Strange Attractors Read Online Free Page A

take word back tothe city. They wouldn’t be long in sending out more troops, that was certain.
    Maybe the three ravens would raise a warning. They belonged to her; Shaea could tell. They were guiding her straight to water, just like they’d guided her to the horses. She bristled, frustrated with her own inaction. She hadn’t dared to challenge them, but it rankled to let them ride away, especially on her brother’s charges. She knew it didn’t matter now that he was dead, but it seemed wrong that the horses should be stolen while his body was still warm.
    She’d come to him when she had the burning—a pain in her chest that she’d recognised immediately as a cry for help, a cry from her brother. She’d felt it before, years ago when they were young children. He’d fallen from a scaffolding and broken three ribs and his right leg. She’d been on the other side of the city, begging for food, when it hit her. It burned from the inside out. She’d startled and muffled a scream, her small grubby hands slapped over her mouth. She’d scooped up the pennies lying bright in the stained oil rag, shoved them in her pocket and run all the way across the city to find him. He’d recovered that time but she knew the pain when she felt it again. It was a warning. It meant her brother Xane was hurt. And the way her heart had pounded this morning—like it would tear her chest apart—she didn’t think he had long to live.
    He hadn’t. Xane was lifeless when she found him, dead without a mark that she could see, save a small arrow in his neck. A Corsanon arrow. How could he have been shot by his own?
    She didn’t pull it out. The arrow would be dipped in hemlock, or a faster-working poison. It was not worth the risk to touch it. She buried him quickly, wanting to keep the crows from his face. His beautiful, unseeingeyes were still there, but that was only because he’d covered himself with his cloak. Had he known she would come? Was he saving her from a hideous welcome? How long had he held out, before he slipped away? She would never know.
    Once she found his body, her only thought was to bury him, away from the crows and the Corsanon death wagons. There would be no mass burning for Xane, not if she could help it. And she could. She tapped the dirt from her shovel and threw it over her shoulder. ‘Rest well, my Xane.’ Shaea’s eyes filled with tears and she could say no more.
    Her twin brother had been a stableboy, apprentice to the master of the Corsanon High Guard. Now he was dead, but she’d always know where his body was. She would have that at least. Shaea looked skyward through the leaves of the white oaks and pines. The sunlight warmed her face, making rainbows of her tears. She had done the ritual, the one they’d promised each other they’d perform if they died apart. He was on his way, alone. She dropped to her knees, choking on the tears. How would she live without him?
    They’d been inseparable since birth, as far as she knew. That’s what the old witch Rall had told her. They grew up together in the streets of Corsanon, staying alive any way they could, the hardship of abandonment like a silver cord that bound them to each other. She didn’t remember ever having parents, but of course there had to have been some, at least at first. She understood biology. Parents were necessary. What she couldn’t get her mind around was the fate that had made their lives so brutal.
    ‘And now this, just when we were on the rise.’ She swiped her eyes with dirty fingers and blew her nose on the hem of her dress. She would pilfer what shecould from the fields before the wagons came. And then she would get away. ‘As far away as I can.’
    Damn that strange witch for taking the horses. She’d had her eye on the black mare before they’d shown up. She recognised the horse, and would not have left either tangled up in any case. She would even have taken the palomino if it came to it, in spite of his bad temperament.