by K. Eason
“The Taliri are always raiding.”
“I’m not talking caravans. I’m talking whole villages burned, up near the border. Alviri villages. Those refugees came to Cardik. Half of them ended up selling themselves into collars, and the rest looked for revenge. So. There was a riot inside the city, same time the Taliri rushed the gates. And not a raiding party, either. A small army.”
Sinnike was staring at her. “So what are you saying?”
“That Cardik’s probably ashes. I reckon we’ll start seeing refugees here, sooner or later. And let me tell you, baby sister, they are not like the toadbellies we have in Illharek. Our Alviri are tame. The ones from the borderlands are feral. They hate us. Dvergiri. Illhari. They don’t see a difference. Anyone with ink, light or dark skin, doesn’t matter. And those are the Alviri who will come here. They’ll rot this city from the inside, and when the Taliri get here, it will crack.”
“And what, now you’re all concerned about the Republic? I doubt that.” Oh yes, Sinnike was their mother’s daughter, arms folded tight across her ribs. “You haven’t taken a step without Tsabrak’s say-so for a decade. So where is he in all this?”
“Dead. Took a trooper’s sword during the riots in Cardik. I’m not here on his business. Not anymore. He wanted that riot, and I didn’t. We disagreed. End of our association.”
Another few beats of quiet as the Suburba’s morning routine leaked through the shutters. Inside the shop, only the firedog’s crackling mutter for company, and the kitchen’s distant rattle.
“Then let me ask you again,” Sinnike said, softly now. “Why did you come back? It’s a big Republic. More cities than this one. Why come back here?”
“Two reasons. First one.” Snow pushed her sleeve back. “This needs a little help. Took a sword cut.”
“Fuck and damn.” Sinnike came around the counter. Looked with a professional’s eye at puckered stitches, at the wound’s livid lips. “What’d you use on it?”
Not what happened?, not who did that? Snow felt the crooked grin crawl onto her face. “Cold water.”
“Cold?”
“Couldn’t build a fire. Not a lot of time. Taliri were on us.”
“Who stitched it?”
“Veiko.”
“Huh. Not bad.” Sinnike turned Snow’s right arm carefully. She pretended not to see the godmark on her palm. “You’ll scar. Don’t imagine that bothers you.”
“Not especially. More concerned about wound rot.”
Narrow look. Sinnike laid her knuckles on Snow’s cheek. Frowned. “Halfway to it, yeah? I’ll make a poultice.”
“Send up the water, and I’ll do it. —Not like that. I trust your skills. I just want it quiet, yeah? You. Me. Veiko. No one else needs to know. You brew down here, everyone will.” She started to tug her sleeve back down. Sinnike grabbed her left wrist. Twisted her hand none too gently into the firedog’s glow.
“How’d you break that finger?”
“I didn’t. Tsabrak did. Part of our disagreement.”
Sinnike traced the line of the bone. Still swollen at both ends, still tender. Snow clamped her teeth together.
“Just the one finger. Doesn’t sound like Tsabrak. I figured he’d take a whole hand.”
“He didn’t want to ruin me. Just, you know. Make it harder to conjure. Or fight.”
“Sounds like Tsabrak.” Sinnike let her go. “And the second reason you’re back?”
Snow looked up at the ceiling, crossbeams and plaster. Veiko would be in the apartment by now, probably pacing, certainly worrying. Feel that much, prickling through Briel. “We’re here to stop the Taliri.”
CHAPTER FIVE
The flat was larger than the one they’d shared at Aneki’s. This one had a separate bedchamber off the main room and a firedog in both. Stone walls, stone floors, even here on the third level, against Aneki’s squeaking wood and drafty walls. There was also a pump in the corridor outside, and a latrine closet. Kaj had shown him both, his eyes hanging slyly on Veiko. Had explained their purpose in careful Dvergiri.
Kaj had apologized for the dust, too, once he’d got the door open. A broom, he promised, a mop, a boy to clean. A bucket for the pump, some pots for cooking. Fresh linens. Here, the window, the balcony, the view wasn’t much, but you could smell the Tano. And then he was gone again, leaving the door open behind him.
Veiko stayed on the balcony. Set Briel on the railing. Waited there, arms crossed, as Logi looked for mice in all the flat’s corners. He breathed the tang of too many people, too many ovens and fires. And under all of that, a dampness that clung to the back of his throat and crept in under his clothing. Not a smell so much as a taste, a presence.
Illharek.
He looked up, followed the cave walls as high as the light would allow. The walls sloped inward here, funneled down toward the lake and the Tano. That meant there were no bridges overhead. No witchfires, either. An absolute black, and echoes, and the immeasurable, invisible mass of stone.
Only a fool’s hands would sweat, thinking about all that rock. Only a fool would gasp like a landed fish, imagining that the darkness had weight. Only a child feared the dark. Snowdenaelikk could drive the shadows aside, could call witchfire out of the black.
Any Dvergir can.
Which he was not. Would never be. He might comb out his braids, trade leather trousers for loose cloth, and he still would not pass for anything except
skraeling
outlander. Too tall for an Alvir, too fair for a Talir.
Too much like Kaj.
There were scars on Kaj’s neck. Old and faded, but still visible. He had an accent far fainter than Veiko’s, an Illhari’s single braid. The Illhari sigil inked into his skin. And he had Snow’s axe-jagged features, or she had his. The same midnight eyes, the same ice-colored hair. Obvious to anyone, what their relation. But Snow had said nothing. Take that as an indication of where Kaj ranked in her estimation.
Snowdenaelikk had told him once that all manner of people
even yours, Veiko
came to Illharek. She had asked once last winter, during those long nights in Cardik, what his people called themselves. She knew that there were different tribes: the Jaihnu, and the Pohja to the north, and the K’Rel in the frozen marshlands of the east. She knew that he was Jaihnu. Just as she must have known Kaj was. She must have seen the sameness in them, and she had said nothing to him. So he might wonder where he fit in her estimation, too.
“Chrrip.” Briel bent her head around to look at him. Nipped gently at his fingers. She did not understand his thoughts. But she understood the roil and upset in his head and his gut, and she did not approve.
He rubbed a knuckle across her skull. Hard bone under skin like fine suede, softer than the membrane on her wings, and tougher. Bat-snake. Svartjagr. Illhari natives who lived wild in the caves. Snow had promised to show him their nests.
“Chrrip.” Briel leaned into his touch. She, of them all, was happy to be here. Sent her impression of
diving and turning
flying in darkness that made Veiko’s eyes ache.
“Go,” he told her.
She launched off the balcony, dip and flap before she caught air. Veiko watched the pattern she took, climbing breezes and drafts that he couldn’t feel on his skin, couldn’t smell. He trusted that she would not bump against the stone walls that he could not see. Trusted that she could navigate that absolute dark.
Cardik had been strange, but at least it had a sky. This place—oh ancestors. Veiko had never missed the ghost roads before. It was a dangerous place, but he knew it, and its rules. Don’t step in the river. Don’t feed the ghosts. Don’t lose your spirit guide.
But in Illharek he knew nothing at all, except trust Snowdenaelikk.
He closed his eyes. It took drugs
poison, Veiko, be honest
to put him close to the glacier in the ghost roads. But he imagined the steady thump of his heartbeat, like a drum. Imagined the wind comin
g off the ice, and the flat pewter sky. Imagined Helgi beside him, tail curled over his back. Close enough to touch, there, reach down and feel Helgi’s cold nose in his palm, and Helgi’s hot breath. Hear Helgi’s growl, warning and query together.
Except that was not Helgi. Helgi’s voice was deeper. That was Logi’s growl and—as Veiko opened his eyes and turned and grabbed, on sheer reflex—Logi’s fur sliding under his hand. He grabbed a fistful, earned a yip and a glare over Logi’s shoulder, but the dog stopped. Crouched, and the growl got louder.
And there, the reason why. Kaj had come back with the boy. But it wasn’t broom and bucket that had Logi’s attention, no, it was Kaj spreading the contents of Snow’s pack across the dust-coated table. It was Kaj with a scroll in his hands, plucking at knots.
“Stop,” Veiko said, sharper than was courteous for the guest that he was. But he had a handful of irritated dog, and a mindful of Briel, and the weird doubling of sensation that was Snowdenaelikk filtered through svartjagr. She
I/we
was no happier than
I/we
he was, blurry sense of
coming
agitation and the farthest end of her patience.
It would be dangerous for Kaj if she came and found him rooting around in her things. So Veiko said again, “Stop, please,” and then, “Stay!” He released Logi. Wished
peace
at Briel. Crossed back into the dim and rescued Snow’s pack himself. He felt over its surface. Found a second scroll under his hand. A small book. The spare shirts were already out on the table. The pouches and the small bottles, too, but not lined up neatly. Scattered, as if Kaj had pushed through them fast. As if he’d had some idea what he was looking for.
Or he’d wanted everything out and visible before Veiko noticed what he was doing.
“Put it down,” Veiko said. “The scroll.”
Kaj did, though his surprise curdled into defiance almost before the scroll touched wood. He pinned Veiko with a direct stare.
“There is nothing to worry about,” Kaj said. Slowly. Careful of the syllables. “I will not steal from her.”
Veiko hooked the scroll with a fingertip. That was imagination, that his flesh tingled where it met the stiff vellum. “Do you know what she is? What she can do?”
“Better than you, I think.”
“If that is true, then you are a fool to touch any of this.” Definitely, he felt tingling. Veiko pushed the scroll back into her pack. Ran a quick eye across the pouches and bottles. He thought that was all of them. “What were you doing?”
“It is custom,” Kaj said, as if speaking to a child, “for a servant to unpack a guest’s belongings.”
“Is it also custom, to”—Veiko fumbled for the word—“to unwrap and look at scrolls?”
“You mean read.” Kaj smiled. And then, very softly, in a language Veiko had not heard for a long year of exile: “Let me say it again. This is an Illhari courtesy, Veiko Nyrikki. Servants unpack a guest’s belongings. It is part of hospitality. And Snowdenaelikk is Illhari. I tell you—she expects this. Do you understand me?”
“I do,” Veiko said, in the same language. Tasted like rust on his tongue, rough edged and bitter and strange. “And I say—she never mentioned this custom to me, and I have never seen it.”
“You are not long off the mountain. What, a summer? Two? Do you know so much about Illhari customs, having spent so much time among us? Perhaps she forgot how young you are and thought you understood.” Arrogance pulled the corners of Kaj’s mouth, shaped like a smile.
“Snowdenaelikk is my partner. I know better than you what she wants.”
“Partner, is it? Who are you? Some youngest son without prospects, come south to win your fortune? Some ragged hunter who can barely feed yourself? Partner. A winter’s amusement, I think.”
Veiko’s skin grew hot. “I am a noidghe.”
“Hunter’s braids. No drum. I don’t know what kind of noidghe you must be.”
Veiko wondered that himself, in the deep quiet of night. He thought—each time he opened his eyes to the glacier, under the silver sky—that he should not be there. That he was just what Kaj said, a hunter, a youngest son without prospects. A murderer and an outlaw. But he was noidghe, too, whatever else, and Kaj had stopped just short of calling him liar.
Veiko gripped the axe handle until his bones ached. A man did not draw a weapon as a guest in another’s home unless he courted blood feud.
“Among my people,” Veiko said slowly, “a man does not insult a guest in his house. Perhaps it is different for the Illhari. Perhaps you can tell me, since that is so clearly what you are.”
Pink crawled from Kaj’s neck to the roots of his hair. The citizen’s mark floated black on his skin. He opened his mouth around something poisonous, possibly fatal.
And then Snow said, from the doorway, “Right. What’s all this?”
The bondie boy dropped his broom. Veiko took his hand off the axe. Kaj almost smiled, and the gleam in his eye made Veiko grind his teeth.
“Veiko is confused about our customs,” Kaj said in rapid, fluent Dvergiri. “I have tried to explain, but his grasp of our language is poor. I think he’s afraid I’m stealing from you.”
Snow had a copper basin cradled in her left arm, heavy enough that the cords stood out on the back of her hand. She cleared a careful place among the pouches and bottles. Nudged her shirts aside. Set the basin on the table and traced the rim of it with one finger. Then she looked at Veiko.
He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. Looked back at her and said nothing.
“Kaj. That will be all. Thank you.” Quiet, oh ancestors. The anger smoked off her.
For a moment, Veiko thought Kaj might argue. A flicker of something in those indigo eyes, a tension in the mouth. And then gone, so fast that Veiko wondered if he had imagined it.
“Domina. As you wish.” Kaj bowed, stiff and Illhari proper. Took himself out the door with a servant’s quick obedience. Snow stared after him, drawn up in a brittle quiet. Glacial fury coming off her, seeping through Briel, who was not at all interested in coming back down, no, who wanted very much to stay high and away from Snow in this mood.
No blaming Briel. Veiko entertained a brief wish for his own wings.
The bondie chose that moment to pick his broom up off the floor. Snow snapped around at the scrape and glared at him. One breath. Two while the boy looked as if he might drop it again and flee.
“Go ahead,” Veiko said in the same tone he might use with spooked takin. Gentle, careful, avoid a stampede. “It is all right. Finish your work.”
The boy looked at Snow.
“Go ahead,” she repeated. “Finish. Then fill the basin with water, yeah?”
“Domina,” he squeaked, and Snow grimaced. Took herself out onto the balcony, collecting Logi on the way. Left Veiko to follow or not, as he chose.
He followed, after a heartbeat. Came up beside her and put his hands on the railing. Gripped hard and counted his own breaths, one for each gripping finger, one for each toe, and started over.
“That didn’t take very long, you making friends,” Snow said when he’d gotten through each of his hands twice and begun again on his right foot. “At least no one’s bleeding.”
“I did not start it.”
“I know that. You caught him snooping.”
“He claimed it was Illhari hospitality.”
“Oh, it is. It’s a very polite way of spying on your guest and assuring yourself that she isn’t carrying extra weapons, or poison, or anything else of interest. Which I was. The scrolls. The books. And poison.”
“A father should not spy on his daughter.”
He had wielded axes less sharp than the look Snow cut at him. “Did he fucking say that? He’s my father?”
“No. But it is obvious.”
“You don’t talk about those things, Veiko, not with Illhari. It’s draw-weapons rude, yeah?”
“To talk about father
s.” Months among her people, so that her language was more familiar than his own, and still, she could surprise him. “That seems foolish.”
“Foolish. Huh. So whose name do you carry? Nyrikki. Your father’s clan, yeah?”
“Yes.” He sensed a trap. Couldn’t quite see the edges.
“Right. But your mother’s the only parent you know for certain. Your father’s a guess, yeah? Only she knows for sure. So tell me who’s being foolish.”
It was like realizing that solid ground on which you had stepped was, in fact, fragile ice under snow. Sudden crack and then ice water up to your knee, and the twin rush of stupid and dangerous. The most important thing to do was stay calm. Too much reaction, you might fall in deeper. Might not get yourself out again.
And so, no inflection: “You do not know my mother.”
“No. I don’t. But how many men do? You can’t say. Your father can’t. She can.”
“My mother,” he began. Stopped, took a breath, started again. “My mother is honorable.”
Snow grinned unkindly. “So it’s draw-weapons rude for me to suggest that she is the only parent you know for certain, yeah?”
He bit off one word, spit it out. “Yes.”
“So then.”
“A child will look like its father. I look like mine.”
“And there’s a shortage of blue-eyed, fair-skinned giants where you’re from?”
“I do not think that my father looks that much different than yours.”
Oh ancestors, the look on her face. Logi whined. Thrust his head and shoulders between them, tried to squeeze his whole self into the gap. Deliberate nothing from Briel, who did not want to be noticed. Svartjagr were wiser than dogs. Wiser than men, too, who continued an argument for its own sake.
He braced for retaliation, but Snow said nothing. Silence so loud he could hear individual voices at streetside, loud enough it was thumping in his ears along with his heartbeat. The bondie’s broom rasped loudly behind them, scraped across raw nerves.
