MeiLin Miranda's Blog, page 14
May 10, 2013
Chapter 15 Part 9 | Son in Sorrow | IHGK Book 2
"Shut those doors!" said Harsin from the hallway outside Twenna's apartments. "I never want to hear her voice again! Hallik! Where is Shelstone?"
"Sir Elbig is on his way, sir," answered the butler.
"I don't know any 'Sir Elbig,'" said the King.
A whiff of Elbig Shelstone's jasmine-tinged cologne hurried into the hall before he did. "Your Majesty! Felicitations on the birth of your new son, my grandson!" he beamed. "Why are you standing in the hallway? Hallik, take him in to see the little thing! He's perfect in every way, sir, resembles his father--"
May 8, 2013
Chapter 3 Episode 3 | The Machine God | The Drifting Isle Chronicles
Adewole came into the first briefing the next day not knowing what to expect. "I have never served in the military," he said to the officers ringed round the table. "Jero's is entirely professional. If you join, you join for life, and it was never my ambition. I think I have hit someone perhaps twice."
"Not much for you to do in the hitting line, Professor," said Major Berger, an older, mustachioed man; cheerful lines offset his naturally melancholy eyes. "You will be translating. With your background in anthropology and languages you're our linchpin. We don't know who we're facing up there, but we face someone. Miss Goldstein's private report gives us strong reason to believe the island is inhabited. And…" He cleared his throat. "We have some confidential intelligence I trust the officers and gentlemen at this table will consider privileged: not only are there people on Inselmond, some are aware of our existence. More than that, I cannot say. Yes, Quartermaster?"
May 6, 2013
Chapter 15 Part 8 | Son in Sorrow | IHGK Book 2
Temmin shook his head to clear it of Gwynna's terror and rage. "I don't like to hear my name used by someone like Tennoc."
"How so?" said Teacher.
"To kill a child--an infant?"
Teacher leaned back against the mantel. "Politics is an ugly business. There is a very real fear in any regime change that someone with perhaps a better claim--someone like Ardunn--would become a rallying point against a ruler and must be eliminated early. Your uncles have no clear claim to the throne, but they have become such rallying points. Is it so strange that Tennoc would wish to secure his position? Especially as a bastard?"
May 3, 2013
Chapter 15 Part 7 | Son in Sorrow | IHGK Book 2
"He's here, Lady," the Kellish Little Mother murmured.
Gwynna stood up, the baby in her arms. "Where?"
"In the Worship Hall. He is alone," added the old priestess. "He wished to bring his men inside, but the Brothers would not allow it--they are ringing the Temple even now. Quite the argument he made, too. The Eldest Brother said he understood and even sympathized with the new King's…aims…but you'd taken shelter here and they could not break Pagg's Law. Do not be deceived--if you leave the Temple, the Brothers themselves will kill the child on the new King's orders. But they will not enter these walls on such an errand."
May 1, 2013
Chapter 3 Episode 2 | The Machine God | The Drifting Isle Chronicles
Dean Henrik Blessing had already come round his desk and stood now before the thankfully glowing grate. He was a round man, almost short. A bulbous nose dominated his florid face, over a small mouth made smaller by a great mop of white mustache, which just cleared his upper lip. Small, pale eyes glowered beneath the most alarming eyebrows Adewole had ever seen; they rose in great white wings against his forehead—itself a majestic gleam expanding right on past where his hair once had been.
April 29, 2013
Chapter 15 Part 6 | Son in Sorrow | IHGK Book 2
Tennoc was gone when Gwynna awoke, tending to what must be an endless number of details now that he'd taken Gwyrfal. Now she sat in her bower amusing her babe. Ardunn had just begun to smile, and making him do so was her chief delight.
April 26, 2013
Chapter 15 Part 5 | Son in Sorrow | IHGK Book 2
This section is NSFW.
His arm was already beneath her; he slid his free hand down her back's curve, around her hip and up her side. His hand was warm and gentle, and would stop every few inches as if asking a question; her body would answer, and the hand would continue on until it asked for permission again. She gave it over and over without a word until his hand reached her milk-filled breasts. She moved it away to her belly, still loose from Ardunn's birth; Tennoc didn't seem to notice or care. A tautness crept over her.
"Gwynna," he murmured, "if we are not to go on, I must leave you."
April 24, 2013
Chapter 3 Episode 1 | The Machine God | The Drifting Isle Chronicles
Mai 7th
Adewole's last trunk—the one bearing the precious green coffee beans—had still not arrived. He should have put them in the one with the tricky new combination lock, the one full of books he might just as easily have left behind in favor of the coffee. How was he to face Dean Blessing this morning without coffee? He drank tea at breakfast instead, politely keeping himself from making faces in front of his landlady Mrs. Trudge, whose outline mimicked the teapot’s. Eisenstadters believed tea to be more refreshing, altogether more restorative than coffee, but Adewole couldn’t figure it himself.
Mrs. Trudge set a good table otherwise, including on this morning: mushrooms fried in butter; fresh little fish straight from Lake Sherrat; toasted bread; and an oaten porridge—something he’d never eaten before, millet or rice porridges being preferred in Jero. “Eggs?” Adewole said hopefully.
“Eggs, sir!” said Mrs. Trudge in a whispered shriek. She took a calming gulp of tea. “You’re a foreigner, Professor Adewole, and as such I can’t expect you to know all our ways. Dear Professor Deviatka,”she appealed to Karl, “please, make sure he doesn’t ask for—eggs–in front of strangers.”
“Don’t ask for eggs in front of strangers, Ollie,” admonished his friend.
April 22, 2013
Chapter 15 Part 4 | Son in Sorrow | IHGK Book 2
This section is NSFW.
Gwynna kept Hanni's words in mind as she waited for Tennoc that night in her bower. When he came to her, he'd taken his armor off, as well as Dunnoc's crown. He wore simple clothes and looked like her own Tennoc instead of the frightening Tremontine stranger in the Great Hall. They exchanged formal pleasantries until Gwynna excused her attendants and they were alone. "Oh, Tennoc, I am so very happy to see you well," she began, but before she'd taken more than a step toward him he'd crossed the space between them and seized her.
He had never touched her like this, never touched her at all apart from a surreptitious clasp of her hand as he helped her dismount and the like. His grip hurt her arms. She had time for one gasp before he pressed his mouth to hers as if he needed her breath as well as his own. She thought of drowning men who took their rescuers down with them, but she opened her mouth to him; he whimpered into it. "Gwynna," he choked as he kissed her neck, her cheeks, her eyes. "Oh, my Gwynna." Tennoc lifted her up in his arms and hurried into her bedchamber, where he set her on her feet and began forcing open the fastenings of her dress.
April 19, 2013
Chapter 15 Part 3 | Son in Sorrow | IHGK Book 2
"What will you do, Lady?" said one of Gwynna's attendants as they looked out over the Tremontine armies gathered before the city. It seemed to Gwynna they went on past the horizon. Daevys must be dead, or else his forces so broken up that he could not regroup. If Daevys lived, Tennoc would hunt him down. She was or would soon be a widow, free to make her own choices.
She could not see the march into the city, but she knew Tennoc would come to claim her father's throne, and possibly herself. Nothing stopped them from marrying now--in fact, everything was in favor of it. But would it still be his wish? It had been a little over a spoke since she'd birthed another man's child, after all. Had he heard? Perhaps he'd already married Cariodas, if she'd lived to reach Tremont City. She'd always been his intended, after all. Cariodas, riding out of Gwyrfal dragging her father behind her: perhaps a girl as brave as that would make him a better wife. "I will prepare to meet our conqueror, is what I shall do," Gwynna said in the end.
