She Who Rides the Storm (The Gods-Touched Duology) - Softcover

Buch 1 von 2: The Gods-Touched Duology

Sangster, Caitlin

 
9781534466128: She Who Rides the Storm (The Gods-Touched Duology)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1534466126 ISBN 13: 9781534466128
Verlag: Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

In this atmospheric, “tightly-woven” (Brandon Sanderson, New York Times bestselling author) YA fantasy that is Wicked Saints meets There Will Come a Darkness, four teens are drawn into a high-stakes heist in the perilous tomb of an ancient shapeshifter king.

Long ago, shapeshifting monsters ruled the Commonwealth using blasphemous magic that fed on the souls of their subjects. Now, hundreds of years later, a new tomb has been uncovered, and despite the legends that disturbing a shapeshifter’s final resting place will wake them once again, the Warlord is determined to dig it up.

But it isn’t just the Warlord who means to brave the traps and pitfalls guarding the crypt.

A healer obsessed with tracking down the man who murdered her twin brother.
A runaway member of the Warlord’s Devoted order, haunted by his sister’s ghost.
An elitist archaeologist bent on finding the cure to his magical wasting disease.
A girl desperate to escape the cloistered life she didn’t choose.

All four are out to steal the same cursed sword rumored to be at the very bottom of the tomb. But of course, some treasures should never see the light of day, and some secrets are best left buried…

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Caitlin Sangster is the author of the Last Star Burning trilogy and the Gods-Touched duology. She is also the founder and cohost of the Lit Service podcast. She grew up in the backwoods of northern California, has lived in China, Taiwan, Utah, and Montana and can often be found dragging her poor husband and four children onto hikes that feature far too many bears. You can find her online at CaitlinSangster.com.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter 1: An Aukincer’s Pot CHAPTER 1 An Aukincer’s Pot
When Anwei stepped into the trade advisor’s private study, she smelled death. The odor burned in her nose, the dregs of it seared into the ornate desk chair, the walls. It was rank in the very air.

“Don’t touch anything,” she whispered to her partner, Knox, as he slipped through the window to stand next to her.

“I thought the point was to touch things.” Knox looked around the moonlit study. “Stealing usually requires physical contact.” He pulled off the scarf covering his face, caught Anwei’s pointed look at his bared nose and mouth, and grudgingly replaced it. The last year of working together had taught him to respect Anwei’s acute sense of smell, even if he didn’t really understand it.

Their contract was simple. Steal the original Trib figurine the trade advisor had acquired through blackmail. Get it to the magistrate by the next day. It had nothing to do with justice for the poor artist whose sought-after work had been stolen, so far as Anwei could tell. City wardens would have been put on the job instead of a thief if that were the case. No, it seemed more like the magistrate, whose jurists sent thieves and blackmailers to the shipping crews every day, just wanted the little Trib maiden for himself and was angry the governor’s trade advisor had gotten to it first.

Anwei walked over to the rose-carved desk at the center of the room, her eyes glued to the small copper pot that appeared to be the source of the noxious smell. Kneeling by the desk, she opened the advisor’s drawers one by one to look for the figurine, wishing the magistrate had warned her that this particular bureaucrat was messing around with an aukincer. The concoction in the pot was clearly an aukincer’s work—just the smell of it sent prickles down her throat with a silvery, sharp sort of glee, as if even inhaling the air near it would slice her lungs to ribbons. She didn’t want to think what ingesting it would do. But anyone stupid enough to go to an aukincer for magic instead of a healer for medicine deserved what they got.

Knox slid past the desk to inspect the shelves next to it. “Is that what I think it is?” He nodded to the pot. “You’re not going to try to witch the aukincer’s residue off me once we get out of here, are you?”

Anwei rolled her eyes. “If ‘witching’ would fix you, I would have done it a long time ago, Knox.” She pulled open the last two desk drawers, her mind jumping to the list of herbs that would best counter the toxic cloud coming from the pot. She closed the final drawer with a delicate click. No figurine.

No figurine—and no sign of what Anwei was actually looking for in this house either.

The sky-cursed stench of aukincy made it impossible to smell much of anything else in this room. She stood and turned to check the display behind the desk. If the tip that had led her to this house was wrong, she was going to crack some Crowteeth heads. It had been two years since she’d had a solid lead, and if her gang contacts thought they could mess with her—

“Aukincers don’t even promise more years of being young.” Knox’s whisper made Anwei look up. He was by the window, lifting the reed blind to look out. “Just more years—and probably cursed years too, since it’s all supposed to come from forbidden shapeshifter magic. If it were between dying when I’m old and bent, and dying when I’m a few years more old and bent—”

“We all know how you feel about medicine, Knox. Not that this abomination counts as medicine. Even shapeshifters would turn their noses up at this stuff. Why are you over there?”

“We all?” He smirked. “Is that the royal ‘we,’ or have you started sampling your own herbs?”

“Did you hear something out there?” The beginnings of worry pulled Anwei’s limbs tight as he replaced the blind. “We should have three more minutes before the guards do a sweep.”

“I thought I heard footsteps.” He turned from the window. “Maybe I imagined it.”

Knox didn’t imagine things like footsteps. “Let’s get this done and get out of here, just in case. Help me with these last shelves.” Anwei moved toward the case flanking the door, then froze midstep when something other than the stink of aukincy hit her nose. A flare of anticipation burst through her. She stood still, taking a much longer, deeper breath, and sorted through the scents: the sharp bite of ink; the deep, earthy musk of the wooden desk; the sour tang of the wool rug, with coppery aftertones for the dye.

Anwei breathed out. She smelled nothing that mattered.

Barely stopping herself from swearing, Anwei turned her attention to the case she’d meant to search. Two years since she’d found even a hint of her brother’s killer in this sweltering cook pot of a city. Two years since the letter that had sent her running to Chaol. He’d been here, and then he’d disappeared.

Frustration brewed inside Anwei. The tip to investigate the trade advisor had been so promising—and then she’d gotten a request to take something from this very house. It had been perfect. But every lead that came through Anwei’s system of contacts throughout the Commonwealth seemed perfect to her. That was what hope did to you. It made you see things that weren’t really there.

Arun’s face seemed to be imprinted on every surface in the little study—the desk, the walls, the stupid pot—her twin’s expression just as aggressively bored as the day he’d tried to persuade her to sneak away from the town council meeting back on Beilda. The last time she’d seen him before the snake-tooth man got him.

Anwei moved away from the display case, then paused again when a new scent rose to the surface, a thin coat of sickly yellow that festered in her nostrils.

Ah, so that’s why he called an aukincer. The trade advisor was sick.

Of course, she couldn’t be sure of specifics of his illness without finding the man himself. She sighed. Rich men were so hopeful and so stupid at once, as if money could solve any problem, including the ones inside you. But an aukincer’s elixirs weren’t going to help the trade advisor do anything but die faster.

“Found it!” Knox slid over to a side table. Anwei jerked from her train of thought and joined him. The little statue was all cheekbones and full skirts, her coquettish look enough to earn her a place in the lovers’ temple next to Freia, their patron goddess. Knox reached out to take the figurine, but his fingers stopped just shy of it. He looked at Anwei. “Is it safe to touch?”

Anwei sniffed experimentally, but it was only for show. The aukincy contamination wasn’t so bad on this side of the room. “I think you’d at least get to the door with it. Maybe even out of the compound.” She scrunched her nose, looking at the little figurine. It was pretty enough, but thirty bronze coins for a girl made of stone? It wasn’t just health that rich men were stupid about.

Knox was still staring at her with a concerned frown, so Anwei gave him a bright smile. At least the magistrate would have his...

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Verlag
Margaret K. McElderry Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2022
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1534466126
ISBN 13 
9781534466128
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
624
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV, GPSR Europäische Union
info@simonandschuster.nl

Herculesplein 96
AA Utrecht
3584
Niederlande

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Hardcover