by Rachel Dunne
Keiro stood, and he held his hand down to Nerrin. “Will you come with me?” he asked. She stared at his hand for a very long time before carefully placing her fingers inside his.
There was a place among the waving grass sea, an irregular circle of shorter grass and flowering plants that, during the day, was a beautiful sight. At night, the flowers closed their petals and the place swam with shadow, and it looked like nothing special, nothing to draw a traveler. Poret had first brought him here, her eyes shining.
Keiro stopped at the edge of the clearing, and with Nerrin at his side, her fingers clutched tightly around his, he swept out his other arm, ran it across the tops of the hip-high plants. It started slowly: dim blue lights winking to life, growing brighter, multiplying. Butterflies rose like scattered clouds, disturbed from their resting places, and the edges of their wings glowed blue.
Keiro watched Nerrin, watched wonder and uncertainty war on her face. “Is this . . .” She reached her hand out toward one of the fluttering insects, curled her fingers back before she touched it. “Is this real?”
“This is real, Nerrin,” Keiro said softly, gently. He released her fingers and, with both hands held out at his sides, he walked into the clearing. The plants tickled against his legs and his palms, and the butterflies rose around him in a glowing squall. Grinning, he turned back to face Nerrin, butterflies swirling between them.
Her first step was hesitant, as though she thought she was stepping into a pool of fire. Maybe that was what she thought, what she saw. But she did take a careful step, and where the butterflies had begun to settle, they rose once more, brushing against her so that they drew a breathy cry from her mouth. Another step, her hands reaching before her, and another. Through the swirling blue, Keiro thought he saw one of the butterflies land on her outstretched hand, saw joy spread over her face. Her steps grew more certain, and then she was running, hands and feet stirring the glowing insects, and she ran laughing through the cloud of them.
Watching Nerrin run through the butterflies, Keiro made a decision. Maybe the Twins and the tribe didn’t need him, now that they had Saval; maybe Keiro truly was an outcast who didn’t belong. But at least he wasn’t alone in that. Nerrin was just as far from her home, farther even, and had suffered worse than Keiro. He didn’t know if there was a way to help her, or if he would ever learn the secret of her madness, but this he could do: make her life here a little less bleak, a little less frightening. It was a small thing, but it wasn’t nothing. It was enough to make it worth staying.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Scal stood before the three black-robed preachers. They stared at him in the rising dark, and he stared back.
He had never quarreled with preachers before. In his long traveling he had crossed paths with some, but they had left him in peace. He had returned the same courtesy to them. True, they were a threat to the Parents—but a vague one, a distant one. As great a threat as the horse-worshipers beyond the longest river. Only a threat in that they believed different things, but they were, when it came to it, people as any others. Traveling with Joros had only proved to Scal that a preacher was not a thing to fear.
Scal spread his hands to show they were empty. “Peace to you. I mean no harm.”
The preacher who had spoken laughed, a sound of surprise and suspicion mixed. “Big man like you could do plenty of harm with a finger, but I wager there may be more of me than there is of you. What’s your name, brother?”
“I am Scal. I . . . I have been traveling a long time.”
“Alone?” one of the others asked. A woman, gray hair and nervous eyes. “The road isn’t safe for a man alone.”
The first man laughed again, his broad belly shaking. “For us, maybe—but look at him! Man like that has nothing in the world to fear.”
“Then wouldn’t it be wise for us to fear him?”
The broad man fixed his gaze on the youngest of the preachers, a boy with splotchy skin and hair bright as fire. “What say you, Herrit? Is it wiser to fear a stranger in the night, or welcome all company?”
The boy glanced nervously to Scal, who was beginning to step slowly backward, hoping to move back through the trees. More disconcerted by their talk and their regard, than their presence.
The boy said, “In the night, all men are strangers, their faces hidden.” His voice broke, the voice of near manhood. “In the night, we should greet every man as though he were a brother . . . for he may be.”
“Good, Herrit!” the broad man said, eyes near to disappearing as his skin folded around a grin. He turned back to Scal, made motion to the empty space at his side. “Forgive us, brother. A mentor must take every opportunity to teach. Join us, please. I don’t doubt the open road holds no fear for you, but the nights grow cold. We have no fire to share—” that pulled soft laughter “—but we make for good company.”
Scal halted and, after the passing of a few beats, stepped forward to take the place at the broad man’s side. Their eyes all were on him. Curious, and somewhat fearful despite their words. Still, they had spoken true. Scal was a man who had nothing to fear, and there was a comfort in the nearness of bodies. In the soft sound of breathing that was not only his.
“I am Berno,” the broad man said. “Herrit is the mouse there, squeaking on occasion. Zenora, of course, is our bodyguard.”
“Har har, fat man,” the old woman said. Her hands shook, wrinkled skin and bones like birds, but she made an obscene gesture at Berno clear enough.
“You said your name was Scal?” Berno asked, and when he nodded the broad man went on carefully, “You seem to be . . . a long way from home.”
“I have been traveling a long time.”
“Yes, you did say that . . . What brings you to the warm-lands?”
Scal looked to his feet, to avoid their staring. “There is nowhere else for me.”
“Berno, leave him be,” the woman Zenora chided. “Strangers in the night may wish to stay strangers.”
Berno huffed out a heavy breath. “Twins’ bones, woman, I’m only being friendly! A man decides to sit with strangers, he must expect curiosity. I don’t doubt he’s just as many questions for us!”
“Which, you’ll note, he’s polite enough to keep behind his teeth.”
They bickered, with the familiarity of those who had long traveled together. It put him in mind, almost, of Joros and Vatri, but their bickering had held a sharper edge. Not the gentle jabs of old friends, but words meant to cut. Voices honed by danger and mistrust.
The boy scooted closer to Scal, and beneath the sound of the other two squabbling, he asked, “You’re a Northman?”
Scal nodded.
“Is it really true you fear nothing?”
“I do not know if it is so for all Northmen,” Scal said.
Herrit’s eyes were wide in his face, a green that was striking beneath his red hair. His mouth was as wide, and his lips barely moved as he breathed, “How?”
Scal did not answer right away, trying to find the words. Trying to decide if they were words to be shared. “My death waits for me in the true snows,” he finally said. “Only they can take me. The only thing a man should fear is death. There are no snows here, and so I have nothing to fear.”
“Only death?” Berno interrupted. He had ceased his quibbling with Zenora, had leaned in to hear the end of Scal’s words. “A wise man fears more than death, m’boy!”
“There’s snow here,” Herrit said. His brow was wrinkled, confusion plain.
“Not true snow. Not killing snow.”
Berno huffed. “Herrit.” The boy’s back snapped straight. Eyes darting to fix on the broad man. “What fears should all men have?”
The boy sucked on his lip, brow wrinkling again, though this time with deep thought. Unexpectedly, Scal was reminded of himself. He and a boy named Brennon had sat at Parro Kerrus’s feet and answered his questions. Philosophy, the priest had said. Morality. Ethics. Just because the world has abandoned us, that doesn’t mean we shoul
d all turn savage. Brennon had always been better at those lessons. Perhaps it was the taint of Scal’s blood. Perhaps simply that words came less swift to his tongue. Most often, he had listened to them as they argued a point. Sat in the warmth of the everflame, wrapped by voices sometimes raised, though never in anger. Strong wills, quick minds. Scal did not realize, until that moment, how much he had missed those debates.
“A smart man,” said Herrit, “should fear sharp things.”
“Explain,” Berno prompted.
“It’s an animal thing. All animals fear the sharp-clawed predator, and what are men if not animals? What are men with weapons if not sharp-clawed predators?”
Zenora snorted. “There are sharp things that are not weapons, boy. Hunger can be a sharp thing. Disappointment. Love can be the sharpest thing there is.”
“Men should fear the abstract,” Berno muttered.
Herrit’s face turned a red as deep as his hair. “All men should fear love, surely. But it’s a different fear. A sharp weapon means a threat, pain, death. Love is . . . a gentler thing, a well-laid trap.”
“Says the boy.” Zenora laughed, and Berno joined her. The boy’s flush deepened, shoulders brushing his ears, eyes fixed to the ground. Zenora waved a hand at him, still chuckling. “Come, boy, enlighten us. What else should a man fear?”
A small silence fell as the sun dropped from the sky. The copse darkened, barely enough to make out faces, eyes. Still, Scal saw Herrit’s jaw jut forward, and there was defiance wound through his next words. “The dark.”
The two preachers stiffened. Shrouded in the thing the boy had named, their faces were hidden but disquiet was written in the dimly seen lines of their bodies. Softly, Berno asked, “How’s that?”
“Anything can hide in the dark,” Herrit said, and the strains of his voice wove around the lowering night. “It gives shelter to all manner of things, good and bad, and with no light there’s no way to tell the difference. How could a man not fear it?” His silence fell again, a thing of shadows and spiders. “But that’s the thing. In the dark, everything but that fear is stripped away. We’re reduced to simple things, easy to understand. We’re all made equal.”
After a long while, Berno muttered, “Remind me to send you to Tressein when we get back.”
“You did well, boy,” Zenora said. There was something like tenderness in her voice. Scal had not known her for long, but the tone seemed not to fit her well. “Now, to sleep with you. Unless . . .” Her voice dropped, low and dangerous. A growl, almost. “Unless you fear the dark?”
Berno laughed, a sound loud enough to wake birds. He laughed over their angry chatter, and after a time, Zenora joined him. Menace gone from her voice, eyes flashing in starlight. Herrit’s laugh took a hesitant step from his mouth, quickly retreated. In the darkness, though they could not see it, Scal felt the corners of his mouth turn up.
Amid the muttering of birds and lingering chuckles, Scal lay upon the ground. It was cold beneath his cheek, but it did not touch him. He fell asleep to the soft sounds of breathing, and slept more soundly than he had since before Berring. Before Aardanel. Before the killing-cold North, before wandering Fiatera with his sword, before Valastaastad, the village that floated on a cliff of ice. He slept as well as he had slept on the warped wooden floor of Parro Kerrus’s small hut, with a warm fire and a thin blanket and snores to shake the walls.
They woke with the sun, and the black-clad preachers moved with the silent surety of routine. The boy fetching wood, the woman stacking tinder and twigs, the man filling a dented pot with water from a half-empty skin.
Scal sat in silence, watching them. He should rise. Leave. This was not a place he belonged. These were not people for him. There was a flamedisk hung around his neck, and they wore robes of black. After a time, he did rise. Joined Herrit, filling his arms full of wood.
The preachers made a simple porridge, thick and lumpy. Filled their bowls and, without words, handed the dented pot to Scal. There was porridge still—some burned to the bottom, and not much of it left, but none of them had taken much. Had given up some of their own portion, that he might have some. Scal’s throat was thick as he ate. The porridge, of course.
After they had all finished, quiet scraping and chewing and heavy swallowing, Berno was the first to break the silence. “Where are you bound, m’boy?” His eyes were honest, fixed on Scal with blue intensity.
Scal shook his head, lifted his shoulders. “I do not know.”
“Well, we’re headed south. If you’ve any business in that direction, you’re welcome to travel with us.” Berno smiled, a grin broad as his belly. “I know you’ve nothing to fear, but the boy, here . . . well, I don’t doubt having the company of a big bear of a man would put his mind at ease.”
Scal’s throat grew thick again, and this time he did not have the excuse of the porridge. He looked down at his hands, clasped in his lap. Softly, he said, “I have nothing to give.”
Fingers touched his knee. Next to his, Zenora’s hand was small as a broken-winged bird before a cat. Scal had big hands, strong hands. A killer’s hands. Stained with old blood, stained so deep they would never be clean.
When she spoke, there was that strange soft note in Zenora’s voice once more. “We’re not asking for anything.”
There was a freedom in those words. They did not want to shape him to their own will, to make him something he was not. They did not want him to be anything. They saw him, silent and serious, and did not mind the shadows in his eyes, the deep stains on his hands. He simply was, and that was the only thing that mattered.
“Yes,” Scal said. “I am going south.”
They walked from the copse, and Scal trailed in their wake. Before they left the winter-growing trees behind, Scal opened his fingers and let the thing he held fall to the ground. Swallowed by brush, swallowed by snow. The witch’s sight faded from his eyes as the seekstone left his fingers. He would go south, but not because of any pull. Not because of any need. He would go south because it was a thing he, and he alone, had chosen to do.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The bars of Rora’s cell were so cold they stung, the one time she touched them, and when she yanked back her hands she left skin stuck to the metal. After that she didn’t go near the bars, curling up on the ground and holding her blood-spotted hands against her chest. She didn’t think she’d ever be warm again.
Rora figured it must’ve been Anddyr. The first time she’d seen him, he’d made an invisible wall around her and Aro, one that’d turned back thrown things just like her dagger had been turned back from the black-robes. Since then, she’d seen him call up fire with a wave of his fingers and roast a whole village with a finger-wave not too much different, so she didn’t expect it’d be much harder for the witch to make the fiery pain that’d burned through her chest. If the witch’d had time to make cahoots with the black-robes, she bet that was plenty damn time for him to tell ’em all about how she was a twin, which made at least two betrayals. The number changed the angrier she got.
She’d known she shouldn’t trust him, but that was the trouble of thinking like pack. You didn’t betray pack, not ever, that was why Tare’d cut off her ear and still hated her. Pack was everything, but Joros and the witch weren’t her pack. Easy to forget that, but it was true. Still, the betrayal stung.
If she ever got out of the mountain, ever got warm again, she made a promise to herself: she’d use her warmed-up hands to wrap around Joros’s throat. She wasn’t one for killing with her bare hands, but if anyone’d earned it, it was him. The witch she’d give a quick knife in the eye, so he didn’t have time to wiggle his fingers to stop her. Those were the warmest thoughts she could think up, in the long, cold dark while they kept her waiting.
Those were better thoughts than the ones about the knives. For a little while, she’d had a real pack again, even if she’d forced her way into it. She’d had a pack, and she’d got enough trust to lead some of ’em, and then she’d gotten �
�em killed. Hadn’t been hilt more’n two weeks, and the first real leading she’d done had ended in death. She tried not to think about it, because the sad and the guilt would drown her if she let them.
She’d spent time in cells before—never too long, that was the good thing about having a pack—and she’d figured out it was mostly just waiting. Waiting for the stomp of iron-shod boots and a jailer to swing open the door, waiting for the whisper of feet and the louder whisper of metal tools scraping in the lock, waiting for a door or a hole to open where it didn’t look like there should be one, waiting for any way to get past the bars ’cause once you weren’t locked in, the rest was easy as a blade. All you had to do was wait long enough for an opportunity to throw yourself at.
But this was different, near as different as you could get. They’d left her in the dark, darker than any place she’d ever been before, dark as somewhere that’d never once seen a touch of fire. That was enough to make her twitch, but the quiet was maybe worse. No other prisoners, no jailers in a faraway room, no drip of water in a damp place. There wasn’t even the soft scritch of rat-feet—it was too cold for rodents. After a while her stomach started filling the quiet—mumbles at first, like something huge being shook awake and grumping about it, then rolling roars that near pulled scared screams out of Rora before she realized it was her and not monsters in the dark. No one came to check on her, no one came to feed her, no loose bricks fell away on a tunnel just big enough a small person could wriggle through, no opportunities to escape.
Then the eyeless black-robes came.
One of ’em carried a torch, though she couldn’t imagine how the light could make much difference to them. After so long in the dark, it burned at Rora’s eyes, made it look like she was weeping like an old woman—still, she’d take it, for the way it pushed back the blanket of shadows.
One of them stepped forward, smooth and confident for all she had no eyes to see, and stuck her arms between the bars. She was holding a small basket of food and a jug of water, and Rora couldn’t decide which she wanted more. She wasn’t stupid, though. She stayed where she was, curled up, shielding her eyes with one hand. The black-robe set down the food and drink inside the bars and stepped back to the others, the line of five of them, all with no eyes on their faces and red Eyes sewn onto their chests.
