The Abbot, in this one thing, was wrong: I have never thought myself a slave. But I was born to a crown. I was born to a fate defined by my bloodline and by the forces of history. I was born to a duty that I did not choose, and cannot set aside. I was born to be a hostage. I was very young when t...
On the first day nothing particular happened. On the second, we struck the remains of a rail line that cut across the flat skin of the prairie like a scar. There was not much left of the actual line—the rails had long since been pulled out for salvage, and the wood ties and telephone poles rotted...
She sat on the pole man’s seat, knife in hand, drowsy in the sun. The burl wood wings were almost finished, full of long, strange twists of wood grain, less like feathers now than like long hair spread in water. They had an uneasy beauty. But the lump between the wings would not show her its face...
She spun away from the clutch of lodges and ran across the top of the snow — a handful of heartbeats, another handful — then the snow crust broke under her and she staggered, tumbled. Ice bit her hands. She was panting, gulping. Not yet crying. The light shot rainbows into her eyes. A cold wind w...