EBV3 Excerpt

The following is from where the key protagonist (Ki) meets another of the major characters in my manuscript Emperor's Blood.








...Ki cocked his head, thinking that there had to be a mistake, but he did not want to move the marker lest he get in trouble. He abandoned his examination of the maps which had yielded no help since apparently sketzine positions were not tracked like imperials and military forces were and walked into the other room, stopping in his tracks. Everything about the room was boringly alike to Kelveniska’s room back in Ship Killer, from the weapons racks to the crates and the messy mats, but across it there seemed to be a door, just a closet really. A cloak half obscured it.

Ki had never heard of drakoon having closets.

“What’s there?” asked Ki of nobody, fixated. Could this be his way out and his way to Hunter? Ki edged a bit closer, staring at the cloak that covered the wall nook’s door, trying to smell it in the tepid air. There was no window in this sleeping room; the only bit of fresh air came from the door to the hallway behind him and even that was rather stale. Drakoon valued safety over ventilation, making it difficult for Ki to get a notion of the cloak from a distance. He bent down, picking up one of the mats on the floor and snuffed it, detecting a very old, whispery trace of Sukra but nobody else. He let the mat drop and feeling bold, he edged closer to the cloak, picking up a corner and bringing it to his nose, then dropping it in shock.

Very logical ideas had made him assume the cloak might be Sukra’s, that the sketzine had left it behind whenever he had been here last, but the cloak did not smell like its owner had abandoned it months before as the mats and blankets at his feet on the dusty did. The mat Ki had sniffed could have been left ages ago, but the cloak smelled like whoever owned it had shucked it only hours or even moments ago, reeking of its owner. Ki nervously picked it back up, trying to decide which member of the imperial squadron it belonged to and realizing, rather horribly that it smelled like none of them. The cloth did not even smell like Benjkoi, smelling not of wet granite but salt spray and rain and cold, the dampened fabric still drying. Fish blood and mucus had touched this article, giving it more the smell of a fisherman’s slicker than an army man’s coat. Whoever owned it was male and older than Ki, knowledge which tipped off the animal portion of Ki’s brain that he might be in danger. Ki let go of the cloak and backed away from the closet door, knowing without being told that it was not safe, that not even Hunter and Keel’s location was worth entering the place.

Bolting back into the office, Ki ran to try the door even though he already knew it was locked. Hoping to find something to hit the door with to make a sound on the desk behind him, Ki turned around and felt every capillary in his body drain of blood.

Somebody was sitting at the desk now. Somebody who had not been there moments before, an armed somebody in Sloveniskan uniform who wore a head scarf covering their entire face who sat with grimy, muddy metal shod boots propped up on the desk, casually petting an immense pale silver tabby tom cat who had blue eyes so bright they nearly burned. The cat meowed at Ki and stood up, walking up the stranger’s crossed legs to bound onto the desk, watching Ki intensely as the man took his feet down, scooching forwards his chair to put his hands together on the desk. The only part of his face not covered by obscuring cloth was his eyes and they were an orange more killer than Ki had seen in any other member of his species.

“Hello Kine Ki. You weren’t trying to call for help just now were you?”

WIP. Subject to revision and editing.