Nightbirds - Hardcover

Armstrong, Kate J.

 
9780593463277: Nightbirds
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0593463277 ISBN 13: 9780593463277
Verlag: Nancy Paulsen Books, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • In a dazzling new fantasy world full of whispered secrets and political intrigue, the magic of women is outlawed but four girls with unusual powers have the chance to change it all.

Magic is illegal in Simta, but for the right price, the wealthy can always partake. They need only procure a visit with a Nightbird, girls who can gift their rare powers with a kiss. Usually a tight-knit group, this Season’s Nightbirds couldn’t be more different. Matilde, the group’s veteran, relishes the feeling of power and freedom she thinks her Nightbird status affords, but rebels against her family’s growing expectation that she finally choose a suitor and pass her magic on to the next generation; fiery orphan Sayer, resigned to this life as a means to support herself, resents each transaction and the world Matilde so reveres; and novice Æsa, fears her own magic and thinks her very existence is a sin.

But when the Nightbirds find themselves at the heart of a deadly political scheme that shakes the world as they know it, they must put their differences aside and band together to fend off those who would exploit them. In doing so, they discover their magic is more powerful than they could have ever imagined, and they see the Nightbirds system for what it is: a gilded cage. United, they are a potent force that could upend the patriarchal system that would hunt them as witches. But wielding their power could cost them more than they are prepared to lose. They must make a choice: to remain kept birds or take control, remaking the city that dared to clip their wings.

Fiercely feminist and set in a thrilling, intoxicating world evoking the Jazz Age—full of speakeasies with magic cocktails, sharp-edged, duplicitous glamour, and handsome rogue alchemists—Nightbirds is an exciting debut fantasy that dazzles as powerful girls emerge from the shadows to determine their own fates.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Kate J. Armstrong has always had a fondness for adventure. After graduating college, she left her home state of Virginia and has never really looked back. She’s explored many places and vocations, working as a high school English teacher and a nonfiction writer and editor for publishers such as National Geographic. In 2018 she started The Exploress, a women’s history podcast with a cult following and over half a million downloads. She is also the co-host of Pub Dates, a podcast that takes readers backstage to join her on the journey to publication for the book you’re holding in your hands right now. When she’s not writing or recording, you will find Kate hiking mountains, trying out cocktails, finding excuses to dress up in historical attire, or reading way past her bedtime. She lives in Melbourne, Australia, with her husband and their noble greyhound, Galahad.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

– CHAPTER 1 –
Jewel, Star, and Sea

Matilde is a thousand layers of secrets. Some sit against her skin, there for anyone who knows how to read them. Others are tucked into a rarefied language only a few girls can speak. Still others have wings, and they are hidden inside her.

She smiles to herself behind her mask.

As Matilde descends the stairs into the ballroom, heads swivel. This is precisely why she made her family wait for over an hour before leaving for Leta’s Season-opening ball. Grand entrances, she finds, are the only kind worth making. Especially during the summer season, when Simta floods with people from all over the Eudean Republic, come to make matches, deals, and fortunes in the City of Tides.

The room is full of finely dressed people, talking and swaying to a tasteful string quartet. It’s clear that many of them have been to Simta’s best trickster tailors, who have outdone themselves enchanting their outfits for the evening. The seed pearls at one girl’s neckline unfurl into flowers. A boy’s evening coat sparks every time someone touches it. Masks smoke, lapels bloom, gloves glow. Matilde is sure there are alchemical potions she can’t see, hidden inside watch fobs and hollowed-out canes. Leta’s added some to her candles so they flame cerulean and emerald and black, her House colors.

Standing here, you would never know that magic is illegal. In the circles Matilde swims in, such laws barely apply.

Her brother, Samson, gazes longingly at Æsa, their pretty housemate, but she is busy staring wide-eyed at the room. After a sidelong glance to make sure their dame isn’t watching, Samson snags a few drinks from a passing waiter and holds one out to her. Æsa shakes her head—the newest Nightbird seems too nervous to enjoy her first proper Great House party. Matilde will have to work on that.

“I wish you had worn what I laid out for you, Matilde,” her dame says.

A dress with frothy skirts, like Æsa’s, and a far-too-tight bodice. The one that made Matilde look like a present wrapped for someone else.

“Really?” Matilde does a twirl. “I’m rather pleased with my choice.”

Her gown is a columnar sheath, with beaded jewelflowers shimmering darkly against wine-red velvet, gathered up at one hip with a golden clasp. She likes how it’s somehow both loose fitting and suggestive. It’s her gran’s from when she was a Nightbird, made over in the newest style. Perhaps that’s why her dame doesn’t like it—she thinks it’s something Gran should have given her instead, just like her Nightbird gift. Intrinsic magic runs through most of the Great House bloodlines, passed down from woman to woman, but sometimes it skips a generation. Matilde doesn’t think her dame has ever gotten over it.

Dame purses her lips. “It’s just the cut is rather . . .”

Matilde smiles. “Rather ravishing?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of risqué.”

Gran smiles in a way Matilde has practiced for endless hours but has yet to master.

“Good fashion is never risqué,” she says. “Only a little daring.”

Dame’s lips pinch together even tighter.

Matilde runs a gloved finger down one of the jewelflowers’ beaded petals. It curls, trickster-kissed to open and close as she moves. Gran has tried to grow real jewelflowers in their garden, but they don’t do well outside the swamps of the Callistan. One bloomed last summer, though, its near-black petals begging to be touched. Gran caught her hand before she could. This jewel’s beauty is her trick, she said. She lures in prey by looking soft, and once they’re close . . .She let a ribbon fall, and Matilde watched the flower swallow it, sizzling as the fabric turned to ash.

She thinks of it often, that flower with a secret. Poison in the guise of something sweet.

“Let’s get to our table,” Dame says. “We must survey the Season’s prospects.”

Prospective suitors, she means. The army of bores she will pour onto Matilde’s and Æsa’s dance cards, trying to push them both into an advantageous match.

“Really, Dame,” Matilde says. “We only just got here.”

Her dame lowers her voice. “You’ve already had too many single Seasons. People are starting to talk of it.”

Matilde rolls her eyes. “I’m not a prime cut of meat at market. I won’t start to stink if you leave me in the sun.”

She doesn’t know why Dame froths over the issue—most Great House boys would eagerly wed a Nightbird. They apply to Leta, their Madam, for the privilege, even though they don’t know who they’re getting engaged to. From what Matilde has seen, they don’t seem much to mind. The suitors are Great House born, and always diamonds. But choosing from a small, curated jewel box isn’t the same as choosing for yourself.

She goes to hook an arm through Æsa’s, but Dame beats her to it. Æsa looks like a fish caught on a line. Matilde has the notion that her dame is pushing Samson toward Æsa—not that he needs the encouragement. With red-gold hair, lush curves, and green eyes, she is stunning. She has no money, but being a Nightbird is a dowry all its own.

She wonders if Æsa can see her dame’s machinations. Since she arrived, she’s seemed too homesick for the Illish Isles to see much at all.

“I’ll take a turn first,” Matilde says. “Do a bit of my own surveying.”

Dame frowns. “The last thing we need is you causing mischief.”

Matilde tugs at one long, silken glove. “I wasn’t planning on it.”

Dame sniffs. “You never do.”

Samson closes one eye behind his umber-colored mask, as if he might block out the brewing argument. “Really, ladies. Must we?”

Samson won’t be chastised for the cut of his outfit or made to dance with some sweaty lord with an underbite. Resentment burns hot on her tongue.

“Never fear,” Matilde says. “I don’t imagine I’ll break any rules between here and the refreshments table.”

Dame is clearly about to argue when Gran cuts in.

“Oura, it’s Matilde’s first party of the Season. Let’s allow her to enjoy it.”

Matilde waits as her dame pretends to consider it. She is not the head of House Dinatris, after all.

“Fine,” she says at last. “But don’t be long, Matilde. And no cocktails. I mean it.”

With that, she heads toward their table, tugging Æsa along with her. The girl looks back with don’t leave me eyes, her bright hair burning in the shifting light. Matilde should rescue her from Dame’s clutches, and she will—eventually. Samson follows, swiping a glass of Leta’s signature cocktail and raising it in a mock toast to Matilde.

Gran turns toward her, the grey-blue sequins of her simple mask winking. “Don’t mind your dame. You know how she worries.”

Matilde adjusts her own mask. “I’ve forgotten what she said already.”

It’s a lie, of course. Dame’s words from that afternoon are still circling. You cannot fly free forever. Eventually you must settle down and build a nest. Matilde doesn’t want to nest with someone who only wants her for her magic. She wants the freedom to...

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Verlag
Nancy Paulsen Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2023
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593463277
ISBN 13 
9780593463277
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
480
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Buchpark GmbH
gpsr@buchpark.de

Krügerweg 1
Trebbin
Brandenburg
14959
Deutschland

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