Blood Storm: The Books of Blood and Iron by Steven Harper Page A

Docks, a place that wasquieter and did not cater much to loud, vulgar sailors. This place seemed to specialize in food and drink more than rooms, and the great room smelled pleasantly of bread and mead and spices. Sharlee talked quietly with the proprietor, a balding thin man who reminded Aisa of a vulture, and they took up a table to themselves.
    “You needn’t feel guilty, you know,” Sharlee said as a serving girl brought them fried apples, glazed carrots, beef ribs heavy with herb gravy, and mugs of mead. “The Gardeners have been kind to you. Enjoy the fruits of your fate.”
    Aisa thought of her own time as a slave. “I do not know that I can say the Gardeners were ever kind to me,” she said, sipping from her mug. The mead was sweet and had a new taste Aisa could not identify. Quite good, and she wanted to share it with Danr. Then she remembered she was angry at him, and then she remembered she was not truly angry at him, and then she was confused. Perhaps bringing him here, just the two of them, could make things up. “The elven hunger . . . I lived with it for so long.”
    “And now you don’t,” Sharlee finished. “The entire world knows how to end that hunger, thanks to you.”
    “Sss!” Aisa glanced around, hoping no one heard. “I do not wish—”
    Sharlee clucked her tongue. “You’re too nice, Aisa. Do you know how many people—rich people—would love to have you at their homes to tell your story? Or who would pay to have you grace their gardens at a party? You could make a tidy living, dear.”
    “I do know,” Aisa said. “And I do not wish it.
We
do not wish it.”
    “Have some more mead,” Sharlee sighed.
    It was good mead, especially with the fried apples, andAisa was a little surprised at how fast the first mug went. Sharlee called for seconds.
    “It must be so sad,” Sharlee said after a while.
    “What is?” Aisa reached for more bread and missed. The table seemed to be wobbling. Or maybe it was her chair. Was this funny? A bubble of laughter rose, and she swallowed hard to keep it down.
    “The fight you had with your young man,” Sharlee said. “You never did say what it was about.”
    “It was not a fight,” Aisa said, and her words were a little slurred. “Not really.”
    “No?” Sharlee rested her chin on her hand. “Tell me.”
    Suddenly, it seemed unreasonably difficult and silly to keep everything back, especially with Sharlee. Sharlee was kind, so gentle, so like her mother. A well of emotion for the other woman burbled up inside her, bringing tears to Aisa’s eyes and spilling words from her like wine from a jar. “I have lied to him all this time. I just today told him that I was angry at him because his fame delayed us in our travels.”
    “So that’s a lie?” Sharlee prompted.
    “Maybe a little lie.” Aisa held up a shaky thumb and forefinger to show how little. “It’s part of the lie. And I told him that if we get married, other people will see me as some kind of abnomin—ablomin—aboomin—”
    “Abomination?” Sharlee supplied.
    “Monster,” Aisa agreed. “So he thought I was calling him a monster, and I was not. I said
other
people will think
I
am a monster. If Danr and I get married. ’Cause he is half troll and lots of people hate half-bloods, even if they have never seen one.”
    “I see.”
    “Oh, good. Because I do not.” Aisa hiccupped and waved her mug, which was not quite empty and probablymade her at least one enemy at the next table. “But that is not what truly bothers me.”
    “And what’s truly bothering you, honey?”
    She did not truly wish to say, but the words kept coming. “It is the Battle of the Twist.”
    “What happened at the Battle of the Twist?”
    The truth popped out of its own accord. Aisa did not fight it. “Sometimes . . . sometimes I see blood. On me. On my food. On other people.” She looked into her horn. It was almost empty, and then a barmaid handed her a full one. Aisa took it