Here under the branches, the white flakes had only just begun accumulating on the corpse, the awfulness of his rictus not yet veiled under a winding sheet of snow. Ji-hyeon knelt over the childlike body, because that’s what it was, she saw now; these weren’t the remains of a grown man, they were those of a puny boy, the sort to be teased for his slight build, his delicate limbs. Without the fire of life, and the man had certainly been all aglow with it, the once-ferocious Horned Wolf reminded Ji-hyeon of nothing so much as the fledgling sparrow she and her sisters had discovered at the base of one of Hwabun’s olive trees. All that remained of his old vigor was his snarling mouth, frozen in a mute scream at the deaf heavens… or maybe locked in a final guffaw at the same.
“You came,” said Sullen from over her shoulder, and when he said it again his voice broke. “You came.”
For all the good it would do any of them now. She turned to Sullen, and he swept her up in a great hug, sobbing into her hair, and she squeezed him as hard as she dared without reopening her injuries. Then squeezed him harder, knowing she owed him blood, and more than a little.
Holding each other there in the snow, it was almost warm. But not quite.
CHAPTER
4
Sullen had rooted around some dark corners in his time, for sure, but over the last day and night he’d explored the deepest fathoms a mind could reach while still hoping to someday make it back up to the light. And all that without leaving Grandfather, standing vigil and keeping his eyes pointed at the edge of the plateau, just daring a familiar face to come strutting up from the camp. After his fruitless search for Uncle Craven he’d cleared out his and Grandfather’s tent, so he’d had some tough jerky to gnaw and syrupy mead to sip over the cold grey afternoon and the brutal black night that followed, but the hunger that constricted his bowel, the thirst that rasped in his craw, these weren’t needs that could ever be filled by the food and drink of mortals. What he needed was the provender of devils.
But then he saw Ji-hyeon come haunting through the gnarled pines like the worthiest ancestor a Horned Wolf ever invented to flatter his vanity, a herald of Old Black come to fetch Grandfather to her Meadhall, and Sullen just totally lost his shit, crying into her tangled hair like a newborn whelp questing for its mama’s dugs.
Soon as he thought about it that way, though, he got himself back together—like Grandfather always said, Sullen’s imagination had a peculiar cast to it. Like Grandfather had always said, that was, before he ate a weakbow arrow fired off by a nervous boy. In a song the old wolf would’ve caught it in his teeth, spat it back at the runt, but… but…
It went like that for a long while, with Sullen unable to stop his mind from thrashing from one random thought to the next. Through it all Ji-hyeon didn’t push him away or tell him to buck up, the way his mother used to when she’d catch him in one of his many unhappy childhood moods. And that, that ickiness right there of comparing the girl he was achingly keen on to his mother, if only for a grief-addled instant, was what properly brought Sullen back to some semblance of his senses. The Kid With Ten Thousand Tears needed to get his shit together but quick.
“Hey,” he said, self-consciously breaking off her embrace, and because thinking at all was hard and thinking in Immaculate was even harder, he just shrugged and shook his head.
“I know,” she said, and looking down at her red cheeks and runny nose and bloodshot eyes he figured she probably did. “How… how did it happen?”
Sullen shook his head again, because there was no way to answer without exploding, and to feed the coals of sorrow was the shame that he hadn’t even avenged the crime. The twitchy runt who had weakbowed Grandfather had only kept half the oath Sullen had made him swear, because while the old man was laid out here on the plateau just like Sullen had ordered, there had been no sign of the boy himself. That Sullen had sworn to hunt the kid down and murder him slow if he didn’t arrive to find both his Grandfather and his murderer awaiting his further inspection hadn’t been sufficient enticement—the kid must’ve hauled the old wolf up here and then hauled arse himself for fear that the crazy barbarian would murder him anyway, out here where there’d be no witnesses.
The truth was when Sullen arrived and found Grandfather’s already ripe carcass left in the dirt and his killer fled there’d been a hot moment where he’d almost doubled back to camp to fulfill his threat, but just imagining what’d it be like to murder a boy that young, remembering how close he’d come to doing just that, Sullen gave up that oath in a flood of burning puke. Uncle Craven wasn’t the only one who could play loose with his word, and the important thing was that the boy had carried Grandfather up here. That he’d like as not be glancing over his shoulder for the rest of his days would be punishment enough.
“I can’t tell you anything that will help, but I’m so, so sorry, and honored he died fighting for me,” Ji-hyeon said softly, bringing Sullen back to the moment, to the dejected girl who sought to comfort him in his blackest hour. Maybe it was just the cold that made her look so tore up, but it was nice to know that at least for a little while now they both seemed in mourning.
Except no, damn Sullen’s cast-iron skull, she was far more haggard than he, with bloody rags on one hand and bags under her eyes so heavy he could’ve used one for a bedroll. She should be dreaming in her tent, not hiking up frozen mountainsides…
And just like that he finally figured out the obvious. That kiss she’d given him back in her tent just before her old flame had returned hadn’t been an idle smooch, something to pass the time on a chill night. This fierce Immaculate general must really care about him, and even if it wasn’t in the same vein that he cared for her, even then it didn’t matter, because she carried him somewhere in her heart, just as he carried her in his. Love, was the word for it, but the singers knew not a lot of good words rhymed with that one, whereas a heart, now, that was something you could work with.
And because you never really know anything, not until you’ve tested it, he looked deep into her dark eyes with what he hoped was his most enticing stare. She was certainly returning his gaze with curiosity, if not outright hope. Up came the arms he’d been awkwardly holding at his sides, landing stiffly on the shoulders he’d so naturally held once upon a time, before Keun-ju came back into her life. This was it. He wasn’t going to swoop down like some thieving crow; he was going to glide in light and easy like a crowned eagle, giving her plenty of time to turn her head if those pale pink lips of hers didn’t fancy a second meeting with his darker ones…
Yes, any moment now Sullen would get up the courage to kiss her.
Annnnnny moment.
Just not this one. Or that one. Or the next few, apparently.
“Do you…” Ji-hyeon licked her lips, her eyes darting downward. “Can I… should we bury him? What’s, um, your custom?”
Sullen the Romantic, trying to woo a girl next to his freshly dead kinfolk. Rakehell show mercy and grant a poor lost descendant some common decency, or failing that, some common sense. Following her gaze down to Grandfather’s yawning mouth, Sullen half fancied the old man was laughing at him. But he only half fancied it, mind, having sworn off full fancies for good.
“The custom of the Horned Wolves is to leave ’em where they fall,” he said, willing his eyes not to fill anew as he stared down at Grandfather. Sullen’s devil-touched eyes never did as he bid, so why should they start now? “The thought is their spirit’s gone on down to Old Black’s Meadhall, or some less worthy place, so the meat and bones and all don’t need special treatment. Best their remains nourish this doomed world of their kin, providing food for mortal beasts and the earth itself.”
“Is that what you want?” Ji-hyeon asked in that way she did that made Sullen feel like here at last at the end of the Star he’d found another soul who actually gave a care what he thought, what he felt.
“I… I don’t know,” Sullen managed through gritted teeth. Each and every time he said that helpless mantra his tongue grew heavi
er, like a boot picking up mud on a trek through a half-thawed fen. He felt so pathetic, standing here unable to even give an easy answer to her easy question. His hands curled into fists, and he looked down on his grandfather with something a little like wrath but more like embarrassment. “Story of my devildamned life, Ji-hyeon. I’ve traveled farther than most any ancestor of mine, or his, and I still don’t know a fucking thing, do I? Not even how to get rid of my Fa, even after he went and left me. We aren’t Horned Wolves no more, so I don’t… I don’t know what to do with ’im. Or what I’ll do without ’im. I don’t know a blessed thing.”
She stepped closer to him, the distant murmur of her guards and the sentries who had set up camp across the copse barely registering over the thunder of his heart, and like it was the most obvious thing in all the world, she said, “You knew him best, Sullen, so what do you think he’d want you to do?”
Sullen considered it, then balked at the responsibility of her suggestion. “I… I couldn’t really say what he’d—”
“Yes you can,” said Ji-hyeon, her hand slipping into his and tightening round his fingers. “Stop thinking so much, Sullen, and just tell me. What would he want you to do, if he saw you right here and now?”
“He’d want me to quit whining and start biting.” The words were out before Sullen knew they were even in him, but as soon as he said it he knew it was true. It gave him the chills, like Grandfather had reached in and used his tongue. And the aftertaste of it, like he’d just chipped his tooth biting down on an iron rasp, brought back something Grandfather had told him down in the Cobalt camp. Of course. Leave it to the old man to drop hints and riddles instead of making his wishes plainly known, trusting his starry-eyed grandson would eventually trip over the truth. Squeezing Ji-hyeon’s hand in his, Sullen asked, “You know much about blacksmithing? Weapon making?”
“Less than nothing,” said Ji-hyeon. “But Keun-ju’s a total bore about that stuff, and we’ve got at least three smiths working back in camp, so I’m sure someone can help. If cremation’s what you want, though, we could build him a pyre up here, let him burn like the witch queens of the Age of Wonders. My first father said that was the custom in those times, from Jex Toth all the way across to Emeritus.”
Emeritus. Throughout the freezing night and into the bleak, snowy morning it had felt almost like being home on the Savannahs, Sullen having missed the wintry weather more than he’d known, but at the mention of the place the Outlanders called the Forsaken Empire he felt the chill in a way he imagined the Southern Armers must. Like the cold was something that could thrust its jaws through your cloak and chew you to the marrow. He glanced up into the icy pines, knowing it was foolish but all the same needing to make sure the Faceless Mistress hadn’t poked her head down through the dark clouds to steal another kiss.
“Fa’s not to burn like some witch, let alone the queen of ’em,” said Sullen, but thinking she might find his plans for Grandfather a touch savage, decided not to go into further detail at the moment. “I’ll come back to camp with you, if you got time to introduce me to one of the smiths, help me get my meaning across if they only speak Crimson or such. Don’t need to worry your, um, Keun-ju with anything. It’s the sort of last rites only a metalworker can do anyway. I think.”
“I’d be delighted to put in an introduction,” said Ji-hyeon, and while it took Sullen a second to figure out why she’d said it like that, he quickly remembered how he’d beat that poor overworked word near to death back in her tent. He met her wry smile with one of his own; not being a native speaker and all she ought to cut him some slack, and besides, everything did seem a mite delightful when he was in her company. Fast as her smile was out it’d fled again, though, as good things tended to do around Sullen. She nodded at Grandfather, and said, “Does he… should we carry him back to camp?”
“Nah, not till I talk to your smiths and see if they can do it. Might just be the kind of work the Horned Wolf metal makers do, I dunno. And if some critters gnaw on the old man while I’m gone that’s still keeping with custom, so it’ll be fine.”
“Is that so?” Ji-hyeon raised her eyebrows in that affected but still dead cute way she did.
“Sure,” said Sullen, mostly able to keep the raw, ravenous grief at bay so long as he kept his attention on her instead of on the dead man at their feet. And now that she’d distracted him from the immediacy of his loss, he could see plain as the snow in her hair or the freckles at her temples that she had her own devils squirming around in her heart, that talking to him about Grandfather had been a reprieve from her own troubles. Normally he’d leave it be, but on a sad, lonely morning like this it seemed important to press her a bit, if only to remind her that she, too, had a friend who saw she was hurting. “But that’s plenty of words about me and Fa, what about yourself? You, uh, you doing okay, Ji-hyeon?”
“Just lost a couple of fingers,” she said, trying to play it nonchalant but sounding panicked as a rumbled rabbit that he’d asked after her. She held up her rag-wrapped left hand so he could inspect it, her right shivering in Sullen’s palm, her eyes everywhere but on his. “Bruised bones and pulled muscles, nothing much else. With the bugs they give you you hardly feel it, so… so yeah. I’m fine. Everything’s fine. Everything’s fine.”
Sullen sucked on the inside of his cheek, ruminating on whether or not to keep pushing her. She finally met his eyes again and smiled, but behind the bared teeth and steady gaze he saw something she’d never before revealed, at least to him: real fear, or something close as kin to that old devil. That settled it, then, because if there was one thing Sullen was an authority on, it was feeling tangled up with all kinds of emotions but not knowing how to express them until someone, usually Grandfather, wrenched them out of him like a ghost bear digging the crunchy innards out of a frozen corpse.
“Ji-hyeon,” Sullen said quietly, “I been all over the Star, and not once’ve I ever heard anyone say ‘everything is fine’ unless it definitely wasn’t.”
“No?” She was shivering from more than the cold, he saw that now…
“No. It’s like, what you say when everything is totally, totally fucked, but you don’t wanna talk about it for some reason.” As he spoke she bit her lip so hard he worried she’d cut it open, so he rushed to give her an out. “And I know plenty of times it’s better not to talk about something, so I ain’t faulting, uh, anybody who said things were fine even when they weren’t. I’m just sayin’… I’m just saying I’ve got your back, if there ever is anything you wanna talk about, I—”
“I don’t know what to do,” Ji-hyeon said miserably, and though her bloodshot eyes were as dry as Sullen’s mouth she sounded like her heart was breaking, and words came torrenting out in place of tears. “I… I… I don’t know what to do, and everyone I talk to tells me something different, and I got so many people killed, and I don’t know what I’m doing but I have to pretend I do or it’ll all fall apart, and the Empress of the Isles wants me dead, and my second dad might try to sell me to her, and because I listened to Zosia and stayed to fight the Imperials the whole Sunken Kingdom’s come back, apparently, and a fucking Gate opened up right in the middle of the battlefield, somehow, and ate so many people, it ate Chevaleresse Sasamaso, my bodyguard, my friend, and I don’t know how or why or what the shit I’m supposed to do now, Sullen, I don’t have any fucking idea, but I don’t have any time, either. None. I have to go back and meet my captains and plan our next move and if I don’t make the right move Chevaleresse Singh will leave and take her cavalry with her, and there’s a whole other Imperial regiment on the horizon, and my dad might talk them into fighting us, and even if he doesn’t as soon as word spreads that there’s a bounty on me it won’t be long before someone else comes to collect, and even if I make it out of this alive my whole family’s on Hwabun, stuck between the empress’s armies at Othean and whatever the fuck might be crawling around on Jex Toth, and I can’t help them, and I don’t know what to do. I… just… don’t.”
Sullen let a little quiet roll back in after all that, but not so much that she’d think he didn’t have an answer.
“I know exactly what you need to do,” he said without further delay, and the shining hope that bloomed in her eyes confirmed that he’d been right to force the issue. “Funny that I do, since I never, ever, ever know what to do myself without somebody pointing me the way, but for once I’m dead sure I know the best course.”
“Yeah?”
“For sure.” Sullen gestured to the log he’d spent all night brooding on. “The first thing we do is sit down there, burn one of Fa’s beedies, and see if we can’t sort through your troubles. Can’t promise I’ll have all the answers, or even any good ones, but I’ll listen till you’re done, I’ll think hard on it, and we’ll see what’s what. Sound okay?”
“I…” She looked over her shoulder to where her guards waited by the nearby fire. “I’d like that, but there’s no time, there just isn’t.”
“If you’re too busy at present I’m ready anytime, right, but never forget you’re the boss here. You say a lot of folk died on account of you, but I reckon a lot more would’ve if they didn’t have someone clever as you leading ’em. And if more danger’s coming, all those people who’re looking to you for orders will want their general relaxed and ready, not overburdened with cares because she don’t give herself time to take some of it off her shoulders. So if you want to sit a spell and talk, General, that’s not just your right, it’s maybe your duty? Yeah?”
A Blade of Black Steel Page 5
