Shadow's Son by Shirley Meier, S.M. Stirling and Karen Wehrstein ...

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
their blows, shouting, crying, going down on his knees. Another child ran, though no one was chasing her,
screaming "Mother! Father!", her formality strange in the chaos.Its always the children who suffer
most . Megan knew. For an instant she was five years old again, in the riots in F'talezon, breathing
furnace-hot air. The smell was the same; what race the residents were made no difference, it seemed, to
that.
The smoke was thick enough now to make the streets dark as at dusk. Flames cut the old brick of a
wall like knives, only a few houses and yards away; the air singed, full of sparks and burning flakes of
ash. She pulled her tunic up over her head, covering her nose and mouth against the rancid smoke, and
ran. Someone screamed close by—long, long shrieks one after the other, high over the thunder of fire.
An Arkan boy Lixand's age with a toy sword stood in the door of a house, the picture of defiance, with
a Yeoli woman in front of him; his stand was useless, the house already on fire from behind. He lunged
with both hands, trying to hold the sword straight; the Yeoli stepped aside, hit him in the back of the head
with the edge of her shield, kicked him out of the way and stepped into the house.
Right, then left—then a blank wall where the street should continue, a building in the way.A bloody
building —in more ways than one; smears of grey mixed with the blood, the stink of bile, piss, shit and
blood cutting even the smoke; a body lay with blond head broken open in a splatter pattern.
She hesitated, thinking she'd got turned around. The fire wasthere , she couldn't go back or get trapped
by it.Up. Look from the fikken roof . She yanked out her climbing claws rather than take the gloves off,
clambered up the new brick wall, over the circles carved under the eaves and over the edge.My map's
out of date, dammit. This was just built, and now it's burning . The tiles were warm through her
gloves and she could near them cracking in the neat, the sound like bones in a dog's teeth. She felt the
hairs on the inside of her nose crinkle as she breathed. Four or five houses down a roof fell in, loosing
whip-tongues of flame to roar up into the sky.
No sack, you said, Chevenga. I remember your eyes, so honest. No sack.
The house behind her, blazing curtains waving out of broken upper windows, bricks bulging outward,
crumbling, ready to fall at any moment. She slid over the peak of the roof to the other side, snatched at
the map, the roaring fire-wind trying to tug her off the roof, into the fire, or pull the breath out of her
lungs.Stopping to read a map in the middle of the bottom furnace of Halya, shit, shit, shit …
The street twisted the other way from what her map showed, but the one beyond looked right. Wind
tore the paper almost in half; she grabbed it and flattened against the tiles. There—the Avenue of
Statuary.
Fishguts. Everyone's here. Of course, where else? This was where the good stuff was. Yeolis and
Lakans and Enchians ran back and forth carrying gold-leafed chairs, paintings, bundles of bright satin
clothing, jewel boxes. They danced in the fountains with gold chains and baubles and sparkly stones
dangling over their grimed oily armor, carried huge glass vases out of the houses just to smash them,
made bonfires of books just to see something valuable destroyed,stupid assholes , waving their arms in
the air like savages at a fire altar. A crowd of warriors laughed and danced and sang around a cart with a
huge cask on it, filling cups from the casks. A dozen Arkans,Aitzas by the few waist-long strands of their
hair not hacked off, were harnessed to the cart like horses, with blinders and bits in their mouths even,
their faces dead with shock. The cobbles shone red with wine and blood.
Statues. A bronze horse being pulled down by a motley group of mercenaries, beating on it just to hear
the hollow boom, a marble form hacked off at the ankles, leaving sandalled feet on the plinth amidst