Asunder: A Gathering of Chaos by Cameron Hopkin (electronic book reader .txt) 📗

elegant solution, quick thinking worthy of a wise chief. Sold to a stranger in shame. He was too shaken, too tired to feel outrage or despair. If only I had waited. I’m a child and a fool, posturing like a man and begging to be taken seriously. He’s right to cast me off. He looked to the black-robed stranger who now controlled his fate and resigned himself to the fact that his dreams were dead and his best days behind him.

Chapter 3 No Power in the Light

Renna Mansour, priestess of the Weavers, Hand of Gaia Fourth Class, of the Bryophyta, strode purposefully toward the Wharf District holding cells, the fiber-clad heels of her boots whispering on the cobblestones. She hated coming down here. Sailors and Seafarers, each one uglier than the next. And I always have to clean my shoes afterward.

She was proud of her boots. She made them herself, enjoying the subtle display of power communicated by using her Weaver abilities on something as simple as footwear. Supple weavings of custom-grown, iridescent willow-leaf protected the top of the foot and wrapped around the calf, and multiple layers of acid-catalyzed graniteoak cambium created an incredibly durable sole. What she loved best was the pillowy cushion of moss leather that blanketed the interior. It was softer than satin and ten times as durable. Let the benighted dirt-grubbers in this backwater clomp about pinching their toes in crude boots of barkleather or stinking animal hide. She lived a higher existence.

Her lip curled as she reflected on the fact that her top-tier crafting and deft experimentation had yet to earn her the recognition among her peers that it deserved. One day she would get to the bottom of the special discrimination against her. It’s unjust. Anyone would think I was one of those filthy Insectae fools, the way I get treated. She cut off that line of thought. It led to a secret compartment in her rooms about which she was not at all comfortable thinking.

She’d have never been sent scuttling down here to the wharf like a clerk if she had been one of the Hands in the Magnoliophyta order. Oakies never get pushed around like this. Undue deference. Ridiculous. And so she stomped on, a tall, narrow specter whose leaf tunic and barkleather leggings accentuated the spare angularity of her form. She just knew some hidden thief was ogling her from the shadows right now, wondering why this Weaver priestess looked more like an aging tree than the dryad spirits all men thought the Hands ought to resemble. This is the body that Gaia gave me, and I’m just as glad to not be hampered by soft curves that serve no purpose. And if the whores and gutter trash of the wharf drew back out of distaste or fear instead of respect, what of it? At least they weren’t crowding about begging for the Earth Mother’s blessings. She’d have to take a bath in lye if a single one of those urchins touched her.

She paused in the middle of the street. Dusk had overtaken her on her walk from the High Quarter. All these shacks look the same. Mother beneath me, if I have to ask one of these gutter rats where to go… but no, she had her bearings. She could see the quay through that alley over there, the wet slap of the waves against stone echoing faintly back, mingling with the hollow thumps of boats against the ramshackle private ship berths. There were pirates and pleasure merchants aplenty once one moved away from the city’s official docks. I should schedule another one of Bannon’s cruises up the coast. He knows what I like. And there, not more than a hundred meters further, she saw the City Watch edifice. It was every bit as run down and salt-stained as the buildings around it, but new glowpods shone behind the vidrin panes of its lamps. Most shops down here had to make do with torches, but having the support of the city’s Council did afford a few luxuries, even in a place like Far East. They should have advanced me back up to serve in Megalith years ago. I don’t belong here.

But when the local Mother among the Hands of Gaia commanded – she was one of the Magnoliophyta, of course – Renna had no choice but to obey. The Watch had sent the Hands a vague, hastily scrawled report about a plague ship, damage to the docks, and someone preaching heresy, and it was her task to investigate. “The worship of the Earth Mother marches ahead in this place, daughter,” fleshy old Megda had told her. “We must be vigilant against pushback. It is bound to occur. The godless will not rest.”

It was true that there were more believers here in Far East than in the more cosmopolitan cities of the Mainland like Hyden and Megalith, but Renna had heard no mutterings of discontent among the dull-eyed citizens of this green pit of earth. Why should there be? The Mother blesses them here, dullards though they are. Why, there hadn’t been even a single Naga attack in eighteen months, despite the fact that Far East bordered the snake-folk domain directly. If that wasn’t divine providence, she had never seen it. Why should anyone start spouting heresy? And what could that have to do with a plague ship?

It was nothing, she was sure. A misreport, a diversion, something to keep her from her research and experimentation. The others were jealous of her advances. They sought to hold her back, to keep her marvelous new plant breeds and tool hybrids away from those who might recognize her for what she was – a singular genius blessed by Gaia’s touch. But she had no desire to be demoted again, so she gritted her teeth and ran their ridiculous errands, even as she saw through them all. One day the Handmaiden herself will lay her hands on me and thank me for