Steelflower in Snow

by Lilith Saintcrow

  Darik set his heels, halting us, and dragged me upright. “Are you hurt? Are you?”

  I will feel this in the morn, should we live that long. “No,” I snapped, and glanced over the bodies. The night had taken on its usual darkness, without the creeping ink of the foul gloves. My ribs heaved. “Is that all of them?”

  “Tis.” Atyarik slid past us, his boots sticking with Power and authority, and offered Janaire his hand. “Are you well, adai’mi?”

  “My head,” Janaire said faintly, her G’mai a whisper. “Ugh. I shall be well enough.”

  “You should not have attacked him.” Darik let go of my jacket, and I whipped effluvia from my dotani. “They are dangerous, Kaia!”

  “I know!” I strode to the nearest body, wiped my blade on still-smoking clothing. Fingers twitched, and the thing moved slightly against the tiles, nerve-death pulling blindly at muscle-strings. My gorge rose, pointlessly; I quelled it. My belly was full of hot coals. “I was not offering him a lovesong, D’ri. Come, we’d best be gone. There will be more.”

  His hand shot out, closed around my upper arm. He pulled, all but dragging me away from the corpse. “Are you not listening? You could have been hurt, Kaia. You could have—”

  “I am not, and we must move.” I wished to enquire just how Janaire and Atyarik had followed us, but that could wait. Everything could wait until I had all three of them tucked safely into Kalburn Keep. “We have announced our presence to the entire city, and if there are more of the foul gloves, they are already on their way. What of Blacknose?”

  “What of—” His expression changed; even in that half-light, I could see it. A soft suspicion tiptoed through the fog of battle-nerves, quivering muscle pain, and my bruised ribs. I could not get enough air in, now that the battle was done.

  I doubted I would ever be able to again.

  So I simply bent my knees, tested the grip of my bootsoles, surveyed the rooftops around us, and hoped we were not already caught. “Come. And for the love of the Moon, try to keep up.”

  Blood-Tinged Tickle

  We were not caught. Not right away, at least, and not completely.

  I remember little of that gallop across the roofs of Kalburn’s Old City, hampered by my inability to catch my breath and the slowness of two G’mai who, though fit and trained, were not schooled in the trick of moving across rooftops. I had no air to ask them how or why, I simply set a punishing pace and racked my head-meat to take us on a long looping path back to the Keep. There was the difference between the maps and the rooftop terrain, and the consideration of a route that left us with means of escape should Dunkast have anyone even halfway competent planning this hunt once a trap gave away our location slowed us even further.

  I have been hunted across rooftops before, of course. In Shaitush, in Pesh, more than once in Hain, where their Royal Guard have a peculiar lightfoot trick they do not teach to outsiders. The best sort of thievery is when they do not discover your presence until you are long gone, and what is assassination but a theft of life? I had no time to think, or I might have been reminded of a slippery plunging chase my first time in Hain before I had learned to cache armor and weapons or even paid my first tithe to the Thieves Guild. That, or a winter chase in Antai, when I had stolen the contract for a particular merchant lord’s life from Smahua of the Snake Clan and led half of her ilk on a merry chase indeed across the city to the Red House.

  I had needed the money, and Smahua was too slow. The end of that chase bore a fruit of tradewire and coin in a leather pack, and I had left half of it on the counter downstairs at the Crimson Hole with her name attached to it. I was not greedy. I thought, why not share?

  Except she took it as an insult, half-noble merchant’s daughter that she was. There are none so jealous of their position as those who feel themselves weak.

  But I had other things to think upon that night. Halfway to the Keep, I viewed the deceptively dark street below and blew out between my teeth, wishing my ribs would stop aching. I shoved Janaire into the cover of a high-peaked windowledge and looked again while Atyarik, glowering, sank on his haunches and peered into his adai’s face. Darik’s was the far-vigil; he scanned the rooftops opposite, head upflung and the rest of him easy, his bow unlimbered and an arrow loosely nocked.

  “Catch your breath,” I told Janaire, though I was the one gasping. “What possessed you twain to come out tonight?”

  “Tis a good thing we did,” Atyarik replied, acidly. “They almost had you netted, adai’sa.”

  “Many thanks for your help.” Darik, polite and formal, smoothing the folds of politeness as usual. “Was that a Skaialan bard I heard?”

  “Yes, the Blacknose fellow. He insisted.” Janaire rubbed at her temples, delicately. Her skirts did not weigh her down much, but then, she had Atyarik to help her when they were cumbersome. “At least the little one is asleep.”

  “And Gavrin?” I coughed, rackingly, spat into the street below. It did not quite freeze in midair, but the cold was beginning to work its way in past the heart-thumping heat of battle and chase. The warming breath requires deep movement of air into your lungs, and I could not manage it. My ear-tips twitched, and my fingers were numb. High, brassy horns sounded to the south and west—the attackers’. The deeper, richer tones of the Kalburn horns from the barricades echoed in reply, defiance made music. I did not like it; the Ferulaine horns were sounding not where they had been at dusk.

  Now why is that, Kaia?

  “We left him speaking with the queen.” Janaire’s term for Emrath was respectful. No doubt they admired each other’s dresses roundly. “They hold bards in much honor here.”

  “At least until she hears him sing about going to sea.” I coughed again, spat. It tasted of blood, and that was a bad sign. “Listen. Two streets over—they are both narrow, Tyaanismir, you should manage them even with your adai’s skirts to haul—and do you turn hard south, you will have a clear path to the Keep. There is a parallel higher, on the eastron side, D’ri will take that to cover you with his bow.” I glanced at Darik, an indistinct shape in the dark. Only his eye-whites gleamed. “It is how we returned on the third night, s’tarei’mi.”

  “Are you well?” Janaire leaned forward, peering at me. “You sound strange.”

  “I am almost too furious to speak without screaming,” I informed all three of them. My harsh throat-cut whisper gave truth to the not-quite-lie. “You left the safety of the Keep, and you are both ill-fitted to rooftop warring.”

  “We saved your skin,” she pointed out.

  I changed to tradetongue; I could not bear to continue in G’mai. “And that is why I have not yet cuffed you both, like the disobedients you are.” I shook my head, quelled the blood-tinged tickle in my throat. “Go. Now. I can hear them coming.”

  “Where will you be?” D’ri had enough presence of mind to ask. His hair was a wild mess and his ear-tips poked through; he had lost his head-covering.

  “There is another parallel, lower, to the west. I shall take that road.”

  Perhaps he did not quite trust my plan. His hand braceleted my wrist, a spot of warmth in the deadly darkness. “Why?”

  “Tis easiest.” That time, I lied. “And that will mean you have the high ground, with your bow.” That was the truth, though only half of it.

  “I sense them too,” Janaire whispered. Her eyes had grown round, and her cheeks, unblackened by soot, were twin Moon-reflections upon the mirror of a calm lake. “How many of those awful things has he made?”

  “More than one,” I snapped. “Move!”

  Thank the Moon, they did, even Darik, who vanished into the dark as if he was made of its fabric.

  I half-straightened, listening. Yes, there it was. The soft, wrong footfalls, creatures too large for the way their boots landed cushioned and cat-quick, and the hideous black blankness spreading from them. An irregular semicircle, and to the northwest, a thick clot of darkness.

  “Invisible bastards,” I whispered, in the rough
argot of a Shainakh army camp, its lilt returning to my tongue as if it had never left. “They hide behind a grassblade, and put their arrows through a coney’s eye.” It was the first thing Ammerdahl Rikyat had ever said to me, in a tent on the Danhai plains as he hunched over a map-table and eyed the new recruits. He had gazed at me—tall for a G’mai female but small among sellswords, point-eared, with a single hilt rising above my shoulder—and laughed, as if he could not believe the recruiting agents had sent him such fodder.

  Darik had no way of knowing what the western route entailed. For he had not been dreaming of it, near-nightly, the way I had. I forced myself further upright, and set off in a silent lope instead of the mad whispering scramble of the other G’mai.

  The dreams had served me well; I knew what would happen next. There was a graying in the east; we had cut our time too close, and with dawn would come the attack on the last of the barricades.

  Make the Bait Sweeter

  Running. Rattling tiles underfoot, trusting to speed and skill to keep me upright since I had no concentration for clumsily using Power to boot-stick my feet. The slopes were easy, and I paced myself, one hand to my side where the pain had settled, the easy, ground-eating pace of a weary sellsword used to long marches. I could run forever in this manner upon flat ground; across the tiles I veered, half-drunkenly, until I came to a place I recognized from many nights’ dreaming.

  I let my foot slip sideways and slid down, hanging for a brief moment from a carved waterspout to channel rain or springmelt, its high horns and leering smile familiar. The drop wasn’t bad, the jolt upon landing merely enough to rattle, wringing a harsh cawing from my throat. I hacked and spat blood again, then set off up the street.

  They smelled distress, the way the great sharpfins native to the Lan’ai near Hain are said to. Some say it is blood from the wounded they scent, the way wolves or coyik in Pesh’s Broken Hills are said to do. An adai in pain, Power flaring and fading through the fringes of her mental walls, was irresistible.

  Or so I hoped. If the others were quick they would reach the Keep. Slowing pursuit was my task; I had played wounded coney before many a time on the Plains—always on a fast horse and with a full quiver, though. This time I had my dotani, my knives, soot smeared all over me, and my wits.

  It would have to be enough.

  The foul gloves were quick, brutal, and full of an alien will. But they were not very intelligent. They dropped behind me, soft plops of diseased, half-melted ice. Stagger-stumbling, letting my boots catch upon cobbles, I felt the other G’mai as a sellsword hears distant music from the street while she rests across an inn-bed. Still moving, and the nasty, bruise-dark stormclouds behind them had paused. The foul gloves were everywhere, and now I realized Dunkast had merely been biding his time, waiting for Rainak Redfist’s witchery-friends to come across one of his traps. Once we were dealt with, his Black Brothers would have an easier time attacking the Keep itself. Dunkast’s tain and his allied bastard clans were expendable, the foul gloves were his true weapon, brought out into the cold to deal with an unforeseen foe.

  Along with that Pensari gem, of course. It was a ruthless move, and one I might have admired if I were hearing this as a tale from afar, perhaps sung by a competent lutebanger. Dunkast was moving swiftly to remove an impediment, which meant he judged us—and Redfist—to be quite a stumbling-block. Now he must guess Emrath had been working against him; stupid of her, to wait for spring, but insurrection takes its own time. No doubt she had laid her plans as well as circumstances would allow, like the weaver she was.

  Ahead, the street took a sharp turn to run true northwest. I slowed, hoping to make the bait even sweeter. At least D’ri had taken his part without question. If he had not…

  No. He will be safe, and when you reach the end, he will be there with his bow, and—

  My left knee, much abused, buckled. I staggered, truly this time instead of an acrobat’s play, and my belly-muscles twitched. Perhaps the man’s kick had unmoored something vital. It did not matter, all I must do was delay them a little longer. My chin jerked up as if I had been struck. I leaned forward and began to lope again, that steady pace I am so familiar with. Tha-thump, tha-thump, the foot strikes and the body pushes itself forward while the rhythm burrows into brain and heart and bone. Horses are expensive, and a young sellsword—or one the dice have been unkind to—must depend upon her own boots to carry her to fresh starting in a new city.

  Kalburn Keep reared before me, much closer now. There was a final barricade, a jumble of broken waggonry, other smashed lumber, chunks of masonry, iron spars for bracing, and behind it, torchlight glimmering. I had no breath to ask the guards to hold their bolts and flung myself at it, my left boot hitting stone, up, my right hand closing about a spar, and on the other side, a short drop, the cobbles jarring knees, hips, shoulders, driving my recalcitrant body forward like an old bent Pesh woman as my belly spasmed.

  The shadows had changed while I coney-led my pursuers; from the battlements, an onlooker would see a line of grey in the east, a thin thread of crimson heralding a bloody dawn. It was still night in the shadows of overhanging buildings, stone faces frowning as a tired, limping sellsword halted in the clear space and whirled, her dotani glittering as it whipped free. Kalburn held its breath. The Black Brothers dropped from rooftop and loped up the cobbled street, slower now with their prey cornered.

  They had been busy while we went to the Market, indeed. The barricade was still intact; they had dropped behind it, and with no G’mai adai to fling Power or bard to exhort the defenders, they found the frozen guards easy enough to dispatch.

  Brought to bay at last, I exhaled smoothly, rolled my shoulders to settle them, and drew my largest knife. The dream rose under my skin again, except in it, I had not been this weary.

  Weary or not, I knew what I must do.

  They melded into the spatters of uncertain torchlight. Two, three, four. More behind me, now kicking and tearing at the barricade with heavy gauntleted hands. A flat shine to their deepwyrm eyes, and their furs hung flapping on gaunt-wasted frames. That was interesting, but with the ones behind me closing in, I had little time to wonder.

  I charged. Not straight for them, though that would have been satisfying, but to the left, where the shadows were deepest. Boots stamping, my legs complaining, ice underfoot and my left knee threatening to buckle again before silence descended—it was not the killing snow-quiet I had discovered after my mother’s death but the white-hot clarity of battlerage. There is a moment, when the body has been pushed past endurance and your enemies are still all about you, when the last reserves inside a sellsword—those crockery jars full of burn-the-mouth, sweetheavy turit jam—are smashed. Muscle may pull from bone, bone itself may break, but the sellsword will not feel it for hours. The Shainakh call it nahrappan, the Hain a term that has to do with a cornered animal, and in G’mai it is called the s’tarei’s last kiss, and it is said that even after an adai’s death a s’tarei may perform one last action, laying waste to his opponents.

  The Skaialan call it berserk, and there are tales of their warriors fighting naked except for crimson chalk-paint, touched by Kroth’s heavy hand and driven mad.

  Pain vanished. My dotani clove frozen air with its familiar sweet sound, blurring in a low arc as I turned sideways, skipping from cobble to cobble with no grace but a great deal of speed. The far-left Black Brother had an axe, and all remaining thought left me as it moved, hefted as if it weighed less than a straw. Their soft, collective grasping burned away, I left the ground and flew, turning at the last moment, the arc halting and cutting down, sinking through fur and leather, snap-grinding on bone, and the Black Brother’s mouth opened wet-loose as his arm separated, neatly cloven. The axe, its momentum inescapable, sheared to the side, and since his left hand was the brace for the haft it arced neatly into his next-door compatriot, sinking in with the heavy sound of well-seasoned wood.

  Their child-high screams rose but I was already past, and Moth
er Moon, I longed to turn back. The burning in my veins, the sweet-hot rage, demanded it.

  Instead, I put my head down and bolted. Thump-thud, thump-thud, the street familiar now, each shadow turning bright-sharp as my pupils swelled, the taste in my mouth sour copper and katai candy, a mix that meant I was tasting blood and remnants of my body’s last reserves. Kalburn Keep loomed ever closer, a great frowning block of stone, and if I could reach the end there was a narrow housefront with a door left deliberately unlocked to the right. Once inside, I could be up the stairs and out a high window, onto the roof-road again, up and down while the foul glove-net closed upon empty air. There was an easy way into the Keep from there, if D’ri had reached it and secured the knotted rope—

  Whistle-crunch. Another high childlike cry behind me as a heavy black-fletched arrow, its curve aimed high and sharp to give added force as it fell, pierced a pursuer’s skull, shattering it in a spray of bone and grey matter.

  Kaia! Thin and very far away, struggling to reach me through the rage. Kaia, down!

  But my feet did not tangle together, and I did not fall. Fleet as a deer, the berserk upon me, I was an arrow aimed high as well. The dream turned to a soap-bubble swirling for a fallwater’s drain; a giant, painless impact slammed into my back.

  It was a crossbow quarrel, and its head punched through the right side of my ribs, crunching bone and spearing lung-tissue. It still did not hurt; beyond pain, I was still running when the darkness took me, and the guttural scream of a s’tarei echoed against ice-rimed cobbles.

  In the distance, spilling from the hills into the cupped palm of Kalburn, came the plaintive baying of horns.

  Common Knowledge

  The grey in the east, shot through with gold, became a smear of blood. Smoke from the burning of Kalburn veiled the new morning, ice-vapor rising in thin curls over road, forest, shattered houses…and a mass of Skaialan upon torkascruagh, a wedge driving across the north to break the Ferulaine supply lines.