The Edinburgh Dead (48 page)
Nobody answered him.
“I loved you, K’rina. Loved!” He spat the word as if it was poison on his tongue. He could not see through his tears.
“I only wanted…” The words died in his throat. He sucked a breath in. “This is not fair. What have I done? Nothing that another might not do. Nothing.”
The shadowed figures made no reply. Their obdurate will lay
between him and them like a wall. With a curse that almost choked him, Aeglyss turned and strode out.
After he had gone, there was a long stretch of quiet. Almost imperceptibly at first, then louder, there came the sound of stifled sobs from somewhere in the shadows.
“Save your sorrow, K’rina. He is unworthy of it.”
“He is m-my ward,” stammered the woman.
“No longer. It is for the best. He has too much in him that is wild and cruel. We cannot free him of it, for all that we have tried.”
K’rina subsided into silence, muffling her grief.
“He’s right in one thing,” someone else said. “We are afraid of him.”
“There is no shame in that. He is stronger in the Shared than anyone we have seen in years, even if he lacks the knowledge to use that strength as he might. When he was only playing cruel games, whispering in ears and working a child’s tricks, we might overlook it. But now… the girl still cries in the night. If he remained amongst us there would be greater sorrow in the end.”
“Wherever he goes in the world, there will be greater sorrow,” said a man with wild, dark spirals etched upon his face. “It would have been better to put an end to him. Blood will fill that one’s footprints. Wherever he goes.”
III The Scavenger and the Professor
XIII The Hounds of the Old Town
XXVII All Hallows’ and All Saints’
The Godless World
Winterbirth
Bloodheir
Fall of Thanes
The Edinburgh Dead
Published by Hachette Digital
ISBN: 978-0-7481-1526-6
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2011 by Brian Ruckley
Excerpt from
Winterbirth
copyright © 2006 by Brian Ruckley
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Hachette Digital
Little, Brown Book Group
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London, EC4Y 0DY
