Dust
Chapter One
Light from a high window
To know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody.-QUENTIN CRISP
At the corner of the window, a waxen spider spun.
Rien's trained eye noticed the spider, the way her spinning caught the light.
But Rien did not move her rag to break the threads and sweep the cobweb down.
She pressed to the wall between that window and the door and held her breath,
praying like the spider that no eye would fall on her, as Lady Ariane Conn and
her knights brought in the naked prisoner from Engine.
Rien knew the prisoner was of noble blood by her chains. They writhed at her
wrists, quicksilver loops of nanotech. An ancient colony, costlier than rubies
and more rare, but forestalling any untoward transformations.
Nobody would waste chains like that on a Mean when cheap extruded would ... read full excerpt from Dust ebook
