Asunder: A Gathering of Chaos by Cameron Hopkin (children's ebooks free online .txt) 📕

she was wearing pushed her breasts up in a way that was both ridiculous and impressive. Blouse? I don’t know if there’s enough cloth here to diaper a baby.

She’d checked no less than twenty times to make sure the paper pouch hadn’t shifted. Kojan had contacts all over, and he had procured a fast-acting sleeping powder for their man. Renna had offered a concoction of her own that she said worked instantly, but when pressed she admitted that occasionally – seven percent of the time, to be exact – the mixture failed to put the person to sleep and instead produced psychotic rages alongside painful, prolonged erections. She had refused to specify what “prolonged” meant despite the older men’s curiosity. Kojan’s more quotidian recipe had won the day, a fact for which Nira was duly grateful. Renna, for her part, had smuggled a twisted, wicked-looking wooden dagger out of her pack when she thought no one was looking and spent most of their preparation time in an undisclosed location, working on some “tricks” for the big day. Whatever she had done, it took a toll on her. She’d returned to their rooms most nights looking ill and haggard.

Nira and Kest wended their way through a maze of suspended gangways over the water and turned a corner to a sight she hadn’t seen since arriving in Megalith: cobblestones. This was a city of moored, floating boats, but no matter the location, the rich always found a way to stand out. Here in Megalith, they had done so by colonizing the one large hill that jutted out into the mighty Hydenso River. Nira and Kest began a long trudge up a steep road. The first houses they saw were narrow and cramped, and probably cost more than any but the most successful merchants could afford. Once they crested the rise they would move into the grandest neighborhood in Megalith, High Commerce. There wasn’t any business in the area at all – only stone mansions – but all the high folk who commanded the city’s commerce made their homes up on the bluff, hence the name. Kest didn’t hesitate in choosing his turns; he’d walked the route half a dozen times, making sure he knew which way to go and where all the crannies and bolt-holes were should anything go wrong. Kojan had insisted, and the Beast Rider had taken the responsibility seriously. Nira herself had hardly left their rooms since the mad dash across the river the night they had been attacked. The group worried that others might be on the hunt for Renna and her, and so the two women had been forced to endure close quarters with little relief once again. As uncomfortable as she was in her costume, Nira was glad to be out of that damned inn. The owner’s son always gave her funny looks.

“There he is,” murmured Kest. Looking up, she saw the slight-framed Sky Islander Kojan strolling toward them, dressed in a brilliant blue tunic and cape. The man was always impeccably dressed, though today his cape seemed oddly bunched up over his neck, making him look as if he had a hump. He walked right past without acknowledging them, but he stroked those ridiculous moustaches and gave two firm tugs on his little chin beard. That was the all-clear signal. They were safe to proceed. Safe. Right. Because entering into a mansion occupied by armed guards to drug a chaos wielder is so very safe. She took a deep breath and steeled herself. I can do this. No going back now.

They approached the closed gates of the Atrillmer House. The double-doored portal was a masterpiece of Weaver construction, the interwoven branches of the solid lower half shaped perfectly into the House symbol on both sides – a purple octopus holding a whaling spear in one tentacle, all enclosed by a scarlet circle. At sternum height the woven wood of the gates separated from a perfectly ordered mass into individual branches, each crossing over and under its neighbors in a perfect latticework that left diamond-shaped apertures to reveal the beauty of the manor within. That latticework was heavily adorned with shining black thorns, all growing at exactly the same angle. No one in their right mind would scale that gate. The manor itself was of a porous yellow stone quarried in massive blocks and worked into frescoes of winged humans, cherubic children, and fantastical horned creatures. Narrow spires graced the towers that bookended the edifice, and the central peak was dominated by a round multi-colored vidrin window of a type Nira had never seen before. Each pane of vidrin was placed and shaped perfectly so that the whole created a picture – a Seafarer vessel with four masts being attacked by a white whale from the rear and an enormous octopus from the front. The fanciful window was taller than Gamarron with his arms stretched overhead.

Kest stopped in front of the gate. In the last few seconds his entire demeanor had changed. He walked with slumped shoulders and his head thrust forward. His lip curled in a sneer, and he hooked his thumbs behind his belt. These changes together with his natural bulk and eyepatch gave him an evil look. He made a convincing pimp. A pair of soldiers stood at attention on the far side wearing lacquered wood helmets and breastplates of purple. This place is better defended than the Governor’s Mansion in Far East. She wasn’t sure if that made the Governor a fool, or the Atrillmer family paranoid, but either way she was not encouraged.

“Got a new one for yer friend upstairs,” Kest sneered to the guards. “They told me it was a ‘mergency.” Nira held her breath. They’d seen whores show up here at all hours, but if for some reason they suspected…

“Everything’s an emergency for that one,” grumbled the shorter guard with a put-upon sigh. “You’d think he was a virgin of forty, the way he complains. ‘About to burst,’ he