by K. Eason
“Storm’s over, yeah?”
“Yes.” Veiko squat-shuffled beside her. Put his face into fresh air and sniffed it, just like one of his dogs. “But there will be more snow by nightfall.”
“And how do you know that?”
“It is the smell.” He tipped his face into the breeze. “It is wet, and cold. It is snow,” as if he’d described something simple and obvious.
“I was born in Illharek,” she told him. “The city itself, I mean. That’s the deep Below, yeah? No real weather there. Wind, sometimes, in the smaller caverns. But nothing like this. No snow. No rain. Everything smells wet, but it’s a cave smell, yeah?”
The blank face said he didn’t understand. Said he wasn’t going to admit that, either. Right. She gave up. “So we’re here another, what, night?”
He settled back near the fire. “Is there reason to leave sooner?”
“Sooner I’m back inside Cardik’s walls, the safer I’ll be. Then you can get back to your life.”
He was busy, suddenly, prodding sparks out of the fire. “The city. It would seem safer to avoid that place. The soldiers will return.”
“Soldiers don’t go into the Warren. Not sober, anyway. And they won’t find me, even if they do look. But they’ll be all over the road, yeah? Between here and there. Have to dodge them.”
“You are a healer. A chirurgeon.” Veiko settled back on his heels. Looked at her now, steady witchfire stare and just as cold. “One wonders why it is that you have so much practice with evading soldiers.”
She was suddenly, acutely aware of the axe beside him. She hesitated on a lie. Fuck yes, she was getting soft. Worse, getting honest. She settled on a half-truth. “I’m a conjuror, too, yeah?”
“Which you say is no crime.”
“It isn’t. But this far on the frontier—there’s a bigger risk for backlash, yeah? Too much Wild out here. Not enough settlement. And people don’t understand conjuring up here. Not like in Illharek. People get strange about things they don’t understand. Soldiers are worse than most. Superstitious, yeah?” Which was true. Mostly.
“You are saying that your witchery is stronger in cities,” in tones of deep skepticism.
“I’m saying conjuring works in cities. Outside, we take our chances with the Wild.”
“I saw what you did to the creekbed. And the hillside.”
“I intended the hillside.” She grimaced. “The creek, though, that was backlash. That’s why we don’t conjure outside the walls very much.”
“Is that because you have offended the spirits? The ancestors,” he added. “The animals. The dead.”
She blinked. Looked for the joke and, dear Laughing God, couldn’t see it. “You’re serious. Fuck and damn, Veiko, where are you from?”
“North,” he said.
“Not a city.”
“There are no cities. There are villages. Farmsteads.”
“And your conjurors don’t know what backlash is?”
“Our noidghe do not offend the spirits, if that is what you mean.”
Guess what a noidghe was, clear enough. The rest made no sense. The Illhari had Purged their superstitions along with their gods. No ghosts. No angry dead. Conjuring, now, that was something else—bound to walls and roads, to Dvergiri creations, etched out in glyphs and gestures, confined to patterns. Limited to Dvergiri blood, too, the whys of which no one understood. Alviri, Taliri, skraeling outlanders—none of them could conjure. But anyone with a Dvergir parent could at least manipulate shadows, if they bothered to learn the trick. Oh, the Laughing God claimed credit for the shadow-weaving, but only his godsworn believed everything he said. Which she was not, being a woman and
unwelcome
too smart to take those oaths. The God wasn’t fond of women. He’d made an exception for an Academy conjuror with no loyalty to Illhari rules, but that didn’t mean he forgave her sex.
So, Veiko thought backlash was angry spirits. And why not? Just because she’d learned cant and gesture and runes and fucking conjuring theory didn’t mean there weren’t spirits behind the effects. If what Veiko said was true—and the man didn’t strike her as a liar—then the Adepts back in the Academy might trade an eye for knowing how these noidghe avoided backlash. That might be worth something.
“Snowdenaelikk.” His voice hooked her back to now, and a small fire under a tree’s broad skirts, and a league of nothing out there except Wild, where her kind of spellwork was as likely to kill her as not. “Why did the soldiers pursue you?”
This time?
“Because I ran. Drasan threw a knife at one of them. My companion,” she added. “Dead now, back at Davni.”
“The burned village. I saw them on the road, running toward it.”
“That’s where they found us. We were supposed to meet someone there, yeah? A . . . courier. In the old temple ruins. But the legion found us first.”
“Courier.”
“Messenger. My friends in Cardik—we do business, sometimes, trade that the legion doesn’t really approve of. Move goods. You know.” Tsabrak would be pissed when she came back without the rasi, but he’d be less happy if the legion picked her up.
A slantwise glance. “Did you destroy the village?”
She remembered his expression at the pyre, when she’d coaxed light out of shadow, heat out of cold. His wasn’t a civilized people. Spirits. Superstition. Angry dead. A serious question, from him. Did she burn Davni? Laughing God, to be insulted or flattered.
Honest, mostly, again and damn her. “No. Not our kind of business.” She stabbed a hand in what she hoped was the right direction. “We came from Cardik. Saw the smoke, yeah, but we didn’t know what’d happened.”
Grunt. Nod. An Illhari might’ve asked what business, and how it brought her into the Wild. Veiko didn’t. His people did not, evidently, value that sort of curiosity. Or maybe it was just him. Other things he worried about, yeah, like,
“Do the soldiers believe you are responsible?”
How bad do they want you? in other words. How much toadshit’s following you?
She scraped up a handful of spruce needles, fed them one by one into the flames. “They might. They’re not famous for wits. Stupid people with weapons, traveling in groups.”
“Yes,” he said. “Better not to anger them in the first place.”
“Yeah, well. I don’t make it a habit.”
“That is wise.” A flash of blue, as he sailed a glance toward the branches overhead, and out toward the sky, and anywhere but her face. “An outlaw must be quick with wit and weapons, which you are. But an outlaw cannot forget her firestone in the winter.”
No hint of a smile. A young man’s face, and more grim than any young man she’d ever known except Tsabrak.
“Is that a joke?”
Still watching the sky, the shuffling clouds: “It is an accurate observation.”
“So I’m an outlaw, am I?”
He would not look at her. “I cannot speak for you.”
Oh, Laughing God, it was time to trade truth. Not the one she’d expected to hear. She’d’ve named him a hunter, a trapper, wrapped up in some outlander’s idea of honor that made him spare wounded enemies and help strangers and not, even once, hint at what she might do to repay him. Not a thief. Not a mercenary. And now he named himself outlaw.
“What did you do?”
Hesitation. And then, as if he trod on a twisted foot: “I killed a man. A thief. He stole takin.” So calmly, so flatly, so finally. “And denied that he had.”
Leave aside what a takin was—ask him that later, takin were valuable to his people, good enough—and focus on the action. “And the penalty for thieving among your people isn’t death, then?”
He frowned at her. Narrowed his eyes until they looked like slivers of sky, bright and blinding. “It depends on what is stolen, and who steals it.”
“So—”
He held up a palm. Stop. Peace. Don’t distract me. The expression she’d learned meant V
eiko’s about to say more than ten words, so listen. “Takin are herd animals. Families rely on them to survive. To steal what another needs to live is a death-crime. But the thief was the chieftain’s son.”
“Oh dear Laughing God.”
“I knew,” Veiko said doggedly, “that there would be no fairness if I accused him. So I—”
“Made your own justice.”
“Yes.”
“Why not just hide the body? Pretend you don’t know what happened?”
His eyes widened, shock and offense together. “I am not an assassin.”
Best keep this one away from Tsabrak, with those attitudes. She said carefully, “No, you’re honest. And you’re a good man.”
Another frown, and this one stuck. “I am a fool. And now I am an outlaw.”
“Same thing, yeah? You’re right. You’re no assassin. An assassin won’t put herself between a stranger and trouble. You did that. I’m glad you’re a fool.”
His eyes widened again. Pools now, not strips, of blue sky. Then he turned away. Grunted. Maybe that was Veiko for you’re welcome.
Helgi raised his head and growled, then surged up and thrust his head past her. Sniffed, all the fur on his back ridged up, while Logi crowded Snow aside and mutter-whined under his breath. Briel hissed, suddenly awake. Click-scratch and whisper of displaced spruce needles, and then she was up the trunk, one more layer of darkness among the shadows.
Veiko raised a hand, unmistakable shh. Dropped that same hand in the next moment and took up his axe. Rocked into a crouch and edged his face into a gap between branches. A murmur, and the dogs ghosted out into the snow. One beat, two, ten, and then:
“Stay here,” Veiko told her, and gathered his bow and quiver and followed them.
Fuck and damn. She drew her own weapon out of the folds of her blanket. Settled the belt round her hips and pulled the buckle one-handed. Pulled shadow with the other, from the skirt of trunk and limb and the gap between needles, and smeared the fire dark. Stretched that same shadow—wider now, so much thicker, over packs and blankets. An eye would slide over that shadow now, seeing only the dark space under a tree, not a campsite. But if someone came down the slope, if someone looked under the branches . . . Well. Snow might be safe, even then, unless that someone wondered why the shadows under this tree were so solid, and what might be hiding inside them.
Veiko had said stay, but he wasn’t here. Was out there, with his bow and his dogs and his toadfucking axe. Veiko had room to run and maneuver.
Because you did so well running last time, yeah?
Snow tipped a glance up. Sent a tight-chested wish at the svartjagr.
Go.
No sound at all from above, and no movement. No sign at all of Briel. She was hidden, and safe enough.
A dog barked. Helgi, from halfway up the hillside. A second bark. A third and fourth, echoing off trees and sky. Logi, this time, and he sounded closer to the top of the ridge.
Veiko’s dogs didn’t bark as a matter of habit. They had reason this time, a command from Veiko. Or Veiko’d gotten into trouble with whatever was out there. Whoever.
Guess, yeah?
No need. She’d expected legion efficiency, but this was truly impressive. Truly unlucky, too. Caught unprepared twice in a week. She’d deserve it if they caught her.
Sensation of cold wind on her skin, and a gut-hollow drop before the surety of wingbeats, of speed and escape, that sent her heart battering up in her throat. Almost a sending, and Briel’s goddamned best advice. Get away.
Maybe she could. And maybe that would leave Veiko in trouble. But he could take care of himself. He’d got between her and the legion once already. Might not a second time. There might be a limit to what one stranger would do for another. What a good man would do for a woman who . . . wasn’t. Consider that.
Except he wouldn’t leave his gear. And his dogs wouldn’t bark without reason. And he might’ve run into more than one inexperienced mila this time.
She eeled through the branches. Bright outside, blinding as any headache or any sending Briel might manage. Snow twitched the hood higher and put her feet in Veiko’s tracks. He didn’t leave many. She followed them to the next knot of trees before she lost him. Paused there, with her back against a spindly trunk, and guessed his likely path upslope. He’d step on the bare patches. On the rocks. She listened for more barking, or crashing, or some sign where he was. Got nothing back except wind through evergreens and her own breath, faint and rapid, pluming like smoke. A flour-fine snow began to sift down from a sky gone increasingly grey. She gathered the fast-fading shadows around her and hoped they’d be enough to blur her edges. Took a step, and two.
A creak. Wood bending in the cold. She froze, with one foot extended. Cast her eyes toward the noise which was
please, Laughing God
only a branch protesting the cold. And saw him, only just: an Illhari soldier. He wasn’t wearing the usual legion black-and-red breastplate. All forest, this one, browns and greys and greens. Oh, tempting to peel the shadows away from him, to leave him vivid and visible. Tempting, and probably fatal. Maybe he hadn’t noticed her yet. Maybe that toadshit bow of his was nocked and pointing at nothing.
“Hold,” said the scout, menace-quiet.
Fickle motherless God.
CHAPTER SIX
Dekklis was picking her way downslope, navigating a tumble of rock and ice and stubborn trees, when she noticed shadows moving where there shouldn’t be. A trick of the light, she thought first, or an animal, and then, No. Too upright for any animal. Too deliberately irregular in its gait. Hooded, like a scout, but it wasn’t Istel. She wouldn’t have seen him at all.
Dekklis sank onto her haunches. Nocked an arrow. Measured wind and angle for a clear shot and drew breath to call out.
And heard Istel, invisible and unmistakable: “Hold.”
Dekklis froze. The person in the hood—a woman, she thought, something about the glide and gait—froze, too. For a heartbeat Dekklis thought she might run. Coiled stillness, too controlled for panic. Mila Salis had reported a runner back at Davni, who’d fled into the forest rather than fight. Guess, then, that this was the same person.
The woman straightened, hands spread and visible. Said something that Dekklis couldn’t make out.
No answer from Istel. But he whistled, two short and one long,
got one
not knowing where Dekklis was, maybe thinking Teslin and Barkett would hear it, too. Dekklis thought they wouldn’t. That chase had moved over the ridge by now, a hunt for barking dogs and someone who crashed through the trees so loudly it had to be deliberate. Her hunch, to stay on this slope, closest to the smoke smell that had led them here.
Nice to be right on a hunch, nicer if the woman cooperated. Dekklis didn’t want to drag a wounded prisoner all the way back to camp.
Don’t move, Dekklis wished her. Listen to Istel.
A dog barked, distant now, and the woman’s head snapped toward the sound. One beat, while Dekklis wished Istel to patience
don’t shoot her
and abandoned her own cover. Made her own noise, rock-rattle, and straight-marched down the slope. Kept eyes on the woman as she did it, took her measure. Wire-gaunt. Nondescript clothing, leather and linen and wool. A short Illhari seax on her hip that looked like it belonged there. Hood pulled up and forward, hiding her features, until Dekklis came around front and looked up, into the woman’s face.
That wasn’t fear looking back at her, oh no. Measuring, appraising, and just the wrong side of hostile. Guess that for bravado, then, thin as the skin on boiled milk. It wouldn’t last, never did, and only the guilty ever tried it. Blue eyes under pale brows, and escaped strands of fair hair instead of Dvergiri dark. Salis hadn’t mentioned a half-blood. Hell.
Dekklis cleared her throat. “You have a name?”
“Yes. Do you?” Coolly, in an accent straight from Illharek’s Suburba.
Try to be civil, see where it got her. Dekkli
s traded a look with Istel, past the woman’s shoulder
be ready
and hooked fingers in the woman’s collar. Tugged it past the jutting bones and blinked at the citizen’s mark.
“You’re freeborn.”
The woman made a noise between nose and throat. “Expecting a collar, were you? Or a brand? Think I ran away?”
“Oh, I know you did. From Davni. And I know two milae chased you. What happened to them?”
“Bad storm, the other night. Maybe they got lost.”
“Maybe. You’re under arrest, half-blood. Hands.”
Dek made a show of pulling the manacles out of her belt pouch, shaking them loose. Watched the half-blood’s eyes dart and focus. Ah. So restraints got her attention, did they? And that wasn’t an idle stare. Assessment, like an armorer with a new blade.
Dekklis reached for the nearest wrist. Stopped.
“Is that blood?” Knowing it was. Rust and copper on nondescript grey.
Blue eyes slid sidelong, landed on Dekklis, narrowed. “Yes.”
“Whose?”
The half-blood’s weight shifted, very slightly, onto the balls of her feet. Her hands remained where they were, spread and empty. Almost a smile on that knife-cut of a mouth, hard and insolent.
“Are you a hunter? A butcher?”
“Chirurgeon.”
“That where the blood’s from? Your last victim?”
“My last patient was alive when I left him, and I think you know that. Or did he tell you something else?”
Bile collected in Dek’s throat. “He didn’t tell us anything.”
“He say who set his arm? Or do you think he did that himself?”
“He can’t say, half-blood. Not skewered from crotch to crown.”
“Laughing God.”
Genuine, honest horror.
Call it intuition. Experience. But that wasn’t a guilty woman’s face staring at her. That wasn’t feigned shock.
“Impaled. He was still alive when it happened.” Dekklis choked on further elaboration. “Now give me. Your. Hands.”
The half-blood stretched her fingers. Cracks in her composure now, a flinch as the cold metal touched flesh. A grimace as Dekklis clamped the metal tight to bone. And silence, so that Dekklis could hear the creak of Istel’s bowstring in the cold, and the wind whining through evergreens.
