brightly-feathered birds that were no larger than his thumb.
    After dressing the Ikanollo’s wounds and making sure the others were stable, Sapphire pushed back into the alley, crashing through small trees and knocking another barbed fly-trap from its stem with an uppercut. After working her way through the entire alley, Sapphire leapt out of the