The Liberation
Page 41
That stranger—he had been all kinds of wrong. And the way that he’d wanted to touch her—that felt wrong, too. Nettie couldn’t recall being touched in kindness, not in all her years with Pap and Mam. Maybe that was why she understood horses. Mustangs were wild things captured by thoughtless men, roped and branded and beaten until their heads hung low, until it took spurs and whips to move them in rage and fear. But Nettie could feel the wildness inside their hearts, beating under skin that quivered under the flat of her palm. She didn’t break a horse, she gentled it. And until someone touched her with that same kindness, she would continue to shy away, to bare her teeth and lower her head.
Someone, surely, had been kind to her once, long ago. She could feel it in her bones. But Pap said she’d been tossed out like trash, left on the prairie to die. Which she almost had, tonight. Again.
Pap and Mam were asleep on the porch, snoring loud as thunder. When Nettie crept past them and into the house, she had four shiny teeth in one fist, a wad of cash from the stranger’s pocket, and more questions than there were stars.
BY IAN TREGILLIS
THE ALCHEMY WARS
The Mechanical
The Rising
The Liberation
THE MILKWEED TRIPTYCH
Bitter Seeds
The Coldest War
Necessary Evil
Something More Than Night
1 In Pepys’s day, these curiosities were commonly known as “Dutch tears.”
2 The existence of Praxis is inferred solely from references elsewhere in Newton’s works, as well as from a single mention of “N, PRX.” in the unpublished notes of Christiaan Huygens. The full manuscript, if it existed, is believed to have been lost ca. 1674–76.
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Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by Ian Tregillis
Excerpt from Wake of Vultures copyright © 2015 by D. S. Dawson
Cover design by Wendy Chan
Cover copyright © 2016 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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First ebook edition: December 2016
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ISBNs: 978-0-316-24805-1(trade paperback); 978-0-316-24804-4(ebook); 978-1-478-91344-3 (audio book downloadable)
E3-20160913-JV-NF