Upcoming release sample: INQUEST
Releasing March 1
Later, M’kar realized she had been planning her days of laziness alittle too loudly, and the universe heard.
Ashrock dropped the bomb over dinner.
“What do you mean, Etrusca and Great-grandfather are missing?” M’karput down her mug of seooli tea, grateful he told her before she took a mouthful.
“They’ve vanished altogether from Le’anka,” Jeyn said, punctuated witha little shrug. “And no, they weren’t assassinated. We’ve been receivingmessages from both sides of the growing battle, asking where they are,demanding we hand them over, and threatening all sorts of dire punishments.”
“Battle?” M’kar’s brain latched onto that word, among all the otherbad ones.
“Someone tied Etrusca’s emergence from the surbda crater to thedisappearance of the Ancestors’ voices,” Ashrock said, with a shrug thatmirrored his wife’s. M’kar wondered how soon that little gesture would growirritating. Her parents weren’t the kind of people to shrug and signalsomething was of little importance. Unless …
“What do you know? What haven’t you admitted to those indiferps andhow could … Oh.” She sat back and wished they were eating indoors instead of inthe pavilion by the firefish pond. She needed to shove back a chair and stompaway from the table and work off the shivers of apprehension as all sorts ofimages raced through her mind. It was hard to rise dramatically when she wassitting on a thick cushion on the tile pavement. “So Etrusca was right, and theAncestors’ voices are actual voices, pulled in through the dimensional warpingof the broken Gate. Once we moved most of the pieces off Nisandros, thedimensional warping stopped, and the voices stopped and …” A chuckle escapedher. “And all the lunatic prophets have no excuse to do crazy things.”
“Etrusca is uniting most of the worst of the clans by their hatred forher. Our clan is getting blamed for silencing the Ancestors and disrupting thetotally idiotic traditions and structure of government. Your uncle Rokas sentyou an enormous chest full of family treasures to thank you, by the way.” Hesnorted, grinning so half the tattoos on his face twisted or disappeared intofolds in his skin. “All my brothers and cousins and uncles are delighted,preparing for war, strengthening the clan house defenses, answering honorchallenges. You wouldn’t believe all the apologies I’ve been receiving on yourbehalf, expressing regret for trying to kill you when you were a child.”
“Nisandrians are insane.”
“Yes,” her mother said, “but life is never boring when you’re marriedto a Nisandrian.”
“I warned you, na’nooshki.” Ashrock reached across the tableand intertwined his fingers with hers.
If her parents started making smoochie noises or even got up andstarted kissing, M’kar might throw herself into the pond.
“So what’s the other boot you’re about to drop on me?” she asked, tohead that off. It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy evidence that her parents werestill silly, sloppy in love, but she suspected that dropping sensation she gotwas something like envy.
