Bound in Blood

Начало книги

Three days out from Tentir, the randon college, they found the first body.

The jewel-jaws led them to it in a fluttering cloud, changing color against each surface that they passed—tawny for the bark of a late summer birch, gold for its leaves, stormy blue for a thickening sky. When they landed on the back of the cadet’s forage coat, however, they crinkled their wings in disappointment and turned the dusky brown of a bruised plum.

The slighter of the two cadets chased them off with her gloved hands and turned over the body.

Her companion caught his breath. “Lady, what happened to him?”

“I don’t know. He’s Randir, anyway. Look at how his token scarf is tied.”

They stared down at a face that should have been young, but that had sunken in on itself under parched and browning skin. A faint crackle came from his chest as if something small and tired shivered there. He was breathing. Then, horribly, his eyelids stirred and opened. The eyes themselves were almost opaque, without pupils, but they moved as the irises shifted, searching.

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