The Winged Histories Read Online Free

night and everything paid for by the Olondrian Empire.”
    He drew his breath in sharply, sucked his teeth and darted a glance at me. “Yes, I remember, you’re the Telkan’s niece. You’re his niece through both Houses and nobody ever mentions it and most of the men are afraid to speak to you as to an equal. Even you”—he jerked his grizzled chin at Vars—“you’re some sort of nobleman but you’re afraid to approach her ladyship, really approach her. Only I am not afraid and that’s because I know my worth and I’d proven my worth ten times before you were weaned.”
    He stopped abruptly and leaned against the tree. Something went flying overhead, perhaps an eagle, its blue shadow streaking the snow. And then he began to speak again in bitterness, cursing the Telkan and this war that was not even a war. For many days he cursed us and then suddenly he stopped, he grew listless and no longer demanded to be taken outside, but we still took him out for Vars insisted the air would do him good. And we built a fire and sat with him in silence.
    Sitting there, I breathed on my cold gloves and tried to find a train of thought I could use to sleep at night. I tried so many, and finally I found that simply letting my mind drift was often the quickest way to the dark. I remembered Siski singing “The Swallow in Winter.” She was standing with her hands clasped and her thin feet on the rug. There was the knocking sound of Uncle Veda emptying his pipe and I was watching her mouth as it opened and closed. Poor lost bird, you flit from place to place but cannot find your home . The green curtains in the parlor smelled of tents. Yes, and under the chair we found a dagger and an ivory comb. On the sheath of the dagger, a drawing of Tevlas in spring.
    All at once I realized that Odra was saying something, he was saying “No, let’s stay here a little longer.” And it was night, and the stars had come out thickly within the circle of the peaks: they pulsed in the dark, as if trying to break through.
    “That’s a beautiful sky,” said Odra dreamily, “it reminds me of the song, Let’s stay a little longer, the evening is so fair .”
    “Then you’ re feeling better, Uncle, ” Vars said eagerly. His teeth were chattering and the firelight flashed up strangely on his face.
    When he said these words, Odra began to weep. He was lying on his side and the tears coursed down his gaunt creased face. “ My poor moikyalen ,” he sobbed.
    He wept for a long time. Vars was biting his lips and tears were on his cheeks. Then Odra grew calmer and smiled. He reached out feebly and Vars seized his gloved hand and pulled the glove off, pressing the rough hand to his lips.
    “You’re a good child,” said Odra. Then he raised his head with difficulty and looked at me, stretching out his other hand. “You’re a good child too,” he smiled, “but why are you so shy?” I had taken his hand, I was kneeling by him in the snow. Vars was weeping openly and I looked at Odra’s face in the light of the fire, searching his eyes which were like two coins.
    “He’s dead,” I said.
    Vars was sobbing, bending over the corpse to kiss the sunken cheeks, pressing his living brow to the brow of the dead, and then he rose and rushed into the drifts, thrashing his arms, snatching snow in his hands and hurling it into the dark. While he leaped and screamed I closed the dead man’s eyes and stripped the body, piling the boots and clothes to be sent to the daughters in the south. And very poor and small he looked when he was laid out naked on the snow. And we left him there in a tomb of ice.
    “You could, if you wanted to,” Vars whispered to me later. “You could get us all released with honor. You could send to someone, maybe not the Telkan himself, but someone.”
    “No,” I told him, “it’s not true, there’s no one.”
    “Yes, there must be,” he insisted in a breaking voice.
    I found that I was smiling at the ceiling. “That’s