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We Are Blood and Thunder

Kesia Lupo
Chapters (32)
  1. PROLOGUE
  2. ONE
  3. TWO
  4. THREE
  5. FOUR
  6. FIVE
  7. SIX
  8. SEVEN
  9. EIGHT
  10. NINE
  11. TEN
  12. ELEVEN
  13. TWELVE
  14. THIRTEEN
  15. FOURTEEN
  16. FIFTEEN
  17. SIXTEEN
  18. SEVENTEEN
  19. EIGHTEEN
  20. NINETEEN
  21. TWENTY
  22. TWENTY-ONE
  23. TWENTY-TWO
  24. TWENTY-THREE
  25. TWENTY-FOUR
  26. TWENTY-FIVE
  27. TWENTY-SIX
  28. TWENTY-SEVEN
  29. TWENTY-EIGHT
  30. TWENTY-NINE
  31. EPILOGUE
  32. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
cover

To Jeff

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In the Year of Kings 554, the mountain city-state of Duke’s Forest was beset by a mysterious vapor. It started out as little more than a few wisps of gray cloud, emanating bafflingly from the earth of the lower town, ruining the townsfolk’s garden crops. But gradually, month by month, it grew—vapor became mist, and mist became fog, and the fog, eventually, became a storm cloud.

Inside the cloud, a traveler could expect to encounter flashes of light and rumbling noises, sudden gusts and squalls of thin, poisonous rain that stung bare skin. And sometimes, like the eye of a storm, the cloud appeared to sleep—as still and immutable as the mountain itself.

In the first two years, trade was crippled, domestic animals sickened, the rose gardens of the upper town were ruined—yet the cloud, insatiable, crept uphill toward the castle at the mountain’s summit. By the start of the third year, the mountain was swallowed up entirely … and that’s when the Pestilence came.

At the start of the fourth year, the Duke shut and chained the city gates, declaring a state of quarantine. After six years, the people of Duke’s Forest, ravaged by disease, cut off from the outside world, and shrouded from the sky, had sunk into isolation and despair.

Duke’s Forest: A History

PROLOGUE

A Cryptling

Before the storm cloud

Lena swept the last of the dust into her sack and stood up tall, wiping a grimy hand across her forehead. Her brass lantern flickered across the crypt’s rough-hewn walls as Hunter slunk past, a twitching rat hanging from his jaws. He dropped it and purred at her, before savaging the poor creature’s torso. The largest mouser prowling the crypts, Hunter was vicious, ginger, and apparently immortal. For the hundredth time, Lena wondered why he’d picked her bed in which to sleep, leaving dubious gifts of rodents and birds at its foot.

Lena tied the dust sack shut and hoisted it over her shoulder, casting one last look at the empty, fresh-polished sarcophagus where the body would be laid in the morning for its last rites, the Descent. Her stomach twisted, and she swallowed hard as bile rose in her throat. Earlier in the afternoon, she’d been allowed to watch while Mortician Vigo prepared the body in one of the special rooms beneath the gardens. She had managed—but only by digging her nails hard into her palms—to stop herself from fainting.