Read Rainbird for Free Online Page A

indifference.” He shook her, wanting something—anything—out of her other than the Perch-sanctioned words. “That’s not what you said to me almost twenty years ago. Do you remember? Marker 22? Cheris gum sticky and sweet in our hands? Remember what you—?”
    Diamada drove her sharp nails into his hands, and Petrus gasped. Pain burned down his nerves. She ripped his hands off her shoulders. Rainbird screamed, “No!” as Diamada half-spun and kicked. Agony bloomed in his gut. He reeled back, fell, struck his head. Stars exploded all around him. He heard shouts and scuffles. Wing membranes slithered all over him.
    He waited for his vision to clear, but long after the stars had vanished, it swam with unshed tears.
    Diamada. She’d never been what he thought—wanted—her to be.
     
    “I got her good,” said Rainbird, with grim satisfaction. “Wrenched her wing and squished her toes. That ought to hurt.” She wound a strip of cloth around Petrus’ head to hold a poultice against the lump forming on the back of it.
    “She came to warn us.” Petrus’ head felt as though it belonged to a puppet, moved this way and that by Rainbird’s strong callused fingers. “She didn’t have to, but she did.”
    Rainbird snorted. He was so smitten. Couldn’t he see ? “It sounded more like a threat to me. ‘Don’t go looking for trouble’? Sounds exactly like the sort of thing Marvelo would have said.” Marvelo, ringmaster and procurer of freaks and substances to cater to all appetites, had ruled with fear and pain. The bloody scent of violence had lurked under his expensive perfume. His top hat and exquisitely tailored suit couldn’t disguise his menacing figure nor the large brutish hands covered with scars from pounding other people’s faces into pulp. Rainbird twitched her tattered wings, old pain stinging through the membrane.
    And according to human law, he’d owned her. She was his property and he could do whatever he wanted with her and she had to bear it. That was the world Miss Levine wanted to drag her back to.
    No, the sunway was home. Diamada, with her snooty pureblood ways and her Marvelo-worthy threats was not going to drive her out.
    Rainbird knotted the bandage and patted Petrus’ head. He blinked at her owlishly. He’d been slow and wandering since he’d hit his head. Probably concussed and certainly in no condition to be traipsing around on the sunway.
    Maybe Diamada had done them a favor, after all.
    Petrus grabbed her hand, held it to his cheek, and looked up her, imploring. “Understand, Rainbird. She was the more liberal, more curious of the eiree. When the Perch and the Company agreed to cooperate to maintain the sunway, she volunteered to work with the inspectors, a job that other eiree considered akin to rolling in filth. She wanted to know more about us. She saw that humans and eiree were all part of the sunway ecosystem now. I—I was fascinated by her. I pursued her, relentlessly, gave her no room to breathe. I pushed her too fast and too far, unsatisfied with the friendship she was giving me, unthinking of the consequences—for both of us. If I had waited…” He shook his head.
    Rainbird tried to pull away, uncomfortable at this image of Petrus as lovesick suitor, at this defense of the detestable Diamada. “She left you to fend for yourself during that track collapse, just because the Perch whistled her to heel. Thirty three hours in the cold and thin air! No wonder your lungs haven’t been the same since.”
    “She had to. If she hadn’t gone, they’d have rent me limb from limb. She was under discipline, you see.” Petrus squeezed her fingers tighter, pulled her down. His eyes were glazed and burning—a weird effect of the head injury and the walk down memory way. “She could’ve aborted you, exposed you on the Perch, like the rest of the eiree do to their weak offspring. Putting you in that supply balloon was your only chance.” He started to cough, and for the next