Mapping Winter

by Marta Randall

  “That was—that was wonderful,” the boy said. “You’re good at that. I didn’t think you’d throw him, not until you did. Do all Riders know how to do that? Is that something you need to do?” His eyes gleamed. “I thought it was just shadeen, but that was—I didn’t know. That you could do that, I mean. That was really good.”

  Kieve looked down at him and changed her mind about sending him back to her rooms. Instead she put her hand to the barracks door.

  “Come in with me,” she said. “Stay close and don’t get into trouble.”

  He hesitated a moment. “What is this?”

  “The barracks.”

  His eyes looked like saucers and he followed her inside.

  The night watch had come in a few minutes earlier. They stood about the fireplace, warming their hands on mugs of vedsuppe that Braith ladled from a huge black pot. The smell of roasted grains filled the air. Kieve’s mouth watered. A few shadeen saw Kieve and jostled aside to make room for her. This morning, she could make out details on the far wall and the light of the fire made her eye ache a little, but not with the pain of the previous days. She thought she could reach out and touch the feeling of her own relief.

  “Look, it’s the Rider’s pet child,” a castle shadi said, and another one laughed. The third, a huge, red-haired woman, put her hands under Pyrs’ armpits and swung him up to sit on a table.

  “Never you mind them,” she said to him. “They’re rabble. Here, drink this.” She snagged a mug of vedsuppe and handed it to the boy. He stammered a word of thanks and looked around him, awestruck.

  Braith, unsmiling, handed Kieve a mug. Kieve watched her over the mug’s rim but Braith wouldn’t meet her eyes.

  “Cadoc?” Kieve said. Braith shook her head and continued ladling vedsuppe.

  Most of the soldiers wandered away.

  “What then?” Kieve said. Braith went to the far end of the huge fireplace and Kieve followed. “What is wrong?”

  Braith looked into her mug, then up. “Rumor has it that you have promised your oath to Gadyn.”

  Kieve cursed. “That’s a lie. You know me better.”

  “Rumor said that you would say it was a lie.”

  “Braith...”

  “Rumor says,” the woman continued, her glance level, “that if Gadyn takes the sword, he will break the contract with the Shadeen Guild, that he will build a force of mercenaries instead, like his father’s Guard. If you help him to the sword, you destroy the Shadeen Guild in Dalmorat.”

  “Who says these rumors?” Kieve demanded. A few people nearby looked toward her. She turned her shoulder to them, staring at Braith. “You have known me for four years, Braith. Who is it that you believe, more than you believe me?”

  She shrugged. “I have known you for only four years. I know your desperation to leave. Rumor says that if you promise your oath to Gadyn, he will not keep you to it when he takes the sword. That you will leave for Koerstadt and not return.”

  “Rumor says,” Kieve repeated with bitterness, staring at the soldier’s face. The long scar caught firelight along her cheekbone. “Would you turn your back on me for gossip? Even ferrets produce better evidence than this.”

  Braith looked away and back again, and shrugged, and went across the room. Kieve watched her walk away. She took a deep breath and let it out. Control the emotion. She put her mug down beside Braith’s. At the other end of the fireplace two of the soldiers had Pyrs up on the table and were showing him how to draw a cheese knife from his belt as though it were a sword. The boy laughed, a quick, delighted sound, and drew the cheese knife again. The big, red-haired shadi corrected his grip and in that moment a quiet fell over the room, radiating from the door. A castle shadi nearby glanced at her and away again. Her shoulders tensed. She turned, stomach tight, to see a man in brown and brick red, Guard colors.

  She had not expected such a summons, not with Cadoc dying, and had to wait for a moment before she could walk toward him.

  Endres always sent the same one, a young man who two years ago had just entered his maturity. Since then his straggle of whiskers had thickened but the pink of his chin still shone through them. Frog. The other guards called him Frog.

  “Rider. In the tower,” he said.

  She raised her hand to stop him, and turned.

  “Will you take him to my rooms?” she said to the red-haired shadi. The woman nodded and rested her hand on Pyrs’ shoulder. He looked from her to Kieve to the Guard. The last vestiges of smile drained from his face.

  Kieve turned again, toward Braith, and opened her lips. Send to Guildmaster Jenci, she wanted to say. Tell him what I am required now to do. But she couldn’t say it, she couldn’t send, she had made an oath. Braith looked back at her, one eyebrow tugging at her scar. Kieve closed her lips. Frog waited while she unhooked her cloak and pulled it over her shoulders, and he followed her into the yard.

  Physicians and seminarians almost blocked the cold hallway; death watchers filled the antechamber, pressed together, grumbling. They moved aside as Kieve came through the hall and the antechamber, and through the doors into the room Cadoc would die in. The thick smell of old air and medicine and rotting flesh clotted in her throat. Endres stood by the Lord’s bed, across from Adwyr and in front of the locked cabinet. Otherwise the room was empty. The scrolled warrant lay by the narrow ridge of Cadoc’s thigh. His hand rested on it.

  He turned his head to look at her and she rose from kneeling. They had stuffed pillows behind him and spread a cloth over those. The cloth was fresh enough to hold the lines of its folding.

  “Rider,” Cadoc whispered.

  “My Lord.”

  His finger tapped the warrant. Adwyr picked it up. Cadoc’s hand rose a fraction, veered toward Adwyr, and dropped again. The Chancellor raised his chin, pleased.

  “Lord Cadoc commands that you seek out the man named within this warrant, and commands that without fail you bring him to the Lord at his castle at Abermorat, there to answer before the Lord to the various and sundry marks against him contained within this warrant. Further, the Lord commands—”

  “She can read the warrant,” Endres said. “Give it to her and be done.”

  Cadoc grunted. Adwyr was still for a moment before thrusting the warrant at Kieve.

  “There. And here, the other papers. You have your master’s leave to go.”

  Kieve looked down at the warrant and read the name inscribed on it, and kept her expression blank. It was not written in Cadoc’s hand. The old man watched her, eyes sharp.

  “Little bitch,” he whispered.

  “These are your orders?” she said. “You said I would be commanded only by you.”

  “I order it,” he said.

  She frowned. “On your deathbed, Lord? This Taking may be your final—”

  “I order it,” he repeated.

  She went to one knee and rose and turned and left. The people outside parted to let her through. Endres followed her. Half-way down the stairs, far from any listeners, he put his hand to her shoulder and turned her toward the wall. He moved a tapestry, revealing a small room. They stepped inside and he let the tapestry fall back into place. The room was dark save for light from a small window. Dust lay along the sill. She stepped into the light and opened the papers.

  “It’s not his hand,” she said, looking up.

  Endres nodded. “He can’t hold a pen, of course.” He paused before saying, “He gave me the key to the cabinet.”

  “Indeed?”

  “Just for the moment. He told me where to find the papers, and I took them out and wrote for him.”

  “Does Adwyr—”

  “No. No, he had me clear the room first. The secret of the cabinet is safe.”

  Kieve looked at him. His expression was bland, the comfortable brown eyes innocent. “This is Gadyn’s doing,” she said.

  He gestured this away. “I think an escort of two,” he said. “Cadoc knows the man and says he should be taken with no problems. I concur. Two
should suffice.”

  Kieve read through the rest of the notes. “Two, agreed. It should take no more than two days, three if there is trouble.”

  “Do you need a portrait?”

  Kieve shook her head. “I also know the man,” she said.

  “Will you want a change of horses?”

  She looked out the window, seeing not the clutter of castle roofs but a map of the valleys north of the city. After a moment she shook her head. “No. I think that—no, it’s not a long ride and the terrain is easy. We’ll need feed, of course, and water. And food. He’ll have his own horse.” She rolled the papers and put them in a pocket. “I want to leave before mid-day. Can you complete arrangements by then?”

  “Of course,” he said. He put his hand to the tapestry and paused. “We need to talk, Kieve Rider.”

  When she didn’t reply, he said, “My oath is to the sword, not to Cadoc. Did you know that?” She shook her head. “It means I must work under whoever succeeds him.”

  “Very well.”

  He in turn shook his head. “I won’t work under Gadyn Marubin.” He came back into the little room to stand by the window. “He’s a stinking amateur,” he said, his voice low. “A cricket, a tool ready for whoever has the brains and will to wield him. He will be dangerous because of that, to everyone around him.”

  It took her a moment to remember Daenet talking in the watch niche and realize why Endres’ words sounded familiar.

  “Then leave,” she said. “It’s not as though there is a guild to punish you.”

  “And lose my reputation, and be forced away from what I have built here? I think not. And I think you have little love for Gadyn. We can work together, Rider. We can both benefit.”

  “No.” She pulled her cloak tight and walked toward the door. “No. When Cadoc dies I leave this province forever. We do not need to work together to accomplish that. The succession will settle itself without my help.”

  “Kieve, wait. At least hear me out.”

  “And postpone our master’s bidding?” she said.

  He grimaced and she pulled the tapestry aside.

  Gossip never moved so fast as when Kieve had been called to her master’s presence. A small bow-wave of silence preceded her through the corridors and the Great Hall. In the wards servants moved aside. The soldiers ignored her. She took the steps to her rooms and came through the door, and knew that Gaura knew by the servant’s frozen presence before the woodstove, her hands twisting knots into her apron.

  “It isn’t you,” Kieve said. “I need to leave.”

  The servant disappeared into the other room. Pyrs sat with his back tight against the map cabinet, hazel eyes enormous. She ignored him. Gaura had left food on the table, bread and cheese and a dried apple soaked in wine. Kieve pulled them toward her and ate as she opened the warrant and the packet and read through them again. By the time her saddlebags were packed she knew the precise location of the man she sought and something more of his habits, and had confirmed her original feeling that this would be an easy Taking. She changed into her traveling clothes. She riffled through the stack of flat maps, selected one, and put it and the compass in her pocket. She left her other instruments in the cabinet. There would be no time to use them on this trip. There never was.

  “Keep the boy in these rooms,” she said when Gaura came back into the big room. “I don’t want him out while I’m away. I should be back in two days. Three at the most.” She looked down at Pyrs, then crouched in front of him.

  “It is not my choice, Pyrs. I am my master’s servant, as you are mine. Do you understand this?”

  He nodded and put out his hand. She rose before he could touch her. “Read something,” she said, and left.

  Traveler was ready for her. As she rode through the Neck two men joined her, anonymous in plain cloaks, breeches, tunics, hoods. In silence the soldiers opened the inner gate. The freeholders in the village stopped to watch her pass, the outer gate stood open for her. Even the porters at the quay knew her business. Without seeming to acknowledge her they let her aboard and put Traveler in the corral. Regardless of the season this quiet never changed. In the silence of her mind, doors closed.

  She thought about who the quarry was, and how to take him. How long it would take to ride there, and how long to ride back. How the Taking itself would be, a plan forming from the information in the packet. The minutia of riding and eating and sleeping. Nothing beyond that, no future beyond the immediacy of her task. She leaned on the railing beside Traveler, resting her head against his neck over the bars of the corral. The two men stood at the bow, but after a moment one nudged the other and they joined her. One was Frog, who had come for her in the barracks. He had never come on a Taking before and she was surprised to see him.

  The second man grinned at her, teeth white in his glossy round face. Dav. He had missed only one such ride in the past four years, and that only because he had broken his leg and could not sit his horse.

  “We always start a Taking this way,” he said to Frog. He was short, and square with muscle. “The Rider and I work out a plan, first thing. I always tell her that without a plan, the job is much more difficult. Dangerous sometimes, too. Isn’t that right, Rider?”

  She stared at him without responding. Three years ago she had asked Endres not to assign Dav to the Takings, but the guard captain shrugged and said that Dav was Cadoc’s choice. She then complained to the lord himself.

  “It pleases me,” Cadoc said to her, sitting his horse in the ward on a windy summer day. “I enjoy watching you make the best of it, little bitch. Continue to do so.”

  Now Dav said in a stage-whisper, “Of course, we can’t discuss our quarry yet. Not until we’re in private. Otherwise, he could...” He made a quick, scooting motion with his hand. Frog nodded, impressed. The wind lifted a strand of hair from Dav’s thin braid and laid it across his cheek, where it stuck. He pushed it under his hood and said something else to Frog. Kieve turned her back on them and folded her guild cloak into her saddlebag, replacing it with a warm cloak of brown wool. The city drew close. Behind it, the crumbling walls and towers of Old City rose up the Palisade and crowned the top like broken teeth.

  They came through Penitence, where the bondslave’s cage still swung overheard, and took the North Road. It bordered the Moratip, which emptied into the big river just above Sterk. The frozen stream had become the district’s main road, as it did every winter. It ran past the narrow streets of the spice merchants’ quarter, the buildings gaudy with painted vines and flowers above the opened shophouse windows and bright striped awnings, the air lively with the smells of cinnamon and thyme. Across the Moratip, the clacking and banging of looms rose from the weaver’s houses, accompanied by the acrid smell of the dyeworks. Noise and scent and sound abated as road and river moved through the district where city officials lived. Here the houses sat behind smooth stone walls, their tops spiked. Above the walls the roofs poked up, blue and red and yellow under a layer of snow, fringed by the bare branches of trees. Sledges trimmed in green and blue skimmed the ice. Servants skated between them, carrying laundry or bread in baskets on their heads.

  Outriders cleared the way for an enameled, jingling family sledge. Sunlight shot from the horses’ polished bells and tack, and ice splintered up from their cleated shoes. Kieve narrowed her eyes against the brightness. She and the guards kept to the land road, which periodically widened into squares surrounding communal wells and edged with shops. Householders and servants crowded these squares, gossiping or bickering. A few glanced without interest at Kieve and her companions in their drab cloaks and leggings. Kieve saw no outlanders or provincial guild speakers here. These folk were the city’s residents, calm and smug in their urban world. A girl at the last well hitched a yoke over her shoulders. A bright sheet of water spilled from a bucket and splashed, silver, against the cobbles.

  Kieve raised her hand and they stopped at the well. The two guards dismounted. Frog, following Dav’s orders, filled
the canteens. Dav flirted with the girl. He kept his little round belly sucked in and adopted an imperious stare which made him look near-sighted. Kieve crossed her arms and waited.

  They were delayed briefly at North Gate and soon rode into the lands beyond the city.

  Three leagues out of the city, after the last tower had dropped behind a ridge, Kieve raised her arm and they cantered off the road to a small stone way-lodge. They led their horses inside the shed and while Frog saw to them Dav pulled a meal from his saddlebags and laid it on the rock ledge that served as a table, first using his sleeve to brush off a layer of cold grit. Kieve stood by the un-shuttered window, looking at the countryside and breathing the bright smell of the pines. Snow had melted near the trail but small piles of it slumped under the evergreens, smudged with dirt and cratered by falling drops.

  “It’s ready,” Dav announced. “I won’t unpack it again,” he said. “You can eat with us, or not at all.”

  She turned to look at him. He had pushed his hood back; the top of his bald head gleamed in the filtered light. He gestured, full of exasperation. Frog looked from one to the other and ducked his head.

  Balor Cook always packed the same waymeal: dried meats and fruits, leather bottles of ale, a loaf of dark, chewy way-bread, a large chunk of deep yellow cheese. Kieve took her portion back to the window and peeled the outer glove from one hand so that she could eat. Dav muttered behind her. She ignored him until she heard him say, “Of course the money will be good, no matter who hires us. Better than Endres makes, I can tell you that. He just wants to do this bodyguard shit, but if somebody wants that, why not just hire shadeen? What my troop does will be different.”

  “Uh, how?” Frog said around a mouthful of food.

  “Because of what I’m doing right now,” Dav said in his noisy whisper. “This Taking. The time is coming, and soon, when lords will be bidding for my services, because I’m the one who knows how it’s done.”