Read Mage's Blood (The Moontide Quartet) for Free Online

in her eyes.
Yes, you know who I mean
. ‘Should anything go awry, it will be swiftly corrected.’
    The room fell silent. He took a cautious sip of the wine. It was an Augenheim Riesling, a fine wine.
Too good, unwatered
. He pushed it away regretfully.
    After half a minute of quiet, Lucia clapped her hands. ‘Thank you,Magister Gyle. Excellent. Stage one of the plan sounds promising.’ She looked around the table. ‘You will all have read the details in the papers I sent you. Are there any objections to considering the Javon Question as being dealt with?’
    He held his breath, but there were no objections.
    ‘Excellent,’ purred Lucia. She reached under the table and rang a bell. The doorman appeared. ‘Ah, Hugo, bring coffee please. We might as well enjoy the fruits of our conquest while we can.’ She smiled around the table, once more the gentle mother of the people.
    As they got up to stretch their legs, sipping thimbles of black coffee, Empress-Mother Lucia approached Gyle. He bowed, but she waved the gesture away genially. ‘Tell me more of this woman, Elena Anborn. A woman finds it harder to kill, you know,’ she said, almost apologetically, as though she were not the woman who was rumoured to have murdered her husband in favour of her son-in-law, despatched two lovers during the Interregnum and three since, and ordered both Crusades, each of which had resulted in more than a million deaths.
    ‘Elena is an altogether selfish creature, Holiness. She is motivated only by personal gain. She will not hesitate.’
    Don’t let me down, Elena. Despite everything, don’t let me down
.
    The Mother of the Nation, Saint of the People, smiled benevolently. ‘You had better be right, Magister Gyle, or I’ll ram a broadsword up her arse. And yours.’ She clapped her hands energetically, evidently revived by the coffee. ‘Gentlemen, to table. Magister Vult has the second part of his plan to talk us through …’

2
Wear Your Gems
Javon / Ja’afar
    An arid land, home of a Keshi people known as the ‘Jhafi’. Following the opening of the Leviathan Bridge, many Rimoni settled there, finding the climate suited to crops from their homeland. After a civil war in the 820s, a remarkable settlement was brokered by a Lakh guru known as Kishan Dev which saw the monarchy become democratic, with candidates needing both wealth and also, incredibly, mixed Jhafi and Rimoni blood. Remarkably, this agreement has been adhered to for most of Javon’s recent history, until the Rondian Dorobon clan usurped power following the First Crusade
.
    O RDO C OSTRUO C OLLEGIATE , P ONTUS
    Brochena, Javon, on the continent of Antiopia
Septinon 927
10 months until the Moontide
    The first rays of dawn stabbed across the land and lit up the cloudless skies. Elena Anborn raised a hand to shield her eyes as she gazed out, catching her breath at the stark beauty of light on dark. The mountains were purple, the olive groves shimmering grey like stones on a beach. Beneath her lay the tangled cluster of streets that made up Brochena, the Javon capital. The city was already humming with movement, black-clad women and white-turbaned men making their way to morning prayer. As the first light kissed the dome of the huge Amteh Dom-al’Ahm, the wailing voices of the Godsingers rose to summon the faithful with invocations older than the city itself. She felt an odd impulse to join them, to flutter like a bird down to thestreets and be a part of the community gathering in the shadow of the dome – not for any allegiance she held to the Amteh, just a growing desire to belong to something.
    Was there any place she truly belonged? Surely not here, where she was a whiteskinned Westerner in the dark-hued East, the antithesis of all a woman was supposed to be. She was unmarried and a warrior, when a woman should be married and confined to her husband’s house – and she was magi, here where a mage was regarded as the spawn of Shaitan. In spite of all that, it