Steelflower in Snow

by Lilith Saintcrow

  “I brought myself, Emrath.” Redfist cleared his throat. “And do nae be ill-mannered to my friends. Kaai and Durrak here have saved my life many a time.”

  She rounded upon him, then, her skirts swaying with the motion. “Then what are you about, here? Kroth smite you, Rainak Redfist, for—”

  “And what are you about, in such fine thread?” Redfist dropped Skaialan words into tradetongue instead of using them exclusively; either he was simply in the habit of doing it by now or he wanted to make certain I understood. The fire crackled uneasily, built back up from its morning embers. “The Lady of Kalburn never used to wear such things.”

  “Ye came to discuss my dresses?” She held up her left hand, pale Highland gold glittering at the base of her second and third fingers. The rings were joined, and angular runes chased their surfaces. “Or my shiny bits?”

  Redfists’s hands knotted, released as he went even paler than his wont. Blue eyes glittered dangerously. “Who?” The single word, burred out in Skaialan, held a note I had never heard from my barbarian friend before.

  The woman’s hand dropped. “How did ye think ye were released? He wanted Kalburn, and I wanted you alive.”

  Redfist stared at her, pupils shrinking to pinpoints, and I wondered if he was going to strangle this new arrival. The blood now rising to his cheeks would not recede easily, if at all; from paleness to ruddy fury he had climbed in an instant.

  The Northern woman continued, her tone rising to match. “I held him off as long as I could. With you gone, there was no reason to…and now here you are, and all of it for nothing.” She looked ready to meet him blow for blow, too. It did not seem quite right that she had entered alone, given her fellow Highlanders and their habits. Most likely, her guards waited outside.

  Hers, or…ah. There was only one possibility that made sense. “She married this Ferulaine.” I folded my arms. “No doubt one or two loyal to him are outside.” Or in the commonroom by now. My boots weren’t even dry yet, and I might have to kill in a tavern brawl once more.

  I did not think Redfist would be grateful.

  The silence that fell was broken only by the soft sound of D’ri finishing his gruel. I took another sip of the sofin, deciding I might more than like it, and I held the Skaialan woman’s gray gaze.

  “What is that?” She did not point at me, but I suspected it was close. “A wee dark elvish bint in trousers?”

  Mother’s tits, I hate that word. I addressed my barbarian friend. “Do we kill her, or not?”

  “We’ll not be killing her, K’ai.” Redfist sounded as if the air had been forced from him by a heavy blow. His use-name for me was often shortened to a single syllable, now that we were in his country and his accent had thickened. “At least not today. So, Needleslay’s daughter, lady of Kalburn, did ye bring men with ye to restrain me as a criminal?”

  “You are an idiot,” she hissed, and I took a long hot draft of sofin. There did not seem to be any alcohol in it, which was probably for the best. D’ri set his bowl down, quickly and neatly, his nose wrinkling a little at the gruel’s sweetness. It was a wonder the Skaialan had any teeth left. “I came here to warn ye, and to give ye whatever gold ye need to make your way South again.”

  “Two hundred pieces of Northern gold, perhaps?” I supplied, helpfully. “With a wolf-rune stamped on each?”

  “Tis what my life seems to be worth here.” Redfist glowered, but his color had returned to what passed for normal. His hands were still fists, but I judged him not likely to use them at the moment. “Well, now ye’ve seen me, Emrath, and ye may take yerself north to yer husband’s Keep. I hear he built thee a fine one.”

  “Did ye think I’d simply sit and wait?” The giantess took two steps away from the fireplace, halted, and rounded on him with another sway of her skirts, her overshoes clop-grinding the carpet. “Let my clan follow the Redfist into the underworld, bairn to brawn? I had no choice, Rainak!”

  Redfist folded his brawny arms across his barrel chest. “Ye could have come with me.”

  “Oh, aye, and leave Kalburn to fire and rapine.” Emrath rolled her grey eyes like a young girl at her first Festival. “Would that have pleased thee?”

  Mother Moon. D’ri rose, paced to the window, his voice-within shot through with sardonic amusement. We traveled through ice, harpies, and bandits for a lover’s quarrel.

  My agreement took the form of a half-swallowed laugh, but I did not move from the door. No sounds untoward sounds in the hallway, yet. If we had to make a quick escape, could we reach the stables in time? The prospect of a gallop with restive stolen torkascruagh—if this woman’s escort had not a man or two posted in the stable now to deny us escape—and traveling along the bandit-infested road again with just our three blades and whatever provision we could take from our attackers was not a pleasant one.

  “You know it would not.” Redfist stepped toward her, once, twice. He did not wish to, that much was plain, but was clearly unable to halt. All the beads had left his great ruddy beard. He had sloughed the south as easily as I would push this place form my skin, did it please the gods to return me to civilization whole.

  I had never seen our barbarian act thus towards a woman, even lovely Kesamine, my Clau darling of the Swallow’s Moon. Which gave me much food for thought, when I could spare a moment or two for it.

  “Then take what I can give ye, Rainak Redfist, and go south again.” She gathered the front of her cloak, crushing and smoothing folds in turn. “And live. Tis the only thing that made this bearable, the thought that you were free, living out of his cursed reach.”

  “Free as a beggar, oh, indeed. Free as a starving dog.” Redfist’s hands dropped to his sides, beginning to open and close, and I wondered if he felt her throat against his palms. “You did not send Corran Ninefinger to me, then? With a lock of your golden hair?”

  “Corran…” A number of expressions traversed her face, swift as startled marshbirds, and D’ri turned from the window, his dark gaze meeting mine. “I knew he had escaped, but—”

  “He carried Northern gold and a sealed commission to assassins in Antai.” It was a day for me to be singularly helpful in conversation, apparently. “Friend Redfist, I like not the way this caravan is wending.”

  “Assassins…” She all but staggered under the news. Her shoulder hit the mantel, a heavy bruising blow, and Redfist moved as if to help her, but she retreated from his grasp.

  I did not blame her.

  “Kaia.” Darik had turned back to the window. “You should see this.”

  There was still no sound in the hallway, and the commonroom’s rumble below the floorboards held no note of approaching violence. I eased away from the door with a sigh, setting my mug upon the table. Redfist nodded, prompting the woman to go on.

  She swallowed, hard. If she was lying, no doubt she needed to wet her throat. “Corran came from the North an eightmoon ago. He begged me to help him escape. I made certain he could leave through Karnaugh. He said he would find you and tell you…tell you what I meant you to hear.”

  I arrived at D’ri’s side, peering through the small porthole that passed for a window. It showed a slice of frost-rimed cobblestone street below, a corner that should have held a bard, a holysinger, or perhaps a player or two performing for bits of leftover Skaialan copper tradewire in the thin gray morning light. Instead, it was bare, except for two hefty Skaialan giants in patterned blue cloth that matched the woman’s skirts.

  “Two guards,” I said, in tradetongue peppered with Shainakh instead of Skaialan. “Wearing skirts to match hers, Redfist.”

  “Of course, the lady of Kalburn doesnae go into a common inn without a heavy hand or two about.” Redfist drew himself up, switching to Skaialan, the words thrumming in his chest. “I am bound for the Standing Stones, Emrath Needleslay, and I will challenge your husband. Corran led me to believe you wished as much.”

  “No, you blundering oaf, I wish for you to live.” She gathered her skirts in both hands.
“Please, Rainak. I can give you a fast treikaull and guards—”

  “I do not like this,” I interrupted. “She has all but announced us to the entire city.”

  “Shut your mouth, foreign whore.” Sharp and disdainful, Emrath spat the last term at me with a measure of icy contempt.

  Do they know no other insult? It was puzzling, and they pronounced it as if those who slake the desires of the flesh for coin are somewhat unclean. Even the Pesh are not so venomous, though they hold females to be only receptive vessels for any male, god or beast, to use as they please. A female sellsword in Pesh is a rare article, likely fast and deadly to escape the coffle.

  I should know.

  A short sharp crack echoed against the walls, the two sturdy beds—both of them large enough for two G’mai or a single Skaialan giant—and the small table where Darik’s scraped-empty bowl and my cooling mug stood sentinel. I turned from the window to see the fair-haired giantess with a sting-reddened cheek, and Rainak Redfist lowering a bladed hand as he spoke, even quiet words that nonetheless managed to chill more than the sleet outside. “K’ai Iron-Flower is wal’kir, she is a shieldmaiden of Kroth Himself, and ye will not insult her again, Emrath Needleslay.”

  I forgave him much in that moment. Perhaps I should not have, for a man who strikes one woman will strike another. I peered again out the window, taking in what I could of the men on the corner. They did not seem happy to be standing in the sleet, but they were not glancing up at the inn windows, nor were they paying much attention to the passers-by. I could perhaps knock out the glass and slide through the aperture, but D’ri’s shoulders were too broad, and Redfist…well, squeezing him through like a pet Shainakh longrat sent down a snake-burrow was an amusing thought, but not even close to possible. “Redfist?” I did not need to add the rest of the question. Do we move now? And do we leave the woman alive?

  My barbarian friend stared at the woman, her cheek now stained vivid crimson. She regarded him fiercely, unblinking, and the two of them seemed well-matched indeed.

  “My apologies,” Emrath Needleslay said, colorlessly. Her stance did not relax, tight as a lutestring, and she did not so much as glance at me. “Do you be my guest tonight, Rainak Redfist, and your two elvish sprites as well. I am still Lady of Kalburn; even my husband cannot kill you there.” Her chin rose a fraction. “He is due from the North soon, to attempt the calling of the Clans to the Standing Stones.” Her gaze had become remote, chill as ice-flowers upon their fine glass windows. “Tomorrow you may, if you wish to, call them first.”

  A Guest is Sacred

  The Skaialan call it ogidaugh; the word in G’mai is hal’adai’ara. To the Shainakh it is ka-atet, the Hain have their own all-but-unpronounceable term. So, and so on. A household guest in all those lands is sacred, and may not be harmed unless one wishes to draw down the wrath of things older than gods. In the Highlands, it is not even the mother of Kroth who punishes transgressors, but her three mothers—the ones who gave parts of their bodies to make the spines of the mountains, the eyes of the Sun and Moon, and the belly of all-giving earth.

  I wondered if Corran Ninefinger had complained bitterly to them as he staggered bruised and bloody through Antai’s cobbled streets, and if we were likely to meet a similar fate in Kalburn.

  Needleslay rode in a treikaull, a manner of sled with three greased runners, pulled by a pair of torkascruagh bred for speed and consequently smaller than most. The beasts had white patches along their sides, as if singed, and the sled was full of furs and soft materials. She had invited me to ride within it as well, but I declined with a single glance. Instead, our trio rode torkascruagh borrowed from her guards, who had to trudge back to their duties afoot.

  If she wanted to alert the entire Highlands to Redfist’s presence, she was doing a fine job of it. And Redfist, the great gingery gruel-brained barbarian, seemed content to let her do so. I mulled this at length, fixing each turn of Kalburn’s winding streets in my head as I would the lay of a battlefield. There was one thing that cheered me—the roofs inside the city’s thick, ancient walls, though steeply pitched, were crammed so close together a torkascruagh could ride across them with a little luck.

  A much smaller G’mai accustomed to thievery and slippery footing would have an easier time.

  The citadel of Kalburn rose, a high, thin block of stone thrusting from Highland earth. By block I mean it was all of a piece, not built, not held together by mortar. A narrow mountain-tooth, worn almost to the gums by time and wind but still larger than petty human concerns. Its rooms were carved instead of constructed. There were timber and stone outbuildings, but the citadel itself was where Needleslay slept and held her board, and also where she sat in a cold high-ceilinged room upon a dais and a low bench likewise chipped from the solid stone, all in one piece, to hear arguments presented by those of her clan in some suit or dispute.

  It reminded me of Anjalismir, and that made me uneasy. Redfist’s acceptance of her hospitality made me uneasy as well. A blade in the dark I may handily fight but poisons are not my specialty, and it is easy enough to add such things to a guest’s food, especially when a guest is a man who has struck you open-handed. I am a sellsword worth good red Shainakh gold, and a s’tarei is nothing to discount either, but enough numbers can overwhelm even the mightiest.

  These pleasant musings accompanied us all the way through the citadel’s outbuildings, the five-sided fenced spaces for sparring or dueling—the Skaialan do not duel under a roof, believing it bad form. Kroth must be able to witness their battles, for little delights him more than honorable bloodshed, this hungry Northern god.

  Under a dark, heavy sky and the iron tang of more wet snow about to heave itself from Kroth’s cellars, we were formally welcomed to Kalburn’s citadel. A double-handled cup of beaten metal was brought, and standing upon the steps before great doors of scarred and iron-bound timber, the fair-haired giantess drank a healthy draft and passed it to Redfist. He accepted with both hands, hefted the brassy metal, and took a long swallow.

  I glanced at the onlookers—dour Skaialan giants with hair ruddy, gold, or dark, their naked, furry calves spattered with mud and snowmelt, the guards in skirts that matched the pattern upon Needleslay’s. Above, heavy shutters closed over most windows, but a few in sheltered places were uncapped, full of pale smears. I later learned they were the women-servants and children watching the arrival of guests, excited and agog.

  Redfist handed the cup to me. The thing was as wide across as my forearm is long, and the liquid within steamed fragrant with spice and alcohol. I took a cautious sniff—wine, with sweet herbs.

  My hesitation might have been insulting. I met the Skaialan woman’s pale gaze, the skin between my shoulderblades roughening instinctively.

  I lifted the cauldron-thing to my lips with no little effort, and took a sip. Passed it to D’ri with a nod, and he copied me, barely wetting his lips. That was apparently enough to appease custom, and from that moment we were the witnessed guests of the woman Northerners called the Keeper of the Stones, the only woman who commanded fighting men in the whole of the Highlands.

  I might almost have liked her, if not for what was to come.

  A Deepwyrm's Eyes

  A Skaialan high feast is rather like a Shainakh army camp. There is smoke, both from fires and from pipes carved from torkascruagh horn and stuffed with bogweed, smoked to ease the lungs and sharpen the appetite. There is meat, roasting upon spits in the high hearth or carried from great clamoring smoke-hell kitchens, and there is liquor. Mead, both mash and distilled, and deep harsh ale that must be watered, and for the children, bubbling thick small-ale and sofin. Roasted meatroot, pasties, all manner of different spices and scents crowding the nose, fighting with the fume of smoke and inebriation. The pressure of a crowd, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, elbows rubbing as they consume.

  Most of all, though, there is the noise, fair to shake the carven stone and timber roof down upon us. Toasts called across the room, drunken alt
ercations settled with blows or by the crowd pulling two combatants apart, children shrieking with joy as they ran from table to table, sampling at will. From the raised end of the room where the lord or commander sits, all this can be surveyed and the crowd is somewhat less, and as the lady’s personal guests, we were treated to the spectacle and only half-deafened by it.

  Oiled, scraped, baked in the heat of their strange little skauna-rooms and with my hair freshly braided, D’ri similarly bathed and both of us in jerkin-and-trews, we must have been a strange sight to the Northerners, to judge by the staring. Of course, we were armed, and that had almost been a problem until Redfist explained that our ways required it in order to defend our host’s honor if necessary. It was an inspired bit of silvertongue explanation, one I had no idea lurked inside his barbarian skull.

  Those who did not study the strange southroners watched him, for he was a sight indeed.

  I had to admit, dressed like his fellow countrymen, Rainak Redfist was an imposing figure. His skirt was a different color and pattern than the Needleslay and her guards’, and there had been a rippling hush when he strode into the dining-hall after her, D’ri and I gliding ghosts in his wake. With his hair clubbed afresh and his beard and moustache no longer oiled and beaded but rough-combed into a torrent, a wide creaking-new leather belt holding his skirt fastened and the excess material drawn up and flung over his left shoulder, he moved just as his fellow giants did. No longer was he an uncertain mass of man in too-small buildings, clumsily handling eating picks and almost breaking every chair. He sat at the Needleslay’s right, and their heads bent together during the meal. Deep in conversation, Redfist did not even glance at me.

  I watched the crowd, as D’ri murmured an occasional comment in my ear. We could guess who held high rank and who held low, and there were a few who looked a bit green at Redfist’s appearance. Children pointed at me and giggled, ran to the foot of the dais and eyed me to test their courage. Fighting men—the Needleslay’s guard, all with a crescent-brooch of silver stabbed by a short bar—examined us as well. One in particular, a black-bearded giant, watched me as if he expected me to shed my usual form and turn into a tree-viper. He chewed slowly, and his coal-dark eyes were thoughtful and wary.