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

the windowsill, letting herself calm down. Silence reigned behind her. The powder had worked. I just took out a chaos wielder in his own rooms. She wished she could tell Fi about it. Looking out across the manor gardens, she saw Kojan loitering in the street on the far side of the manor’s perimeter wall, right where he’d said he’d be. She looked into the gardens and waited until a patrolling guard wended his way out of sight to the far side of the manor. Then she waved to the waiting thief, who responded with a tug on his cap. Standing upright from where he was slouched against the wall of a shop, he ran hard across the street toward the manor and leapt. The impossible jump took him to the top of the manor’s wall, and he kicked off powerfully, still rising.

He was flying.

Nira gaped in shock, unable to believe what she was seeing. She’d heard the legends of the Sky Islanders before, how they could float from cloud to cloud and sprout wings, but she’d thought them to be tall tales. She laughed in sheer disbelief as the little man with funny moustaches soared toward the window, arms forward and outstretched, one leg tucked up in a crouch, the other trailing behind him. A strange sound trailed through the air behind him – she couldn’t quite place it, but it sounded almost like the popping of corn kernels over a fire. There was a discolored smear trailing through the air at Kojan’s feet, almost as if he were extruding gas to propel himself forward. So maybe he’s not flying, maybe he just farts really hard. That pulled another chuckle from her as she clung to the windowsill, and she recognized the light-headed silliness she was feeling as the relief of having escaped death. She’d felt it far too many times recently. I need to find some different folks to spend my time with.

However he did it, the master thief alighted directly in front of her, clinging expertly to the windowsill with his fingertips and digging his toes into the mortared cracks between the stones of the wall. “Well met, young lady,” he said gravely. “I trust everything has progressed as planned?” His seriousness just made those wagging braids of hair hanging off his face look even sillier.

“Absolutely nothing has gone as planned,” she sighed, “but I think we’re all right. Mister Chaos is taking a nap,” she reported, jerking a thumb over her shoulder, “and that’s what really matters. How did you do that?”

He gave a mysterious little smile. “We have our ways.”

“Uh-huh,” Nira responded noncommittally. She peeked over his shoulder. There was a fleshy, bulbous sac of a dull, angry, red color strapped to his back. “Is that one of your ways?”

His smile widened. “My people know how to grow gaseous spore nests very small up in our islands and also how to control their combustion. It is a skill that frequently comes in handy in my line of business.”

She nodded, impressed. Thinking back to Kojan’s short flight, though, she wondered if there wasn’t something more to it – gas explosions powerful enough to lift a man into the air should have shot the thief high into the sky rather than letting him jump in a gentle arc across forty meters.

The mystery would have to wait for another time. Kojan cleared his throat. “Your pardon, Mistress Nira. As pleasant as it is to cling to the outside of the wall and risk exposure to the guards below, perhaps you’d be so good as to step aside and let me enter?”

Blushing, she muttered an apology and stepped aside. The thief hooked a leg through the window, all business. “I can get our man out to the street through the window. Are you and Master Kest safe to exit back through the front?”

Before she could answer there was a scuffle behind her, and she spun around. Guyrin had tumbled free from his nest of pillow, his nose and mouth powdered with the knockout dust. How…? His eyes were shining like the sun, looking like nothing so much as two almond-shaped portals into a furnace. He was panting with rage, staring straight at her. “You… you lied to me!” He sounded shocked, hurt. Furious. He put his hands together in front of himself, still naked as a shorn cat. A pinpoint of flame appeared between his palms. This is it. I’m going to die.

She dove sideways for the floor, and the world disappeared into flame.

Chapter 10 A Convincing Performance

Renna laughed along with the crowd as Gamarron dispatched the last of his foes. Blending in with the rabble and anonymously screaming her approval of the blood being spilled was strangely liberating. She was wearing the old man’s demonsilk robe, and she loved it. The tatty fibers were durable and cool despite being stark black in the afternoon sun, and for once in her life she didn’t feel self-conscious. It’s because your stomach isn’t hanging out in the breeze, old woman. She was nearly of a height with the tall northerner, and the roominess that the wider-framed man brought to his robe only added to the cool concealment. She was tempted to start a new religion just so she could wear a robe like this. Forgive me, Earth Mother. I didn’t mean it. Except she very nearly did. It was difficult getting the respect she deserved when dressed like a wood nymph. This sober outfit bespoke wisdom while still offering freedom of movement. The pants of her Weaver uniform peeked out through the hip-high slit, but she did her best to ignore them.

Even better, the fact that she was wearing the robe meant that Gamarron was not. The self-serious king had not been pleased when she revealed his outfit for the games. “People have an idea of what a savage of the north is supposed to look like,” she had argued, quite rightfully.

“Those ideas come from woodcarvings in romance stories written