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    Silent Blade
    Silent Blade
    Silent Blade
    Ebook72 pages1 hour

    Silent Blade

    By Ilona Andrews

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    About this ebook

    The World of Kinsmen

    Family is everything. Talent is power. And revenge is sweet.

    In a distant, future world Kinsmen—small powerful groups of genetically and technologically advanced families—control vast financial empires. They are their own country, their own rulers, and their only limits are other Kinsmen. The struggle for power is a bloody, full-contact sport: in business, on the battlefield...and sometimes in the bedroom.

    Old hatreds die hard. Old love dies harder.
    br>On the planet Rada, Meli Galdes’ family is of minor rank, and were relying on her marriage to Celino, the razor-smart, ruthless leader of the powerful Carvanna empire. When he abruptly breaks their engagement, he ruins her family and guarantees that Meli will never marry, as no suitor will oppose the rich and influential Carvannas.

    But Meli has a rare, secret, lethal—and valuable—talent. As a melder of energy, she’s capable of severing anything in her path. So she ‘leaves’ her family and trains to become one of the best and most lethal of assassins, all the while covertly guarding her family’s interests. Now she’s ready to quit; but she has one more assignment.

    To kill the man who ruined her life.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNYLA
    Release dateJun 2, 2009
    ISBN9781641970617
    Silent Blade
    Author

    Ilona Andrews

    Ilona Andrews is the pseudonym for a husband-and-wife writing team, Gordon and Ilona. They currently reside in Texas with their two children and numerous dogs and cats. The couple are the #1 New York Times and USA Today bestselling authors of the Kate Daniels and Kate Daniels World novels as well as The Edge and Hidden Legacy series. They also write the Innkeeper Chronicles series, which they post as a free weekly serial. For a complete list of their books, fun extras, and Innkeeper installments, please visit their website at http://www.ilona-andrews.com/.

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    4/5

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    • 4/5
      Well, this was a surprise. I loved the twist at the end. Unique.
    • 3/5
      Nawww nothing like a little bit of romance on a rainy day.
    • 4/5
      I love the membership! The app doesn't seem to crash or have bugs in it. It's definitely worth the membership cost without a doubt. I wish the app didn't burn up so much cpu%. It's often hard to see things grouped in series so I leave for the publishers page to see things more simplcticly.
    • 5/5
      Well-crafted short story from the authors of the Kate Daniels series. If you like Ilona Andrews (and I do), this is well worth a read.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      What a powerful little tale a unrequited love and revenge. Ilona and Gordon know how to take the depth of heart ache in a romance to a change in the behavior of the sufferer. What a great story- loved the magic powers of both characters.

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    Book preview

    Silent Blade - Ilona Andrews

    Chapter One

    In the course of space colonization, there arose a need for humans with enhanced abilities. Men and women who could survive harsh conditions, who were superb warriors, gifted hunters, and brilliant scientists.

    Some enhancements were technological in nature: an array of implants with various functions. Their effect ended with the death of the person who carried them. Other improvements were biological and these enhanced capabilities persisted, lingering in the bloodline, changing and mutating into new abilities in the offspring of the original carrier. It was quickly realized that the advantage of these biological enhancements lay in their exclusivity. Thus, the biologically enhanced united and shut down all further biological modification.

    Collectively known as kinsmen, these exceptional beings gave rise to several dozen families, which now form the financial elite of the colonized planets. The kinsmen strictly control their numbers and their loyalty to their families is absolute. Like the Sicilian mafia families and feuding Corsican clans of the old planet, the kinsmen exist in tense competition with each other. It is that competition that rules the economy, begins and ends wars, and drags human civilization to greater technological and scientific progress.

    Chapter Two

    Place your hands on the panel in front of you. The bodyguard, in a sleek grey uniform of Canopus Inc., nodded at the plasti-steel console that sprouted from the luxurious rug like a mushroom on a thin metal stalk.

    Meli smiled. Four high-caliber gun turrets swiveled on their mounts on the ceiling, tracking her every movement as she rested her fingers on the panel, a thin bracelet sliding down on her right wrist. She had already passed through a number of metal detectors and submitted to a search and a chemical sniffer. Only one final test remained.

    Light slid along her fingertips as a complex array of scanners feverishly assessed her temperature, heat, and chemical emissions, sampled the composition of her sweat and oil on her fingertips, and probed her body for foreign influences. A long moment stretched. A calm female voice with the crisp unaccented pronunciation of the computer announced, Implant scan, class A through C, negative. Biological modification negative.

    The guard relaxed slightly. The tense line of his shoulders eased. A person like her had no chance against a bodyguard equipped with a combat implant that sharpened his reflexes and increased his strength.

    You may step down, he permitted. Follow me.

    She walked behind him to the large wooden door polished to an amber gleam. Maruvian pine, unthinkable luxury. The guard tapped a code on his wrist. The door slid aside, revealing a second, steel partition. The steel wall split in half and parted. Meli strode into a spacious office. The door whispered shut behind her.

    Three people waited in the office: an older man behind a desk cut from a single block of malachite, and two bodyguards, a woman and a man, both lean and sharp, positioned at the walls on opposite sides of her.

    She smiled at them as well.

    The man behind the desk leaned forward slightly. Agostino Canopus, thirty-eight, a kinsman, fourth son of Vierra Canopus, Arbitrator Second Class. Of average height, he sat with the easy authority of a man completely confident in his position. His hair, a dark copper, was cut and styled with artful precision. His skin was perfect. His eyes, two dark chunks of green, fastened on her. In a split second she was evaluated, measured and approved.

    Sit down. Agostino indicated a plain stool bolted to the floor with a casual sweep of his hand.

    Meli sat.

    You came here to become a retainer of Canopus family, he said. Why?

    Power.

    In the financial world, where most disputes were decided by arbitration, the arbitrators wielded unprecedented influence.

    Agostino nodded. The answer seemed to satisfy him. Your test scores are exceptional.

    She accepted the compliment with a nod. So is my reaction time.

    His eyebrows came together. What…

    She leapt off the chair. Obeying her mental command, a long ribbon of transparent green whipped from the narrow bracelet on her wrist. The ene-ribbon slashed the female bodyguard, whipped across the door, and kissed the male bodyguard across the chest. Before Agostino’s lips shaped the next word, Meli sat back onto the chair. Behind her two bodies slid apart, cleaved in two. The air smelled of fried electronics. She had disabled the control panel on the door.

    Agostino surveyed the door. You’re a melder.

    Yes.

    Melders like her were an extremely rare commodity. The mutation that permitted her to operate an energy ribbon came along once in every fifteen million, and most possessing it never discovered their abilities. In the world of combat implants and biochemical modifications, melders were the extraordinary natural-born freaks.

    Agostino leaned back, one leg over the other, pleating his long fingers on his knee. What’s this about?

    The Galdes family sends its regards.

    Ten days ago he had presided over the arbitration between Galdes and Morgans. He’d ruled in favor of Morgans, finding no wrongdoing in the hostile takeover of Galdes’s Valemia Inc.

    "It was a fair

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