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

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"Orphanage not a good idea? Why?"
He hesitated, biting the inside of his cheek. "I was already in one. They sold mehere ."
Megan just blinked at him, feeling anger pop like a lava-bubble inside her.Isn't there one decent person
in this whole maggot-ridden place ? "Well then, not an orphanage. Until things are settled down, we
won't decide. You can be part of our household until then, all right?"
The boy flung himself on his face, hugging her ankles. "Don't do that." She bent over, hauled; him up
away from her, by the shoulders, careful not to claw. "You're not a slave. Don't grovel." Megan caught a
glimpse of Sova's eyes, fixed on the boy with the mix of sympathy and irony, and knew she was thinking
of a past moment, on a dais in Brahvniki, nearly two years ago.
"What do you mean no one is allowed in to see him? He was wounded, you say; fine, don't friends visit
the convalescent?"
The Yeoli guard shifted, frowning down at Megan. "I'm sorrhy,kere ranya." Sister foreigner , that
meant. They'd never called her that before. "Orders."
"Let me speak to your superior." The guard called a squire from inside the building. She was at the first
door off the main square, away from the main steps of the Marble Palace and the three-story-high gates;
the one wing of the University building whose tower she'd seen fall, was a long block behind her, still
smoldering. The chestnuts and cherry trees along the Avenue of Statuary stood charred and withered.
It was morning. The City had quieted down. Yeoli patrols stopped arsonists at least, and the looting had
tailed off as the more obvious targets were stripped bare. She had seen plenty of troops camped here
and there, mostly sodden-drunk or sleeping it off; the better-organized units were busy. Here, a Schvait
wagon-train, heaped with bulgy loads under businesslike tarpaulins; there, Hyerne kicking burdened
prisoners along to add to an enormous heap of fabrics and weapons and chests and whatnot, with
Peyepallo standing on top of it dressed in an Imperial high-priest's robe, directing. There, a huge column
of prisoners under Enchian guards, women and children mostly, ready to be hustled out of the City
before the Yeolis collected their wits and remembered their emancipationist convictions.So where are
you to save them, people-wills-one , Megan thought,who was going to make them your citizens ?
She tapped her foot impatiently, looking the other way, along the wall. It was covered in carvings, from
the base right up to the top, gilded around the Imperial speaking balcony. At the far end of the square
there was a small public park, and where the wall turned away from the square an ornamental tower rose
over the flowering bougainvillaea, the fist-sized cut crystal at its peak still catching the sun though the
gilding on the roof was sooted. The smoke from the fires hung like eye-stinging fog, making it hard to see
across the marblea square.
A patter of feet, and the squire was back with a piece of paper which he passed to the guard. "Kere
ranya, thesemanakraseye-lmperator is seeing no one," he rattled off. "Healers orders as per Emao-e
Lazaila, signed, Estennunga Shae-Fiyara for Krero Saranyera, Guard Captain."
Semanakraseye-lmperator; what a mouthful . It was odd, though; Chevenga's policy was not to let
people in no matter now badly he was hurt—if he was conscious—one at the very least to carry his
message to everyone else, in which case she should have heard it being announced. Dead? No; they'd
announce that, and make Arko his funeral pyre. No announcements had come out of the Marble Palace