Storms of Lazarus (Shadows of Asphodel, Book 2) Read Online Free Page A

hands at her waist, Wendel boosted Ardis into the sleigh. She clambered in gracelessly and slumped in the corner. Wendel settled next to her with a thud. He leaned back and stretched out his legs.
    Ardis touched her fingers to her forehead. “Where are we going?”
    “Not to our deaths, apparently,” Wendel said.
    Konstantin shook his head. “Logic escapes you, doesn’t it?”
    “I don’t trust you,” Wendel said, with more than a little insolence. “Do I need to explain the concept of revenge to you, archmage?”
    Konstantin leaned across the gap between them. His eyes looked frosty.
    “You are more useful to me alive,” he said. “Necromancer.”
    Wendel looked smug, as if he had known he was invaluable all along.
    At Konstantin’s command, the driver urged the horses into a trot. The sleigh lurched into motion and scraped over the snowy road. Blearily, Ardis gazed at the sky. Snow like powdered sugar drifted onto her face.
    “Where are we going?” she said again.
    “Phillipopolis,” Konstantin said.
    That sounded vaguely familiar to Ardis, so she nodded.
    Darkness swallowed the village. Only lanterns hanging from the sleigh lit their way. The horses plodded through a forest of pines, their harnesses creaking. The slicing of sleigh runners across snow underscored the silence.
    Ardis tilted back her head and watched the boughs of trees pass overhead.
    “ Grok !”
    “Oh, damn,” Wendel said.
    Wingbeats whooshed between the trees. The raven fanned its tail and banked over the sleigh, then settled on a low-hanging branch. Wendel pantomimed throwing something at the bird to scare it away. The raven chattered in a bratty way, glided down to the sleigh, and landed behind the oblivious driver’s back.
    Konstantin stiffened. “Get rid of your minion.”
    “My what?” Wendel retorted.
    “That crow.”
    “The raven isn’t undead, archmage. I can’t control him.”
    Konstantin arched his eyebrows. “Then why—?”
    “He’s clever, that’s why.” Wendel smiled. “In his greedy little head, a necromancer is nothing more than a glorified sous chef for scavengers. If he follows me long enough, he might find his dinner. Something nice and dead.”
    Konstantin eyed the raven with considerable disgust and a hint of fascination.
    “Don’t tell me you have undead nearby,” Konstantin said.
    “All right,” Wendel said flippantly, “I won’t.”
    Konstantin spoke in a dangerous murmur. “I am absolutely serious.”
    The raven clambered nearer to Wendel, its claws clicking on the lacquered wood of the sleigh, and Wendel gazed at it rather fondly. Ardis suspected the necromancer liked the bird only because the archmage didn’t.
    She smiled. The lingering venom in her blood weighed down her eyelids. They had barely slept a night since Constantinople. A hard bench in a sleigh was a luxury after huddling together in a cave in the wilderness.
    Ardis rested her head against Wendel’s shoulder.
    If she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine they were alone. They were safe. And she let this delusion lull her to sleep.
    ~
    San Francisco never slept through the night. Red lanterns hung like garlands of glowing fruit over the streets of Chinatown. Ardis ran over the cobblestones, dodging the crowds, ducking into alleys wherever she could. She loved the feeling of cutting her own way through the city, of finding things she had never seen.
    Outside an herbalist’s shop, a man sat on the sidewalk and played a haunting melody on a two-stringed erhu from China. The song reminded Ardis of romantic maidens in flowing robes. She lingered until the man pointed with his bow at the box of coins by his feet. Then she shook her head and kept running.
    Ardis passed a restaurant, which smelled of sizzling and simmering, and an opium den, which smelled of burnt poppies. The odd sweet aroma always provoked a shiver down her spine, though she had never been tempted.
    Ardis ducked her head and ran faster. She would be late.