Shadowed By Wings by Janine Cross Page B

Komikon’s title? All of you. You’ll be executed, sure as the sun rises at dawn, because the Komikon chose you the day after he chose her .”
    Fearful looks were exchanged amongst the inductees.
    “Are you saying the Komikon shouldn’t have chosen her, Dono?” Eidon murmured. “Are you questioning the Komikon’s judgment?”
    “Are you protecting the deviant, Eidon?”
    “A vote, hey-o?”
    “A vote.” Dono raised his voice. “All for giving the deviant the extra work of cooking, raise a hand. The sooner she’s out of here, the safer we all are.”
    “Remember what you’re voting for, if you raise a hand,” Eidon interjected. “The risk of poisoned food.”
    Uncertainty rife in the air. More looks exchanged amongst the inductees. Slowly, uneasily, hands went up. Dono counted them silently, as did we all, then he swore under his breath.
    “Looks like you lose, Dono,” Eidon said.
    Dono lurched to his feet. “She’ll be the death of us if she stays.”
    He shot me a malice-honed look, then strode into the darkness, crossing the courtyard and disappearing into the next. One by one, the eyes of every apprentice turned toward me, where I stood holding the lifeless body of the renimgar.
    “Ringus, watch over the deviant while she prepares tomorrow’s meal,” Eidon said in the same voice he’d used on Dono. “I don’t want that meat wasted, and she sure isn’t eating a whole renimgar herself. She’ll cook this once, and that’s it, and don’t you pull this stunt again, girl, hear? Or there’ll be consequences. Your Skykeeper be damned.”

    I soon learned what a favor Eidon had inadvertently done me by blocking Dono’s move to have me cook, for by the time I had the vast cauldron filled with steaming broth for the next day’s meal, I moved in a stupor of exhaustion.
    Dono had been right: Doing such each evening, on top of the day’s heavy labor, would’ve soon broken me.
    See, cooking a meal meant not only butchering an animal each eve, but fetching water from the stable pump, sifting sufficient featon grit and sesal nuts from the silo located behind the third courtyard, and, once back at the hovel courtyard, coaxing the embers beneath the cauldron to new life. Once the ingredients were all simmering in the cauldron, the thick mess required constant stirring to prevent the bottom from burning and the top from remaining unheated.
    I cursed myself many times for having taken on the project, albeit only for the one night. Hunger would have been preferable, surely. And I’d not elevated my status in the slightest by my show of defiance; it had only underscored how aberrant a creature I was and given Dono the opportunity to emphasize the danger my presence posed to the lives of all present.
    To what lengths would Dono go, I wondered, to rid the stables of me? And how would Temple deal with the dragonmaster, and, by extension, me?
    Ringus followed my every move as I prepared the next day’s meal. He was a slender servitor with lips so pale and glossy, they looked like ribbons of pomegranate-seasoned oil. He had a gentle manner, somewhat nervous, and eyes so wide they looked perpetually awed. I soon discovered that he had an unconscious habit of stroking things, as if ladle and table needed reassurance.
    I stirred the cauldron while Ringus fitfully dozed, leaning against the butchering table and jerking awake every now and then to check my progress. I dozed off twice, too, only to awaken abruptly when my hand that held the ladle slid into the gruel.
    At middle-night, with dew heavy and chill about us, I spoke.
    “It’s cooked enough, yes?”
    Ringus hauled himself upright. He took the ladle from me and stabbed the gruel a few times. With a shrug, he grabbed one of the chipped and unwashed bowls stacked haphazardly upon the butchering table and filled it with the slop. He held it out to me.
    “Eat.”
    I did so, his sleep-heavy eyes watching my every move. I thought it ridiculous, though. If I