The closer you get to the city, the less you see it. From far away, approaching from ten miles down the dusty road, the white-brick windmills gather breezes with their turning metal blades at the edge of the walled arena. The highest nobles’ houses …

“...wanted me to marry Logo the tanner. He’s got a beautiful home, she said, and you soon get used to the smell. Mother, I said, I don’t want to get used to the smell. I don’t ever want to be the sort of person who doesn’t notice the stink of sheep’…

In late summer of the fourteenth year of the reign of Fei-hu the Road-Builder, on a day when the portents suggested peace and prosperity throughout the city and all its territories, the warrior Aun-ki woke up and found that her skin caught fire at t…

After I spoke to the tablecloth, its edges unraveled and slid through the arm of Aakash the Undying, neatly stitching up the flaps of his recently purloined skin. The serving boy had startled at the oath, but I made a tamping motion with my hands. T…

Once again it was that horrid time of year when the cashmere silk spiders crept from the bowels of the city of the angels and spun their pale web across its spires and domes, and Lukas the vendor of miracle tea felt a deep shudder begin in his testi…

Mei Huang considers the merit of an objection and quickly finds it inadequate. The threadbare comfort of a riposte will not put rice in her bowl, or ingots in her purse. Worse, it might even soil her reputation, diminish her standing. So many hours,…

It’s the last day of autumn, and Jiteh’s twin brother is dead. He sits on the edge of his cot, thorns popping like seedlings from between his knuckles and poking through his sweaty scalp in a blood-slicked crown. “I’m scared,” he whispers. via Pocket

The silent proctors walked beside Ukeme into the examination village, checked him for iron and palm leaves and concealed cloth-patterns, and brought him to a hut. He stood at the threshold for a moment, looking down at the floor just inside. via Poc…

Erinia was at the table to win, more than anything else. The need for it filled her bones, burned through her lungs, steadied her will. She wanted it more than earning the Empresses’ favor, more than testing her mettle, more than the pleasure of def…

“It’s your wish,” Amarine said, moving the dandelion puff closer. “I picked this for you. So please, say it. And when you do, we’ll watch the seeds scatter into the swamp like stars.” And then the wish will come true was implied. via Pocket

Perrin took a bride in the dark midwinter. With any other sculptor of his talent, the wedding would have rivaled that of the Count de Roche-Sur-Terre, held the week before. But Perrin chose his wife at dusk, swept her off to a priest by moonlight, a…

Her tea shook, and she wondered if at the other end, looking down into his own teacup or water glass or wine goblet, he would see his image of her rippling. “I am a mage.” So was this man, of course, this so-called Magister Lie. The first thoughtsen…

Grandma’s root cellar looks like a barrow in the gloaming: door facing north, yawning wide beneath the hill. Lintel so low it makes me crouch, threshold so high it makes me stumble. You might have laughed at that if you could see me, brother. I wish…

Beneath Ceaseless Skies - A Legacy of Shadows by Christopher M. Cevasco via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2MaM9HZ

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Goya found the blade. I should say that first. He pulled it from the silt at the bottom of the creek bed, where its hilt sliced through the reflected clouds on the water’s surface as though it were itself one of the emperor’s great airships. He reac…

The game’s not played to win but to see how long you can last. The Wit MacMahajan taught Morholt that, after his accident, while he was in Rexhame’s hospital and she was growing him a new arm from sculptwood. Only he didn’t realize the truth of her …

Verity was broken, fractured in a way that Hester alone could never hope to mend. Dissatisfied with her appearance, Verity would disappear for months on end, only to return bruised and bleeding from yet another endeavor in the name of obsessive self…

It’s easy to shoot a dog. Susanna watched Papa do it one bitter morning, winter before last, when old Karo couldn’t get up off his blankets, so she knows how it’s done. via Pocket

We went to the lake of our ancestors on the longest night of the year. As the oldest, I had to make sure I and my four sisters and little brother gave greetings to our parents in their first year under the ice. via Pocket

Yes, I went walking with him near the Deaf King Inn. There are some in Quadril who will call that my first mistake. via Pocket

The rot hound struck in the dark hours of the morning. It took one of our horses and left a geld woman bloodied and wild, telling tales of a two-headed wolf with eyes like the last embers of a fire. I had known this would come. Not the wolf but some…

The leader of House Hawthorn’s Court of Birth lived in a part of the House that Samariel had never been to: a wing of dusty, disused corridors where the wainscoting had rotted away and the wallpaper’s elegant asphodels were obscured by elongated smu…

The folk of the Infinite Forum swore in nine languages and ninety dialects as a cat’s black shape darted up Via Antiqua’s hot white stones. They hissed again as they spied the magic-twisted bloodhound bounding after it like a carnelian thundercloud.…

The pirate captain’s daughter had no name, although her mother’s land-born lovers, male and female, sometimes amused themselves thinking of names for her. Such strong hands, such a lithe frame, one might say, and suggest a name from an island known …

When the magistrate arrives in Immen, the first thing he does is summon Grandmother Seung, druidess of Yang Village Behind-the-Mountains, to ask for her magic potion. via Pocket

Like you, I grew up with the telling of the Tale of the Scout and the Pachydormu. That telling, on the night of first new moon of winter, marked my years between toddler and twelve like tree rings. via Pocket

“—and she said, well, that’s as may be, lad, but if you don’t recall what color it was, then I don’t see how I can help you!” Roars of laughter seemed to shake the hot taproom. via Pocket

My cousin Ren was waiting for Mama in the kitchen, pacing. When he looked at me, I saw the flickering light in his eyes, just like Mama's. He was going away, too. It looked like nobody would get to say goodbye to him properly, either. I hated the soldiers so much it hurt.