Shadowed By Wings by Janine Cross Page A

moved the writhing animal above the cauldron so it would bleed into the pot.
    “What’re you doin’, hey?” Egg bellowed in front of me. “You can’t help yourself to meat whenever you want!”
    “I’m hungry.” I glared at him, disturbed by the fear of the animal dying beneath my hands and annoyed at myself for letting others eat before me.
    My response to Egg was wholly inappropriate, for a woman should never publicly display anger to a man, and Egg was a man, albeit a yolk-brained one. I felt the crowd stare at my back in astonishment.
    “But you can’t,” Egg spluttered, and with an aggrieved expression, he looked toward the veterans for help.
    A pause. Then:
    “If she wants to cook, she can cook,” a voice said from the gloom. I looked in the direction of the voice: Dono.
    Joy leapt like a tongue of fire through me, for here was the kin support I’d so longed for.
    “That’ll be her job from now on, not Ringus’s,” Dono continued. “Every night, she can cook the meal.”
    The lithe servitor who had heated the slop pursed his lips. He, obviously, was Ringus.
    “Oh?” said a bearded young man reclined on the ground near Ringus. He had shoulder-length brown hair shot with streaks of red, and his thighs were as muscled as a dragon’s, and though there was no anger in his voice, the tone he used was fraught with tension. “And what’ll Ringus do now instead?”
    A moment’s silence from Dono. “Why, he’ll serve you, Eidon. ’Cause that’s what you like. Service from Ringus.”
    Snickers peppered the air, hastily snuffed. Ringus glanced at the ground. Eidon’s shoulders twitched.
    Egg, either oblivious to the tension between the two or too concerned about himself to care, tugged on a curled lock. “But she’s not gonna quit work early just so’s she can cook, right? She’s gonna have to do it when she’s finished, ’cause I ain’t losin’ her work time just so’s she can do Ringus’s job.”
    Dono tossed the dice he was holding onto the ground, making a show of continuing casually with his game. “She’ll do both. That’ll be the price the deviant pays for thinking she can help herself to meat whenever she’s hungry.”
    My heart sank. No support was this, but a punishment for my audacity.
    Eidon rose into a sitting position and draped his arms loosely over his knees. The muscles in his great thighs bulged out, clear even in the rising moon’s weak light. “I don’t recall the Komikon choosing you to speak on behalf of the rest of us, Dono.”
    “Should we put it to a vote, then, Eidon?” Dono said quietly. “Is that what you want, a vote? There are others here who like the way Ringus does what he does best, and I’m sure they’ll be glad he’s got some free time to serve their needs as well as yours. A vote, then?”
    “I think a vote is a good idea,” Eidon replied. “A vote between eating food made by a deviant, or Ringus, who’s been cooking for over a year and not a one of us poisoned by his feed.”
    “She won’t poison us,” Dono said, anger audible through his poise. “Temple would execute her immediately.”
    “They’re going to execute her regardless. It’s just a matter of days.”
    My heart beat faster.
    Dono looked around at the apprentices. “The more work we give her, the quicker she falls. The longer she stays, the more reason Temple’ll have for revoking the Komikon’s status. We’re all out of here then.”
    “You don’t know that for certain, Dono, my friend,” Eidon said. “If they revoke the Komikon’s title, one of us could just as soon be elected Komikon by Temple.”
    “You’re deluded,” Dono snorted. “Temple would purge these stables. If they question the Komikon’s choice of one apprentice, they’ll question his choice of all of us. We’d all be out of here then.”
    Dono stabbed a digit at the inductees clustered together some distance from the veterans. “You know who’ll be first to go when they revoke the