Shades of the Past by Melissa McShane EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Melissa McShane
- Language: English
- Genre: New Adult & College Fantasy
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
Ared-bellied fly buzzed high in one corner of the charter house, the buzz
growing louder briefly every time it bumped against the ceiling. To
Ginnevra, it looked like it was trying to find an exit, what with how intent it
was on that particular corner. She watched it meander first one way, then
another, relentlessly searching for a crack or hole that would let it escape
this overheated, brightly-lit room that smelled of candle wax and sweat and
Justicer Talliapanne’s unique perfume.
Even Ginnevra’s highly developed
sense of smell couldn’t decide whether the scent was apricots or lilacs. For
the most part, the scent faded into the background, but then Talliapanne
would flick her hair over her shoulder, releasing another whiff, and
Ginnevra’s senses leaped into action, trying to pin down the elusive smell.
Ginnevra breathed shallowly through her mouth, trying to prevent another
round of the guessing game, and watched the fly bob across the ceiling.
Devoyenne’s charter house, where legal cases were tried before a justicer,
was as old as the republic, and its age showed in the heavy ceiling beams
and the much-mended plaster between them, the corners still dark with soot
from the torches that had lit the room hundreds of years before.
The fly was
a dancing dot of red against the sooty background; if Ginnevra unfocused
her eyes, its flight traced a drunkard’s path of crimson across the ceiling.
A loud cough drew her attention away from the fly and back to the men and
women seated on the hard wooden pews. Light slanted through the clear
glass windows on the western wall, heating the air further. Almost everyone
on that side of the room had shifted away from the squares of sunlight, but
with how hot the room already was, Ginnevra didn’t think it much mattered
where anyone sat. The Sezarni, the people who had occupied the Lordagne
region long before the coming of the Goddess’s Faith, had called this time
of year “hiraldi,” which in their language meant something like “days of
being broiled alive.” Ginnevra liked the heat of late summer, but even she
had her limits, and the charter house was testing all of them.
She shifted her weight and reflected that at least she wasn’t wearing her
paladin’s plate mail armor. Talliapanne had looked disappointed when
Ginnevra had arrived at noon dressed in her usual jerkin and breeches rather
than her armor, but she hadn’t said anything critical, just eyed the
greatsword slung across Ginnevra’s shoulder and nodded politely. Since the
justicer had on her own robes of office, a long-sleeved knee-length black
robe over long black trousers, Ginnevra suspected Talliapanne wished she,
too, could have worn something cooler.
The man standing in front of the justicers’ desk sounded as if he was
wrapping up his statement. Ginnevra had stopped paying attention the third
time he repeated himself. If she were in charge, she’d have brought his
meandering story to a halt fifteen minutes earlier. But she was in the charter
house to learn, not to enforce her whims, and she was enough conscious of
her lack of legal understanding not to let her impatience interfere with that
learning.
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