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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Acknowledgments

  1

  Penitent

  Aaran

  2

  Penitent

  3

  Aaran

  Penitent

  4

  Aaran

  5

  Penitent / Acolyte

  6

  Aaran

  Acolyte

  7

  Aaran

  8

  Acolyte

  9

  Aaran

  Acolyte

  Aaran

  10

  Acolyte

  Aaran

  Hawkspar

  Aaran

  11

  Hawkspar

  Aaran

  12

  Hawkspar

  13

  Aaran

  Hawkspar

  14

  Hawkspar

  Aaran

  Hawkspar

  15

  Hawkspar

  Aaran

  16

  Hawkspar

  Aaran

  17

  Hawkspar

  Aaran

  18

  Hawkspar

  19

  Aaran

  Hawkspar

  Aaran

  20

  Hawkspar

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  Aaran

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  22

  Aaran

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  Hawkspar

  24

  Aaran

  25

  Hawkspar

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  Aaran

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  27

  Aaran

  28

  Hawkspar

  29

  Aaran

  30

  Hawkspar

  Aaran

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  Aaran

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  32

  Aaran

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  33

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  34

  Aaran

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  Aaran

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  Aaran

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  37

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  38

  Aaran

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  39

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  40

  Aaran

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  41

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  42

  Aaran

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  43

  Aaran

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  44

  Aaran

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  45

  Aaran

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  46

  Aaran

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  47

  Aaran

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  48

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  50

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  52

  Hawkspar

  Aaran

  Hawkspar

  Tor Books by Holly Lisle

  Copyright Page

  To Matthew, with all my love,

  and,

  in memory of Frank O’Brien Andrew, without whose assistance this book

  would have existed, but would not have been as good

  Acknowledgments

  Some books are easy. This one was not. Writing it was an adventure, and as grand as adventures are once they’re over, sitting in the (metaphorical) mud and icy rain in the middle of one, trying to figure out how to fix the broken wagon by inventing your own spare parts is no great fun. I owe thanks to the people who got me from the beginning of the adventure to the end.

  Huge thanks to my agent, Robin Rue, whose help kept Hawkspar the book I wrote.

  I also owe Matt, who kept me centered when all those deadlines landed at once, and kept me laughing, and who kept reminding me that he believed in me, and believed that I would, in fact, figure this out and make it all the way through.

  And another thanks to the folks at Pocket Full of Words (http://hollylisle. com/writingdiary2), who cheered me on and frequently reminded me that they were waiting to read this. Remembering that there were people who wanted to know what happened helped enormously.

  1

  Penitent

  My jara came at me with a quick punch and sweep of her ban. We were practicing that morning with ban-vi-ri, which means “stick like self”—they’re heavy wood staves cut to our height. The jara, taller than I, had better reach.

  I was quicker for once, however, and feeling more aggressive. “Hai!” I shouted, and went over her sweep, already moving inside her defenses and punching with my ban before she could pull hers back to defend herself. “You overreached.”

  My ban smacked her ribs, and she yelped, and I spun the end overhand to catch her opposite shoulder a sharp downward blow. Done correctly, this will get through the padding of the rayan—the corded shoulder protectors that are a part of our penitent garb—and weaken the opponent’s grip on her stick. Done perfectly, it will cause the arm to go numb and the stick to drop from the hand.

  I, however, did it badly, because as I snapped my ban downward, out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of an Obsidian stepping into the doorway to the fighting floor, then moving toward us. Which meant that my attention wasn’t fully on what I was doing. My blow bounced harmlessly, and left me with my stick up and entangled in the back of hers for an instant. The jara, for whom my secret name was Redbird, grinned, and used the opportunity to sweep me again and take my knees out from under me.

  So it was that I found myself lying on my back with my head ringing from the rap on the floor when the Obsidian stopped beside us and stared down at me.

  I had to guess she stared down at me—after all, she bore Obsidian Eyes, and it’s impossible to tell what those featureless, glinting black stones are looking at. Everything, maybe—or nothing.

  “Senior Penitent Ter Light Ranwi?” she said.

  I scrambled to my feet, and bowed. “Yes, sera.”

  My heart was in my throat. The Obsidians are the warriors of the Ossalene Rite—silent and terrifying, dressed always in unrelieved black. They have fighting skills that defy the eyes and the mind, and what we see when they demonstrate skills for us or spar with us is only a portion of what they can do; they are rumored to walk on water and disappear and appear at will, to be able to kill with a fingertip touch or a whisper, to be able to see not just our sins of commission, but the sins in our thoughts.

  As I had lately occupied myself by committing all manner of both sorts of sins, I could barely breathe as I stood before the Obsidian.

  But she did not say, “I know what you’ve been doing.” She did not say, “I know what you’ve been thinking.” And she did not mention tossing me into a cage filled with starving rats.

  All she said was, “Oracle Hawkspar commands you appear in her private
chapel next bell.”

  And that was worse. All hopes I might have had of surviving the day fled.

  The only thing that could have made me more panicked than having an Obsidian single me out for attention was discovering she did so in order to command me to face an oracle. In the oracle’s private chapel at that, where none entered unbidden, and where only some who entered later exited.

  Nor would I be standing before just any of the Nine Holies. Oracle Hawkspar was the Eyes of War, the Living Goddess of the Blade, whose words brought kings and commanders, dictators and despots—all bearing the wealth of nations—to the Oracle Tower to beg for her true telling of their futures.

  Hawkspar was the commander of the Obsidians. She was, to us penitents, like Death incarnate.

  She knew what I’d been doing, I thought. But she couldn’t; if she’d known, I would already have been fed to the rats. Or perhaps she meant to make a spectacle of me. It would make sense.

  I said only, “Yes, sera,” for if a penitent speaks to an Obsidian, the only acceptable answers are “yes, sera” and “no, sera.” My voice shook saying merely that; I was grateful no more words were required of me. In my ears, the two words I had said screamed my guilt.

  Redbird’s hand rested on my shoulder, silent comfort.

  The Obsidian turned next to her. “Jara Light Ranwi?”

  “Yes, sera.”

  “You will follow Ter Light Ranwi, and will see the Oracle Hawkspar when she is finished with the Ter.”

  Redbird’s fingers tightened on my shoulder.

  “Yes, sera.”

  The Obsidian flowed away without comment, and Redbird and I exchanged panicked looks. She, now ranked Senior Penitent Jara Light Ranwi, had been my closest friend since the day they chained her into the hold of the slave ship next to me. When we staggered off that ship, we stood side-by-side on the slave block in the market of the city below the Ossalene Citadel; we’d managed not to faint when a stone-eyed monk had touched us and told us in our own language that we were going with her; and we had managed to stay together through years of slavery within the Citadel, through the choosing that brought us as lowly penitents into the Ossalene Rite of the Cistavrian Order of Marosites, more commonly called the Order of Ossalenes.

  We’d risen through the ranks. We’d put together a fine, fine conspiracy.

  And now we had been found out. Hawkspar would not see mere penitents for anything less than the sort of overarching criminality that we’d committed.

  “You haven’t much time,” Redbird whispered. She looked as pale and sick as I felt. “You can’t go looking like that.”

  “Neither of us has much time.”

  I needed to present myself, clean-showered and in formal garb, in less than a bell. Redbird would have a little longer—as long as it would take the oracle to sentence me to death.

  “I’m sorry,” I told her.

  “You’ll never make it unless we run. I’ll help you,” she said.

  We fled the fighting hall, and when we were clear of the Obsidian paths, raced to Ranwi Hall, up the spiral staircase from the common area into the cells, and into the cell we shared with two other Lights, Fawi Light Ranwi, and Ghoteh Light Ranwi.

  Penitents are designated by bed color, cell name, and hall name. These change each time a penitent moves on, either to become an acolyte or to be sent from the Order; all the other penitents move up a bed, and their designations change. Bad months, when a sera or two dies, or something unspeakable happens with a group of acolytes, our designations changed half a dozen times. We learned not to get attached to names—but we’d already learned that when we were slaves. All slaves are called Slave. Nothing more—ever.

  We were beaten for speaking our real names, for using nicknames for each other. But Redbird and I had developed a system. We found common items around the monastery: wild animals, birds, flowers wild and domesticated, bits and pieces of cookware. We marked each other and our other coconspirators with these hidden nicknames, and by so doing, managed to hold on to news of each other, to stay in touch, to pass messages, to keep friends—the very things I suspected the ever-changing rank names had been designed to prevent. Our hidden nicknames could be passed in casual conversation, along with a specific movement of the face. Whatever magic their terrifying Eyes gave them, the blind Ossalene sera, we had discovered, could not read facial expressions.

  In our cell, which Redbird and I shared with two other penitents, we pulled our formal robes from the shelves. Then Redbird and I raced to the ground floor and to the penitents’ bath, a large open room with one wall dedicated to showers. Water poured constantly from twenty dragon-shaped showerheads, then down a drain and into the garden irrigation system. We placed formal robes on the long, narrow changing table, stripped off our work clothes, and tossed them into the basket where the penitents assigned to laundry would gather them up. And we plunged into the icy downpour. I scrubbed quickly, soaping body, face and hair with the harsh lye-and-ash soap we penitents used, that the slaves made. When I was a slave, I had hated soap-making days.

  Even terrified, though, I kept to my ritual. I sent the magic into the water. If all hope was gone for me, it still might remain for some of the girls in the monastery. I put everything I had into the little spell. And I prayed to a forbidden god that rescue would come in time to save even me. For the love of Jostfar, by the hands of the Five Saints, save us before we perish.

  I did not let myself think about Oracle Hawkspar, or what she might want with me. I had served her for a season my second year as a penitent; I could be said to know her better than most, yet she remained a mystery to me, and she terrified me. With her stone Eyes that replaced her sacrificed human eyes, she saw what had been, what was, and what would be in the dealings of the great men of many nations, and if she was so moved, she would tell those who petitioned her what she saw.

  Oftentimes she sent the mighty and the rich away with nothing. She was a harsh woman, cold and demanding, and if her visitors displeased her, she turned her back on them.

  Most things displeased her. She did not like children at all, and the girls who were assigned to serve her, slaves and penitents alike, cowered at her slightest whisper of displeasure. In the season I spent serving her, I had wished one of the two of us dead every single day. The longer I served her, the more I didn’t care which of the two that might be.

  I stepped out of the shower shivering, and Redbird tossed me a coarse hemp towel pulled from the rack. A few flicks took care of my hair, what little of it there was. Slaves’ heads are shaved, penitents must wear a fuzz no longer than the first joint of our first finger; acolytes’ hair is cut as long as their longest finger. Seru wear a single twisted rope braid capped at the end with a hedu, or little metal ball. Oracles wear their hair in whatever fashion they like. The Oracle Hawkspar shaved her head like a slave. I could not guess what she meant to say by doing this.

  Damp but with no time to get completely dry, I tossed my towel into the laundry bag. The seru were unforgiving of messes left lying; slaves and penitents kept ourselves and our quarters neat as a simple matter of survival.

  Redbird helped me put on my formal garb of the Order of Ossalenes, which consists, even for one of my low station, of layers of cotton and silk, each wrapped precisely, every piece requiring a special tie or named and complicated knot or the precise and ordered crossing of bands. There are prayers to be said as each piece is donned—but neither Redbird nor I had time for that.

  At the best of times, dressing is difficult to do well, and an appearance before the Oracle Hawkspar could never be considered the best of times. My hands shook so badly I ended up holding lengths of the thick brown silk away from my body while Redbird did the knot and tucked the ends, and both of us whispered Tonk curses. When all of my attire was perfect, I threaded the top edge of my beaded cepa, my rank apron, which is of the brilliant bloodred we call ter, beneath the outermost layer of my bo—my wrapped silk belt—and then folded it under the innermost l
ayer so that both ends hung even with the skirt of my tabi.

  “Is it straight?”

  Redbird stood on tiptoe and peered out of one high ventilation slit. “It’s going to have to do,” she said. “The bell-slaves are heading into the tower now.”

  “Already?” My body went rigid with fear. I looked to Redbird, my mouth dry. “How about you? Will you be ready in time?”

  She nodded.

  I ran.

  So the slaves and penitents and seru and oracles meditating in the central garden watched me hurtle over the cobbled paths, leaping flowerbeds that impeded my race to Oracle House, while I clattered like a mule in my wood-soled shoes.

  Word of my behavior would no doubt reach Oracle Hawkspar well before I did.

  And then the bell rang, and I was no longer merely indecorous, but also late.

  I took the steps up to Oracle House two at a time, dodging Bloodstone seru who cluttered the broad stairs like great red birds—one walks in the Citadel, but most especially, one walks wherever oracles might be.