A Wild and Unremarkable Thing , livre ebook

A Wild & Unremarkable Thing


Jen Castleberry
C opyright © 2018 by The Parliament House
All rights reserved .
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review .
Edited by C.K. Brooke
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The Fire Scale
On mighty wings
Does every fifteenth year depart .
And who, but fools
And princes and kings
Should want to eat its fearsome heart ?
Contents



Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49


About the Author

Your Mission

The Parliament House
Prologue

T he Fire Scale flies low over Ithil. Its body is the breadth of a circus tent. Its breast is striped by veins as broad as the boughs of a mighty oak. Its roar is like the howl of an angry wind .
It gleams in the starlight. Its scales are ruby-red. No wonder just one of them is worth its weight in gold, and there must be thousands. They sparkle, catching the glow of lamps and torches below - flat, fluttering discs that ripple against its skin like a scarlet coat of suns .
Its leathery wings beat, once, twice, like a tribal drum, like a thunderclap, and out of its yawning mouth, a blaze erupts, engulfing everything .
One breath, and Ithil is black as ash. Ithil, gloating Ithil, built of white sandstone. Built by the hands and backs of scholars .
One breath. Libraries and the proud, columned summer homes of wealthy merchants are set alight. Every inch of lush, green earth in the airy market square is grit and gravel in an instant .
Screams rise up like a symphony, sobs and the worst swears men can muster. Just outside of the town gates, in a field not far enough away for anyone’s liking, crystal champagne glasses fall into the grass. Girls in their finest gowns faint or flee, and some are trampled underfoot .
In the heart of Ithil, beneath a brightly embroidered tarp, drunks and costumed children lie dead or dying. They make groaning prayers as they bleed and burn, mouths flush with the rose-cobbled street .
One, two. The Fire Scale is high above the burning town. It gapes, and smacks its lips. Embers teeter over its tongue and tip out between its wide-gapped fangs .
One, two. The Fire Scale breaks through the clouds and inky phantoms swirl in its wake. Some Ithites watch its yellow talons shove aside the stars .
So quick, it came, it left. A breath. A fast-ascend, and it is gone .
And Ithil…Ithil is on fire .
C ody doesn’t start. She does not fly upright as the dream recedes. She lies perfectly still, except for her unbound chest, which heaves, and her throat, which lobs as it swallows a sob .
She might have tossed, or screamed out in her sleep, or even mumbled and woken her father. Now she doesn’t make a sound. She listens for his footsteps, heavy and quick, but the house is as quiet as death .
She’s had this dream before. Once, she called it a memory, but now…now she wonders if the scales were really so red, if the beast’s one eye was as bright and sharp as the sun. If its other eye was really missing, gouged out by a Lair Town Champion, the way legend says it was .
Maybe the beast had two eyes, after all. Maybe it saw her, tripping over her lace-hemmed skirt. Maybe it knew how she cowered, black with soot, in the butcher’s fireplace .
She hasn’t seen a Fire Scale in fifteen years, and she’s heard so many tales since the scorching of Ithil—fantastic tales. She doesn’t know what is really memory anymore, except that the Fire Scale came. It came and ruined Ithil. It made the whole town burn .
It made her a boy .
C ody doesn’t remember anything before the last Emerging, when the Fire Scale scorched Ithil. But after - she remembers everything, everything , that came after .
She closes her eyes now, and thinks she’ll have another hour of sleep. Dawn isn’t so near. But when she tries to dream, she remembers instead :
A pair of feet. Her feet. Pudgy, cinnamon toes. A fan of faint, burnt umber hair, like a feathery bangle, over each one of her ankles .
Her father, tipping her head forward, his hand like shaved ice, cold and callous on the back of her neck .
Her father, sheering off her shining, raven curls with a switchblade .
S he remembers:
Watching her hair fall away, each lock a tightly coiled ribbon of black .
S he remembers:
Whimpering.
Her father scolding her .
Gods, she remembers every tight-lipped swear. Every promise :
“A lash for every tear .”
S he remembers:
A swallow. A blink. A wobbling room. And fast, a puddle between her feet .
A shorn, boyish reflection gazing out of her tears .
And a scream .
H er next memory is of the cane .
C ody opens her eyes – nineteen-year-old Cody. Not Cayda, the little girl her father cuddled and coddled and loved. “You’ll slay a Fire Scale one day,” her father said before he sliced away her onyx mane. “A girl shouldn’t do it. A girl would never get to keep her prize .”
His words were apt .
His instruction indisputable .
He cut her hair close to the scalp. He dressed her in trousers and called her Cody . And when she was sixteen, her mother bound her breast and warned her not to linger long in front of mirrors after a bath .
C ody is a boy, on the outside at least, though she is slender and soft of cheek. She didn’t fill out the way her father hoped she would, no matter how much he made her run and climb and swing a sword .
Sometimes, when her father is gone to the neighboring towns for wares, Cody does stand in front of the mirror too long. She strips naked and admires herself in the dingy glass. She wishes, wishes , she could be Cayda again .
A selfish wish. She can’t say it out loud, else she will have the cane. And she shouldn’t wish it at all. Her younger sisters have both brought home coin from the brothel. Her mother’s chest – how it boasted and bulged once! – is concave. The house is always black with filth. The cupboards are always bare. A Fire Scale will set everything right, if Cody can kill it .
Cody, not Cayda .
T he town keeps Cody’s secret. Most have forgotten it by now, she thinks. Most call her a boy and believe that she is one. If anyone doubts…well, no one picks a fight with her father .
He says his eldest child is a boy .
So she is .
1



CODY
C ody is running. Running against the heat. Running against the sun. The day is early, but it’s sweltering at the peak of summer. She blinks, and wouldn’t be surprised to find herself plunging forward into a blaze of Fire Scale breath .
She has nothing but porridge in her belly, but she’s not slowed by hunger pangs. She’s too used to hunger. It doesn’t make her dizzy anymore, or leech her sun-stained face. No, she is swift .
Her feet know this road. Her father won’t meet her at the end of it; what an easy sprint that would be! Once, when she was small, she only had to run as far as the butcher shop. Every week for fifteen years, her father has made her run farther, till all of Ithil was too small. Till she didn’t cry, or vomit, anymore .
He waits for her now, beyond the gates of Ithil, at the edge of the surrounding wood, resting his horse, counting the minutes that pass. He won’t let her dally long when she arrives. He won’t let her ride back into Ithil with him. She’ll have to run again. But she doesn’t think of that now .
Now, she thinks of her feet - bare, calloused feet. Feet that know the town grid as well as a pair of hands may know a harp. She thinks of her legs - hard, lithe, launching her forward. She is faster than she was yesterday. She is sure .
She breathes, even and slow, and counts the minutes, too. She’ll let her father make his report first, and won’t argue if he brandishes his cane. Sometimes, if she’s too fast, he lies. So she’ll be just fast enough. Just a little bit faster than yesterday .
She can’t be too slow, either, else he’