Mapping Winter

by Marta Randall

  Before Puwan could protest Kieve and Glyn were gone, sprinting down the stone corridor toward the stairs.

  Chapter 9

  Trickles of wind still moved along the stones but the storm had passed. Her boots crashed through the thin ice coating snow along the promenade above the Garden of the Lady. The broken stones of Lord’s Walk seemed like a froth of river water, caught in a jumbled moment of time. Once she stopped moving the world was silent except for the sound of Glyn’s breathing and, soon, the sound of Puwan and the Myned shadeen crashing in their turn through the ice. When they arrived she turned away from the snarl of stone and snow to face them.

  “The wind came from the north. We need to look in the lee of stones. Look for steam, a thread of steam rising from a hole. I think he will be closer to the walk here, not by the cliff. If we cannot find him that way—” she shrugged. “Then we will probe with staffs. But first look for the steam.”

  They fanned out across the Walk, Kieve, her two shadeen and two in Myned blue.

  It was the most basic of Inguruki tactics to survive storms—to shelter in the lee of a rock or tree, dig into the snow, create a small cave that the body’s own heat could warm, and maintain a breathing hole to the surface. He would have been there for all of the day, and perhaps much of the previous night. She had heard stories of hunters lasting as long as a week, melting snow in their mouths to drink. If he had not been injured too severely before being brought here, if he had been conscious enough to obey his training, if he had not been too great an idiot, he might still be alive. She moved from stone to stone, clearing her mind of everything save what she saw. The wind died further. The sun would set in a few hours. She closed her eyes, resting them for a moment in darkness, and searched again.

  Glyn shouted. Kieve scrambled over rocks to her. A wisp of steam rose beside a stick protruding from the ice. Together they dug, following the stick until they broke through into a small snow cave two feet down. Leyek curled within, cocooned in his cloak, his arms tucked against his torso and his knees touching his chin. Kieve snatched off her overglove and laid her hand along his neck. His pulse was faint but regular.

  “The bathhouse,” Kieve said, pulling her glove on again.

  She had forgotten what a slender boy he was. After they brought him off the uncertain footing of the Walk, Glyn cradled him in her arms and carried him along the walk above the Garden of the Lady. Leafless trees glittered in sheathes of ice, their branches and limbs like black bones through transparent flesh. The few evergreens bent their branches to the ground with the weight of frozen snow, showing dead brown needles within. Aside from crunching footsteps, silence filled the world. When Kieve pulled open the bathhouse door, a blast of steam shot out to freeze and fall as splinters of ice at their feet.

  One of the men at arms had already left to find Esylk. The other followed as Glyn carried the boy to the pools. Birds rose shrieking. The lamps were out save for the one the bathkeeper carried. Glyn put the boy down at the first pool, the tepid one, and Kieve stripped him. The bathkeeper lit the hanging lamps above the pool. Kieve stripped to her shirt and breeches and turned her sleeves up. She lowered the boy into the warm water, cupping her hand under his neck to keep his face clear. The bathkeeper picked up his clothes.

  “No,” Kieve said. “Leave them.”

  The woman shook her head and went away. Leyek’s body floated from her hand, white in the water, pale hair darkening as it grew wet, almost green in the light reflected from the leaves. Water poured from the soldiers’ clothes as the ice melted, lifting small tails of fog.

  “Glyn, you or Puwan had best tell Ilach about this.”

  “I’ll do it,” Puwan said. He left before Glyn could object.

  Kieve transferred the boy’s head to Glyn’s keeping and went through his clothes. She found the shayka in a slender bag sewn into the breeches and slid it into her own pocket. Otherwise his clothes were innocent of weapons, and steamed in the warmth as ice melted from the hems and seams. She put them aside to let them drip.

  “Rider?” Glyn said. “He’s awake.”

  Kieve turned.

  “Bear did not take me,” Leyek said in Akeguruk.

  Glyn dropped his head into the water. “He talked in Trapper,” she said, alarmed.

  Kieve grabbed at Leyek’s head. “And if he did?” She tangled her fingers in the boy’s fine, fair hair and brought him, sputtering, to the surface. “He belongs to Lady Esylk. Will you explain to her how you drowned her shadi?”

  “But Rider—”

  “If you spread rumors about a Trapper on Sterk, Ilach may kill you before Esylk does.” Leyek looked from one to the other, his eyes half open. One hand grazed his own bare hip. His eyes widened and he thrust both hands down to cover his genitals. It turned him onto his stomach, plunging his head under the warm waters. Kieve flipped him onto his back again.

  “Rider!” he protested. Water brimmed over the side of the pool.

  Kieve nodded at him. “Come, Glyn, you fear this?”

  The Myned shadi snorted and stood up. “It is too hot in here,” he said. “I will wait outside.”

  “You can go too,” Kieve said.

  “Ilach will flay me if I leave you,” Glyn said, watching the Myned shadi recede through ranks of green leaves and bright jeweled flowers.

  “And I will flay you if you stay,” Kieve said. “You may guard the door. There is only one.”

  After a moment’s hesitation Glyn picked up her cloak and left. The bathhouse quieted save for the lap of water against the pool’s sides. She looked down at Leyek, who had one hand on the pool’s lip and the other one covering himself.

  “If I let you go, can you keep your head up?”

  “Yes.”

  She wiped her fingers on her breeches, feeling the bone splinter wrapped in moss at the bottom of her pocket.

  “I thought I would die,” Leyek said. “Is there something to drink?”

  Kieve went to the door and called for two mugs of tea, one laced with plenty of honey. She came back to the pool and sat beside it.

  “Tea is coming,” she said.

  “Rider?” Leyek yawned again. “Perhaps some clothing?”

  “I don’t think so, snow brother,” she said in quiet Akeguruk. “I think you are more likely to stay where you are if you are naked as a baby. Have you been naked, since you were a baby? You are polluting the bathkeeper’s fine hot water.”

  “It is not healthy, to sit in water. A sweat room is better, to sweat and then to roll in the snow.” He said it without fire. “Is it you who saved me?”

  “In part,” she said in Cheran, hearing the bathkeeper pad into the room. She thanked the woman and took the two mugs. The bathkeeper reported, with mild outrage, that Glyn had already sipped from both. Kieve too sipped at both to find the sweetened one, and put it down at the side of the pool for Leyek. She sent the bathkeeper away with a stiver. The door closed behind her.

  The boy frowned at the mug. He could free a hand for it either by releasing the side of the pool and risk turning over, or by uncovering himself. After an agony of indecision, he tucked as much of himself as he could between his thighs and crossed his legs. Kieve smiled.

  “It is not funny,” he said, taking the mug. “It is wrong for someone to look at all of a warrior. It damages his ukame-agku.” The term meant courage and, more, the spirit of the hunter.

  “Then you have little to worry about, since you don’t have very much to begin with,” she said, sitting on a low stone bench. “Soon Lady Esylk will be here, and Commander Ilach of the castle brigade. When they come, you will tell them about what a great gambler you are, that you lost your father’s shayka in a bet. And you will tell them what you did to get it back.”

  “Nothing! I did nothing!”

  “You killed a woman,” Kieve said.

  He looked sullen and sipped at the tea. She watched him over the rim of her cup.

  Silence fell amid the vines and leaves of the bathhouse.
>
  Where was the boundary between pride and grace? Could she even recognize it? She took pride in her honor but she had broken her oath once, in anger; she took pride in her honor and it had led to Aedin’s death. If Cadoc sent you to take that child, your bondslave... She turned from the pool, thinking of the young man sitting his skittish horse amid the gallows and posts of Penitence, of the boy’s upturned face listening to the Voices of the Dead, of Jenci with his blunt, blued fingers tracing Stormbringer’s outline on a map.

  Ilach and Braith came in together, bringing Glyn and Puwan with them. Leyek moaned and drew up his knees, trying to hide inside his own limbs. Kieve found his shirt and dropped it into the water. He wrapped it around his hips.

  “This is Myned’s missing soldier?” Ilach said, staring down at the boy. “Where did you find him?”

  “Lord’s Walk.” The commander looked at her. She said, “Perhaps we should wait for Lady Esylk, so as not to repeat the story.”

  Braith took off her cloak and draped it over a bench behind her. Ilach had brought a lantern and now he walked along the path toward the other pools, pulling aside the foliage, glancing at the water. Steam rose in the lantern’s light, wispy clouds reaching for the ceiling high overhead. The azure bird scolded him.

  Taryn had once played his flute and talked with the bird, melody to melody, until the bird perched on a bough just above his head. The bird hopped from side to side, distressed at hearing but not seeing its fellow. When Taryn stopped playing the bird rushed away in a brief flutter of wings. She pushed the memory away.

  Ilach returned, his cloak over his arm. He set the lantern on a nearby bench and crossed his arms and looked at Leyek until the boy, already nervous, turned away. Water crept from the pool again.

  “Are you warm?” Braith asked him, moving to avoid the wet. Her scar began to pale in the warmth.

  “Yes,” he mumbled. He made a show of drinking his sweetened tea.

  Esylk arrived, accompanied by Endres. She strode into the light, handing her cloak behind her to the captain. He took it and put it across the bench. The others started to kneel but she waved them to their feet again. She came to the edge of the pool and stared past her boots at her soldier, her lips tight. He cringed.

  Ilach glared at Endres, who paused with his cloak open and spread his hands a little. His hair started to curl more tightly in the damp air.

  “I met the Lady in the Great Hall,” he said. “She invited me. I asked and she invited me.” He paused. “I believe this may be Lord Cadoc’s last day. He is much weakened.”

  Ilach didn’t respond.

  Endres said, “I have thought about our conversation this morning, Commander. I apologize. Perhaps I put too great a reliance on the spirit of my oath, and not enough on its words.”

  “Which can be twisted to allow this?” Ilach demanded.

  “This is the disappearance of one of Lady Esylk’s soldiers. It is not, I think, covered by my oath, or by yours,” the captain said.

  Esylk grimaced. “Can you make a truce between you, for a little time at least?”

  For a moment Ilach and Endres stared at each other, separated by the gentle steam from the pool. Then Ilach frowned and nodded. “Truce,” he said.

  Endres gestured as if to reach his hand across the pool. “Truce,” he echoed.

  Leyek had crabbed his way closer to Kieve and away from his lord. Esylk scowled at him, her pale eyebrows drawn together. “Rider, would this not be better kept private, between a shadi and his Lord?”

  “With respect, lady, it is beyond that, I think.”

  They looked at each other for a long moment.

  “Then before my shadi speaks,” Esylk said, “I require a promise.” They turned to her. “That regardless of what he says, or what he has done, he be given over to me untouched. I will deal with him as I see fit.” She looked at them, one by one. “Without this promise, he may not speak.”

  “He is a shadi,” Ilach said. “It is for the guild to decide.”

  Esylk shook her head. “He is my man, not the guild’s.”

  Ilach’s mouth tightened. Before he could speak, Braith said, “Is what he says so important?”

  Kieve said, “It has to do with the apothecary’s death, I think. And other events.”

  “Other events,” Ilach repeated. “Lady, you may ask more than I can give.”

  “I believe this will be a fair trade, Commander,” Kieve said.

  He frowned at her. She frowned back, made impatient by his scruples. Water dripped from the broad leaf by her shoulder, sounding tiny, distinct notes as it hit the stones by the pool.

  Endres said, “I can undertake the promise, Lady. I am not in Commander Ilach’s position. I give my word.”

  Ilach shrugged. “This cannot be worse than what we have now,” he said. “Very well, Lady, you have my promise.” Braith nodded.

  Kieve squatted beside the pool. Leyek chewed at his lip, looking up at her. His green-pale hair clung to his scalp like a tight cap.

  “Leyek, it starts with a gaming debt to Lord Cairun. Tell us.”

  He did. He said that although he was the best gambler in Myned, renowned for his prowess with the bones, he had nonetheless lost when he played against Lord Cairun, who may have used some unfair advantage, a fetish perhaps, something unknown to the honest players of Myned Province. When Cairun had taken all his money, Leyek insisted on a chance to win it back. The lord agreed to let the boy wager an item of little importance, something his father had given him. A token only, of no great value except the sentimental.

  He fell silent when Kieve brought the shayka from her pocket. It looked like two slender, cream-colored tubes of ivory, one inside the other, the outer one incised with lines which, to Kieve’s eyes, resolved into the story of a valros hunt. One end angled to a sharp point. The soldiers and the guard captain passed it hand to hand, turning it over.

  “What is this?” Ilach said.

  Kieve shook her head. Endros gave the shayka to Lady Esylk, who slid it into her robes.

  “You lost again, didn’t you?” Kieve said to Leyek.

  “He had strong magic, to counter my skill,” the boy insisted. “He had strong magic and made me lose, and then he would not give it back, or let me buy it back. I didn’t ask it as a gift of him, a gaming debt is a debt of honor. When I tried to speak to him he would not see me, and then he would. He told me that he had given it to Lord Gadyn. He said that someone would take me to see the lord and that I was to wait and I did, in his rooms.”

  The boy glanced around.

  “Go on, puppy,” Esylk said.

  “Soon a man came, a thick, greasy little man with white teeth. He took me into a stairway and then he covered my face. I was insulted! No man of honor is treated like this,” Leyek said with anger. Water lapped around his narrow chest. “But he said I must and so I had to hold onto his cloak and follow him. And when it was done and he took the covering from my face I was in a house built of bones, of men’s bones. It was horrible. It was horrible.” He shivered and wrapped one arm around his shoulders.

  A room in the ossuary. Kieve met Braith’s eyes across the pool.

  “Go on,” Endres said. “So far, you have been taken for a walk. I see no startling news in that.”

  Leyek looked up at his lord and wet his lips.

  “Lord Gadyn was there, and the man who brought me, and no one else. He had my father’s shayka. He told me that he would give it back to me, as soon as I—as soon as I did a thing for him. And I agreed, because it is my father’s shayka and I cannot go home without it.” He licked his lips. “And I did the thing because, because he made me, and when I went back to Gadyn—”

  “Stop,” Braith said. “Lady Esylk, may I see it again?”

  Esylk handed her the shayka. Leyek watched, his lower lip tucked between his teeth. Braith turned it over in her hands for a moment, then her forehead cleared and she held it up.

  “So,” she said, and mimed thrusting the shayka into
flesh. She pushed up on the inner shaft. As it emerged, blades sprouted from the top. She twirled the shaft, sending the blades spinning, then pulled the shaft down. The blades disappeared into the outer tube, and she mimed removing the entire thing. “It is a thorough weapon,” she said, “and would leave only a small wound.” She looked at Kieve. “Like the one you found on the apothecary’s neck.”

  Kieve nodded. “Leyek. You killed a woman for Lord Gadyn.”

  He stared at the water and didn’t respond.

  “Leyek,” Esylk said.

  He flinched. “Yes,” he whispered. “I had to. Without the shayka, I cannot go home.”

  Ilach said to Esylk, “You knew he had this with him?”

  “Of course not,” Esylk said. No one challenged her.

  “He’s a Trapper,” Ilach said.

  The Lord of Myned raised her chin. “He is in my retinue, Commander.”

  After a moment of silence, Ilach said, “Why did you go back to Gadyn, if you had your shayka back?”

  “He took my bones,” the boy said, with some heat. “He took my gambling bones and said I could not have them back until—”

  “You killed a woman and risked your life, for gambling bones?” Braith said, incredulous.

  Leyek stared at the mug of tea. Kieve said, “Tell us what happened afterwards.”

  The boy took a deep breath. “I went to where Lord Gadyn told me to wait. The greasy man found me and took me again to the room of bones. And then—and then somebody came behind me and hit me and I fell and then I was hit again.” He touched his scalp. “Here, there is the bump. When I woke I was in the mouth of the storm, and I found a place to hide and I hid there, and when I woke again I was here.” He looked from face to face. They stared down at him.

  “It is, I think, what was done to Jenci,” Kieve said. “Save that Jenci was more gravely injured, and may have been dying already. And they blinded him, but not the boy. If it was only one man, or two, they could not have carried the guildmaster. I think they forced him to walk through the ossuary and the Garden and to the Walk, and that they finished hurting him there, and let him go.”