A Trickster in the Ashes
Page 42
“Will you bloody leave off!” he shouted, hearing tears in his own voice, torn between stopping Harrish and following him. “It’s no use! You can’t get away!”
The parlor door burst open. Emily Tausseroy fluttered in, pink and breathless, ribboned hat in hand. Nadine shadowed her, disapproving. “I’m late,” she wailed. “Such horrible things always happen when I’m—darling! Sluizhe! Have you done your nut?”
“Stupid. Out,” Sluizhe squawked at her.
Burns walked over to the potbellied little man and slapped him, silencing him.
“There’s a bit of an emergency, Em,” Crispin said, but she mistook him. Like a maypole toppling, she fell to her knees beside Mickey.
“What is he doing here? Crispin, what is he doing here?” Her upper body, suspended horizontal to the floor, swayed like a bough heavy with cherry blossom. Her hands undulated over Mickey without touching him. “Crispin—”
“My soul, Em, you’re a sight for sore eyes,” Crispin said. “Don’t do that in front of the Disciples.”
“Huh. Always finish what you start, that’s my motto,” Harrish said with unconscious irony—his richest yet, Crispin thought. “Kateralbin, I hope you realize I’m ceding you the field—hope you remember how the game’s played—good luck—” He defenestrated himself with a crash. Nadine, silent and apropos, offered Crispin his coat. He tugged it on.
Oh, Death was never an enemy of ours!
We laughed at him, we leagued with him, old chum.
No soldier’s paid to kick against his powers.
We laughed, knowing that better men would come,
And greater wars; when each proud fighter brags
He wars on Death—for Life; not men—for flags.
—Wilfred Owen
About the Author
FELICITY SAVAGE spent a peripatetic and wholly idyllic childhood in rural corners of the British Isles such as the Outer Hebrides, Connemara, and West Cork. She also lived in Paris and in the Pyrenées. At the age of fourteen she moved to the U.S.A. She attended public high school in Massachusetts, where her two younger brothers, Darragh, eighteen, and Tristram, twelve, still live. In 1992 she relocated to New York to attend Columbia University, where she majored in East Asian Languages and Cultures, specializing in Japanese. Since then she has held a variety of tedious jobs in the retail sector. Though she resents tourists when she is trying to sell them things, she has been a tourist herself in Japan, Kenya, Germany, and Jamaica. She hopes to keep traveling until she finds somewhere she would like to settle down.
She has been writing every day since she was twelve. Her debut novel is Humility Garden, which came out when she was eighteen; its sequel is Delta City. In her early teens she wrote two long novels that, since they were less derivative than autobiographical, she may someday have another look at. For the moment, she is interested in wars, murders, and other extreme experiences which she feels more or less qualified to explore. Her next project is a mystery set during World War I and entitled The War Comes to Acidleigh. After that she intends to attempt a thriller about presidential politics. It is her opinion that fiction is the best tool we possess as a race to ensure civilization’s continuity and to inculcate respect for history in those who think Utopia will be a result of cumulative scientific breakthroughs.
She currently lives in Harlem. Her outside interests are music and meeting people. She is twenty-two.
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Books by Felicity Savage
EVER: The War in the Waste
EVER: The Daemon in the Machine
EVER: A Trickster in the Ashes
Published by HarperPrism
Copyright
10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022-5299
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1998 by Felicity Savage
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © MARCH 2010 ISBN: 978-0-061-05834-9
HarperCollins®, ®, and HarperPrism® are trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
HarperPrism books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. For information, please write: Special Markets Department, HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022-5299.
Cover illustration copyright© 1998 by Romas Kukalis
First printing: June 1998
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Savage, Felicity.
A trickster in the ashes / Felicity Savage.
p. cm.—(Ever; pt. 3)
(trade pbk.)
I. Title. II. Series: Savage, Felicity. Ever; pt. 3.
PS3569.A8237T75 1998
813’.54—dc21 97-40360
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