Streets Running Like a River

By Vera Nazarian

I got off the plane at Venettia with two swords...

In a world of the global "Iron Honeycomb" all countries are isolated from others behind impenetrable geopolitical walls....

All international travel is strictly controlled or forbidden.

All firearms and long-distance weapons have been replaced with intimate hand-to-hand combat and cold steel, reminiscent of Shakespeare's Verona.

In this story set in the cruel world of Pantheon, an aging, disillusioned master swordswoman coming home from a special foreign assignment returns to the old Venice of her birth and the dissipated noble House she is sworn to protect. . . .

Discover an elegant, bloody, swashbuckling vision of the future by two-time Nebula Award Nominated author and award-winning artist Vera Nazarian.

Streets Running Like a River

A Pantheon Story

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vera Nazarian
• Release date: Jul 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386414018

Vera Nazarian

VERA NAZARIAN is a two-time Nebula Award Finalist, 2018 Dragon Award Finalist, award-winning artist, a member of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and a writer with a penchant for moral fables and stories of intense wonder, true love, and intricacy.She immigrated to the USA from the former USSR as a kid, sold her first story at the age of 17, and since then has published numerous works in anthologies and magazines, and has seen her fiction translated into eight languages.She is the author of critically acclaimed novels DREAMS OF THE COMPASS ROSE and LORDS OF RAINBOW, the outrageous parodies MANSFIELD PARK AND MUMMIES and NORTHANGER ABBEY AND ANGELS AND DRAGONS, and most recently, PRIDE AND PLATYPUS: MR. DARCY'S DREADFUL SECRET in her humorous and surprisingly romantic Supernatural Jane Austen Series, as well as the Renaissance epic fantasy COBWEB BRIDE Trilogy.Her bestselling and award-winning series THE ATLANTIS GRAIL is now a cross-genre phenomenon -- a high-octane YA / teen dystopian apocalyptic science fiction adventure, romance, and historical mystery thriller -- has been optioned for film, and is in development as a major motion picture franchise or TV series.After many years in Los Angeles, Vera lives in a small town in Vermont, and uses her Armenian sense of humor and her Russian sense of suffering to bake conflicted pirozhki and make art.Her official author website is http://www.veranazarian.comTo be notified when new books come out, subscribe to the Mailing List:http://eepurl.com/hKaeo

Book preview

Dedication

To Tanith Lee

Streets Running Like a River

I got off the plane at Venettia with two swords. They were poor quality asps, with long thin epee blades that I’d gotten at the airport gift shop in Roma Maiorra before boarding the plane for the connecting flight, having checked in my own unnecessarily—forgetting for a moment it was Venettia I was coming to, the birthland of naked steel.

One of the swords had a tiny uncomfortable three-ring grip, so that I wondered how I’d get my fingers through that contraption, and whoever comes up with these useless designs. Until it occurred to me that the three rings formed a clover pattern, and it was one of the popular House affiliations. Pick one and you automatically become an honorary member for the duration of your stay. And I had now unwittingly affiliated myself with Poventa. The House of the Poor.

I was a thoughtless idiot.

The Houses were advertizing again. I had thought that nonsense over and done with, with the coming in power of the Autocratte Rorin. But obviously there were still undercurrents of insurrection.

What a time to be in Venettia!

Paola! someone cried, and I turned my head to search the crowd near the international baggage claims.

A burly man with red-gold hair and beard stood up on his toes like a ballet dancer—as though he needed any help towering over the crowd—and gesticulated to me enthusiastically with his own short dagger, holding it up with insolence by the blade between forefinger and thumb, so that I could see the affiliation. The pommel wore the unmistakable shape of the Moretti rose flower, and with it came a pang of Familial pride, followed by a strange, almost unfamiliar sensation of warmth rising. I felt my throat constrict for a second as I thought of my childhood, all coming forth like a bouquet bursting from the fingers of a conjurer, and the colors of earth and antiquity and sweet Italia.

And that man? Could it really be Barto? After all these years, I knew him in a single blink!

Family Italia was around me now, and