Foxfire in the Snow

by J. S. Fields

  An amulet. The old king’s magic. Why was the lake offering it to me? Would it spew a body at me next?

  What in the world was I going to do with either one?

  I heard Sameer’s voice from behind me, laughing. “He’s fine, Royal Daughter. Sorin, you want to take the amulet out? The magic has all bled out by now, and it’s just a shell with the solvent they used to carry the magic. It’ll get a decent price in one of the towns, or we can drink the alcohol in it ourselves. These are as common as the rabbits up here. The alcohol might make tonight more bearable if we don’t find a wave cave to sleep in. Or maybe it will turn one of us into a polar bear. Or shrink one of our arms. Either way, fun.”

  That was too much. Curiosity would take me only so far, and my chest felt heavy from the heat and moisture and the masculine pronouns. I scrambled away from the lake edge on heels and hands, unable to wrest my eyes from the deepening vortex. Any minute now, I’d see the rest of the body, I was sure. Its skin would be wrinkled and saggy. Its eyes sunken. It’d be in high-end leathers with fine stitching and…

  Magda looped her arms under mine and hauled me to standing just as foam formed near the edges of the lake, then crashed to shore in a wave. Water soaked through my pants, warm and unwelcome. I pushed us both back again, trying to get out of range of the water, when a twinge pulled at my wet legs. I stopped moving.

  “Come on, Sorin. Sameer’s right—we were bound to stumble across a few old amulets while up here. I’ve found them before, with the queen, when we traveled this far north. Mother collects them, in fact. Part of our history, you know? But right now, we have to keep going, and you don’t need any more enchanted water on you. Be an alchemist later, when it won’t get you killed from hypothermia.”

  “I’m trying!” I tensed my shoulder muscles until they bunched. My limbs, my mind, told me to move back to the water’s edge, to look down that supernatural, blasphemous hole, and take the amulet. A sound came from the water, much like twigs snapping and too much like my name. But the wind, with its own words, clashed in discord with the lake, as if the magic was layering on top instead of being a part of the same whole.

  Sorin! the water called. Or maybe it was some ghost in the lake. They were both terrifying.

  The witch’s voice came again. Go home, Sorin of Thuja, and leave magic alone!

  For once, the witch and I were in agreement.

  “Stop!” I screamed at the lake, startling Magda enough that she dropped me back to the ground. On my rear, I kicked at the slush beneath my heels, trying to push back, away from the lake, back to the safety of the ice. Another two meters and the water on my pants evaporated. The waves stopped. The foam sank and dissolved in gliding burps. The concentric rings fell still, first at the widest circumference and then collapsing in until there were only tight circles where my finger had broken the surface. The bottom of the vortex rose back up, and finally, the lake exhaled. The water stilled back to glass. The amulet disappeared. There was no trace of the body.

  “Sorin?”

  “I’m really, really tired of magic, and I think it’s creepy that the queen collected those things. Also, why are there bodies up here?”

  “Bodies?” Magda wrinkled her nose and scanned the lake. “All I saw was the amulet. But up here, who knows? There are a lot of ways to die on a glacier. And I don’t disagree with you. If the lakes act like that, no wonder the Miantri villagers were spooked when you appeared from nowhere. There’s a lot more active magic in this area than I remember. We’ll stay out of the lakes from here on out.” Magda got me to my feet once again, and together, we walked back to Sameer.

  He shook his head. “Get it studied then? You could have at least taken the amulet if you were going to waste time,” he said. “Just because they’re common doesn’t mean they’re not useful. The king stored spells and such in them. They’re worth money, even if the magic is long gone. They’re hard to make, and the witches’ guild will buy them back if nothing else.”

  “I don’t need to get drunk, and I have no interest in magic,” I retorted. I brushed my pants one more time, then pulled my cloak around my shoulders again. It probably had just been the froth on the water. I had a witch whispering to me, after all. My imagination was overactive.

  Sameer kept talking. “You don’t care for magic, but you have an interest in alchemy? That makes no sense. So, instead, you persist in being useless. I can see why the royal daughter travels with you.”

  Was he going to be like this the entire way to Puget? Maybe I didn’t need a sibling after all. Maybe next time, the lake could attack him.

  “Magic is useless. Why do you want an artifact from something the old king cooked up in this desolate, treeless place? I just wanted to have a look. I’m done. We can go. I’m not going to be wooed by a lake, no matter how many amulets it offers me.”

  “Stop it,” Magda snapped. “Both of you. Please. Let’s just keep moving.”

  I grimaced but nodded, and fell in step behind Magda. “My apologies.”

  “Did you have a destination in mind for when we set down for the night?” Magda’s lead foot slipped out from under her before she had put her full weight on it, and she steadied herself on my shoulder.

  “Take short, cautious steps from here on,” Sameer advised. “And yes, I have thoughts on where we can camp. We’ll have to move onto the glacier proper soon, but there’s a small lake just up here, perhaps twenty minutes away. It has one small wave cave, or at least it did on my journey out. The weather has been consistent. It should still be there. The lake won’t be frozen, either, unless the thermal vents gave out.” He pointed southeast. “This line of vents will take us directly to Celtis. We have one, maybe two more days of travel ahead of us, assuming Sorin can keep from triggering any larger spells.”

  I scowled. “I’m not doing it on purpose.”

  Sameer tightened his cloak and pushed ahead of Magda on the trail. “I know. That’s why you’re so damn dangerous.”

  Seventeen: Silver

  It was evening before my temper cooled enough to speak. Sameer and Magda hadn’t had much to say, either, as our movement onto the glacier brought us closer to the towering seracs and the ground under our feet turned from pebbles to ice.

  Our destination—the wave cave—was a short ice outcropping, maybe only a handspan taller than Sameer, that arched partially over the ground. It did indeed look like a frozen wave, although how anything that size could have come from the tiny little lake it butted up against, I didn’t know.

  “We’ll stay there tonight. This is a common waypoint stop. The cave is stable.”

  I eyed the ice critically. If it wasn’t stable, it’d kill us all when it caved in, since it was deep enough that even our toes wouldn’t poke from the entry.

  When neither Magda nor I moved any closer, Sameer tossed his pack forward. It slid the remaining distance to the cave, ending in a rattling sound.

  “I’ll just relieve myself then,” he muttered and disappeared behind the cave.

  Magda’s hand ran across my back, not slow enough to tease but lingering enough to tell me she was still thinking about the last lake as well. I looked out along the never-ending sheet of ice to a looming serac around fifteen meters away. Were the crackling sounds I heard coming from the glacier itself, or the serac? I couldn’t be sure, not with the wind pushing kernels of words at my ears I was determined, this time, to ignore. I told myself there was no sound in the wind. The dotting greens and blues I saw in the distance were lights reflecting off the ice, not enchanted foxfire. I told my mind to shut up and forced myself to stare at the endless expanse of white, and at sheets of ice so blue they looked like the ocean. Nothing to see. Nothing to think. I just needed to go to sleep.

  “How long will the talks take?” I asked Magda as she put down her pack and removed her sleeping mat.

  “A few days at most. I don’t have much to negotiate with anyway. The census already came around. None of the rulers—not the triarchy from Puget,
nor Eastgate’s king, nor I—get to see them before the talks, but I know what ours will look like. We’re going to lose land.”

  I laid my pack next to hers, then sat down to fuss with the lacings on my boots. I didn’t look at her; she didn’t need to see the concern on my face that “a few days” could be long enough for Master Rahad to forget. To find another apprentice. That a few days was already too late for that body in the lake and, maybe, too, for the other missing masters.

  Magda misunderstood my frown. “We’ll find them, Sorin; I promise. Your mother wasn’t at Miantri. We know that now. Do you have any thoughts where she might be in Celtis? Does she have any contacts there? Former clients?” Her hand covered my own, and she scooted up behind me.

  “Amada’s missing?” Sameer had returned. He put his canteen down and wiped his face with his sleeve. “Is that why you’re traveling with Sorin and not a bunch of knights? Some sense of obligation?”

  “Why Sorin is with me is none of your business, Sameer,” Magda said tersely. “You’re here because Sorin wants you here. I’ve traveled the glacier before. I don’t need a chaperone.”

  Sameer knelt next to Magda and scratched at the ice. The sound was horrid, and I winced. “She’s my mother, too, Royal Daughter. I’m allowed to have feelings. This isn’t a political game.”

  “Good, because I’m not going to negotiate.”

  Sameer’s jaw set into a hard line. “I only want to talk with Sorin.” He paused and narrowed his eyes. “Alone.”

  Magda scoffed. “Thus far, all you’ve done is mock Sorin. Why? You’re guilded. You know the rules. You’re not the only firstborn son to get fostered. You became a master of textiles. You could have your own hall if you wanted. Life hasn’t been cruel to you, so what is the problem? Sorin isn’t responsible for the matrilineal inheritance laws.”

  “I’m not arguing with matrilineal inheritance.” Sameer glared at me, and then, in an action that broadcast itself in a hundred familiar ways, his eyes fell on my chest. I pushed into the side of the cave until ice dug into my spine. I wrapped my arms around my bound breasts and tried to breathe, clutching at fabric instead of skin.

  “Stop it,” I said, though I wasn’t sure I was loud enough for him to hear me. “I can’t help this.”

  Sameer rolled his eyes. “I don’t care that you strap your breasts to your chest, Sorin. But the rights of matrilineal inheritance are clear. They’ve always been clear, even with the unbound guilds. The problem is, of course, that you are Amada’s goal and Amada’s masterpiece, identity be damned.”

  The air tasted, suddenly, like guilt. Matrilineal inheritance laws were as old as Queen Iana’s reign. Pervasive across every guild, and even the tradespeople followed them. I wasn’t perfect; I just had the right genitalia. It was no more complex than that.

  Magda shuffled beside me. I needed to respond if only so we could get some sleep, but I didn’t understand. Sameer should have been happy in his textile guild. He should have never known who his biological mother was, who I was, outside of some distant childhood memory. What was there to say that wouldn’t drive his hurt deeper? He had his parents. I had mine. My mother had encouraged me. Trained me. Supported me, even when I wasn’t the daughter she’d thought she had.

  The daughter she’d thought she’d had.

  Oh.

  Sameer’s bitterness snapped into focus. I leaned toward him, unsure of what to say but wanting to do something, but he mirrored backward, his face contorting into distaste.

  “I remember when you came to the shop with Amada. I was almost fifteen, so you’d have been fourteen. Dressed in woodcutter’s leathers. Not a trace of a chest. Your hair so short it stuck up from your head like a porcupine.” He pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders, enveloping himself in cloth and memories. “I hated you. I hated you when you were born because you were a girl, but then you were there, in front of me, and you looked just like me. A boy, just like me. Still, Amada kept you.” He whispered the last sentence. The wind caught it and carried it deftly to my ears.

  I drowned in memories. The guildhall. The boy barely taller than me, pushing me down. Hitting me. Rubbing my face into the dirt. It was the last guildhall we ever visited. There were scars on my arms. still, from that day. My right hand moved of its own accord, back to my left arm. My fingertips curled into my skin.

  Magda stayed silent but took my hand, steadying it. I couldn’t uncurl my fingers. My skin wouldn’t still.

  “I’m not a man,” I said, as if that would somehow heal the rift between us. I didn’t know what else to offer. I hadn’t given his existence more than a precursory thought. He was fostered. He wasn’t really my brother, not by guild law. I hadn’t known Mother was in contact with him or his foster family. She never should have been. There was no reason to be. This torture he carried should never have happened.

  Well, if his desire was inheritance, of being Mother’s heir, the solution was simple. Maybe it would ease some of the ache for both of us. “You can have it if you want it. The guild line. I have no desire to be a woodcutter.”

  Sameer’s hand sprang from his cloak and slapped me. I fell back into Magda’s arms, stunned, my head spinning.

  “I can cut his hands off with my boot knife,” Magda hissed into my ear as she helped me back up.

  “You don’t even care for what she’s done for you!” Sameer yelled now, glaring at me though he made no further move to strike. “You toss it aside like a toy. Without respect for your guild or our family’s history.”

  I rubbed at my cheek as my own anger bubbled up. “I didn’t choose to be this way!”

  “I didn’t say that you did,” Sameer countered, his jaw clenched. “Don’t make this about—this.” He gestured at my chest.

  “Well, what in the three countries is it about? I don’t know why Mother kept me, but she did. I had no say in the matter. The decision wasn’t mine. I was assigned to woodcutting from the moment of my birth. However, you—” I pointed a finger at his chest. “—have chosen to travel with me. To mock me in some perverse desire to find every fault I have, obsessed about inheritance rights over which I have no control. If you want some admission of guilt, that I tricked Mother or the guild, you won’t get it.”

  I swore I heard Sameer growl. “Fuck Amada,” he spat into the wind.

  Though part of me agreed with him, the words still burned. “If you plan on finding Amada, to have her acknowledge you as heir due to some deficiency on my part, well, we have to find her first. So, you could help, instead of taunting.” I unclasped my cloak and tucked it around my legs. “I was never able to convince her I wasn’t suited for woodcutting.” My voice turned bitter. “Maybe you will have better luck. Maybe you could ask her about her motivations, instead of assuming I was ever party to her decisions.”

  “You’re a disgrace to woodcutting,” Sameer whispered.

  The sun had finished setting during our argument, and I couldn’t see his face in the dark. That didn’t matter because I was too angry to respond with anything coherent. Sameer stormed into the cave, pushing me as he went. I slid back into Magda. Though her hands were warm and she tried to talk to me, I twisted against her words, crouched down on the ice, and brought my cloak up over my head.

  You should have stayed in Thuja, the wind whispered in my ear. You’ll die on the ice. You’ll die, and freeze, and your friends will be unable to take your body back. It will be found by ice harvesters, and they’ll cut you free, and they’ll see you’re a woman. All anyone will remember about you is that you are a woman.

  SHUT UP! I yelled into my head as my fingernails found purchase on my arms.

  “Sorin?” Magda’s voice was soft, but still more than I could manage. “Come inside. We should get some sleep.”

  “Not yet.” Sameer emerged from the cave, a frown on his face and a candle in his hand. “You’ll have to lend me a hand, Royal Daughter. A former occupant never quite made it out.”

  My head shot up, though my nails did
not leave my skin. “Guilder?” I asked. “Snowsickness?”

  Sameer simply glared at me. “It’s a dead body, Sorin. You can alchemy magic it or whatever you want after we get it out of the cave.”

  I stood as images of Mother, frozen and stiff, danced in front of my eyes. I took a step forward, but Magda put a hand on my shoulder.

  “Let me get it out. We can check after.”

  I nodded and backed away. Although the sun had set, the sky was alight in greens and yellows, which, with the help of Sameer’s candle, allowed me to make out the bundled form Magda and Sameer pushed from the cave. It was human, certainly, but curled into the fetal position, its head tucked low to its chest. It didn’t appear to be very large, and at first, I worried that it might be a child. It was certainly far too small to be the queen or Mother. But as I knelt, Magda moved the hood back to reveal gray hair and a thick beard. When she pulled down the collar, exposing the man’s neck and half his face, our gasps came in tandem. I didn’t need to see the guild mark. I’d know the man’s face anywhere.

  Master Rahad.

  Eighteen: Separation

  “He’s dead. He’s dead on a glacier. What business could he possibly have had here?” Magda pawed through the pockets of his cloak. She tore his belt from his pants, cracking the frozen leather. She unstrung his pouches and opened them before I could warn her otherwise, and tipped them upside down. Every one was empty.

  “I don’t understand,” she murmured. “Why?”

  Empty was exactly how I felt. Empty like Master Rahad’s pouches, like his vacant eyes. I fingered my own belt and the pouches there. I thought about his offer of apprenticeship. I thought about how joy had threatened to burst from my chest that day. About how I’d made it to this point only by telling myself that eventually I’d be back in Sorpsi and in Master Rahad’s workshop. That I’d be his apprentice. That my life was finally starting.

  “I take it you know him?” Sameer unrolled his sleeping pad and pushed it into the cave.