The Book of Transformations Read Online Free

done. Her heart broke, but then a day later she received another note declaring that he had changed his mind, that he had considered some new techniques and that the possibility of failure wasn’t a reason for them not to try. A few days after this, Lan received another letter telling her to travel to a tavern to the other side of Villtreeb, in a district cluttered with run-down taverns and dreary granite hotels. Slipping away after one performance, she took one of the workhorses, and braved the snow and ice. Only when she came out here, into the open plazas and past the decrepit shop facades, did she realize just how lucky her own life was. Irens here were void of much business, street corners became centres for illicit transactions, priests gave sermons alongside barrel-fires, dealing out nuggets of wisdom to a handful of onlookers. Lan climbed the slippery streets and passed under a hefty Jorsalir cathedral.
    When she arrived at the rendezvous she found the tavern virtually empty. It was the usual kind of dive found all across the islands in which traders came to talk business and shake hands over nefarious deals. One secluded corner of the bar, beneath row upon row of antique agricultural implements, would become a meeting point between herself and the cultists over the next few nights.
    Old networks had been dug up, they told her, and information was relaying back and forth across the island of Jokull, across the Empire. Her main contact smoked a roll-up, and every time he took a drag it seemed as if he might never complete a sentence, a habit that made the conversation agonizingly slow. Still, she had waited long enough. Cayce’s order of cultists was interested in her. It was suggested that they could be of help.
    The second meeting, in their hooded cloaks, and with sharp shadows fallen across their faces, the cultists from the Order of the Chirurgiens – and Cayce himself – interrogated her. They searched her memories, dredged her soul. She told them everything.
    ‘I’ve always been a woman,’ Lan told them matter-of-factly. She’d repeated this to herself so many times in her head it was now like reciting a mantra. ‘It’s not a question of choice, I always knew I was a girl. That is my true gender. I’d played with dolls, with other young girls instead of boys, wanted to dress as them, and none of this ever seemed wrong. I guess some of us are simply born in the wrong body.’
    They never released their gaze from her own; never gave her any indication of their opinion.
    ‘Throughout my childhood,’ she continued, ‘my father would incessantly plead with me to act “normal”. He’d hit me, at times viciously, trying to make a man of me. I was lucky enough to be schooled well, though bullied massively. I was beaten up more times than I care to remember. My father and teachers didn’t stop any of this, they said it would do me good. When I showed no signs of changing, I was taken to medical cultists, given erratic and eccentric treatments to make me more masculine. I was kicked out of school and whilst at home would try on my mother’s pretty dresses. After I was caught doing this my parents locked me in a room for days, whilst Jorsalir priests attempted to exorcize the demons within me. Apparently in our blessed church you are either male or female, and your gender matches your anatomy which matches your soul, and there’s no changing it. The world is black and white through Jorsalir eyes.’
    ‘I wouldn’t put too much trust in the words of priests,’ one of the cultists muttered, possibly a woman – it was hard to tell with any of them, which was strangely comforting. ‘The Jorsalir church has never been a fan of . . . development. That they are so entwined with the structures of the Empire remains saddening. They loathe people like us.’
    Yeah, well I’m sure you didn’t have one abuse you at length , she thought, repressing that bitterness. ‘Anyway. I’ve conditioned myself to not