Read Online Empire of Dust by Eleanor Herman - Free Book Online

the middle of the road, only to be edged off again when several merchant carts packed with goods trundle toward them. The passengers cheerfully call out greetings, and one, a little freckle-faced girl, waves at Zo.
    Zo quickly turns her head away, unable to wave. Roxana , she thinks. Her six-year-old half sister, who followed her out of the palace and down the Royal Road, only to be killed by the slave traders. At night, she still hears the screams.
    No, Zo can never go home. It wouldn’t be the same without Roxana. Who would she tell bedtime stories to, the old tales of valiant heroes rescuing beautiful princesses? Zo told Roxana only the happy stories she learned from Mandana, not the ones that kept her up all night when she was small; really Mandana should have known better. Corpses cracking open their tombs to eat the living. Evil jinns flying into people’s mouths and possessing their bodies. A group of murderers called the Assassins’ Guild who always slashed the chests of their victims with a bloody X.
    Zo starts to laugh at the memories of herself sleeping under the bed rather than on it to fool the corpses, jinns, and Assassins when they came for her. But her laugh turns into a little sob. Roxana will never be old enough to hear those stories. Never. A dull ache courses through her and she tries to stop all thought, to concentrate on the horse’s rhythm.
    After a couple of hours, the landscape changes into crumpled white cliffs that look like wet laundry thrown in a heap. And beyond them, gray cones of stone rise up. As the sun slides low on the horizon, they enter a town of towering pointed houses, four and five stories tall, each carved out of rock formations and leaning toward the west as if pushed there by the wind. Rooms have been dug out of the stone, and Zo sees an intricate series of wooden ladders and stairs that connects them all.
    â€œThis is our last posting house along the Royal Road,” Ochus says, pointing to several rock-cut dwellings with high walls in between and a courtyard in the center. Creaking in the wind over the main gate is the usual wooden sign of a running horse carrying a blue sack of mail and the posting house’s number; this one is 374. The comfortable posting houses—located every fifteen miles or so—were built for the couriers to sleep, eat, and get fresh horses, though soldiers and other travelers can use them, too.
    â€œTomorrow we head northeast,” Ochus says, wiping the road dust off his face, “on a smaller road.”
    Zo nods carelessly, but her thoughts are racing. She will miss the comforts of the posting houses—the clean beds, water to wash with, and delicious tavern food—but their barricades slam shut at dusk and open at dawn. She could never run away even without the manacles, which, she knows, Ochus uses only to humiliate her. But perhaps—if he gets careless or starts to trust her off the Royal Road—she could escape.
    When they turn their horses into the stables and try to arrange for new ones the following morning, the horse master shakes his head sadly. “We don’t have any to offer,” he says. “We keep getting reports that horses—and their riders—are meeting with...accidents in the east. Even royal couriers have...gone missing.”
    â€œWhat accidents?” Ochus asks in irritation. The man shrugs. Ochus runs his hands through his tangled brown hair. “But our horses are exhausted,” he says, “and one of them is favoring his right leg.”
    But there are no fresh horses to be had.
    With Ochus grumbling by her side, they enter the tavern and she immediately knows it’s very different from the other posting house taverns they have dined in. This one has been dug out of stone. It’s smaller and cooler, and Zo feels the crushing weight of rock all around her. She smells roasted meat, fresh bread, spilled beer, and the smoke of resin-soaked torches. It seems