by K. Eason
She tugged hard on the chain, to signal to Istel he could ease off the draw. She expected a stumble. Expected some protest of innocence, a flood of panic and pleas. But the half-blood said nothing. Yielded to the pull, kept her footing. Only her hood slipped, puddling around her shoulders.
Hell and damn. “You’re Academy.”
Lazy smirk. “And you’re legion. So?”
Istel frowned, having no idea. Cardik-born Istel wouldn’t know what the topknot meant, or the close-cut sides, or the rings bristling at the top curve of the half-blood’s right ear. The silver with the garnet, that meant a master chirurgeon. But the three gold, now, those meant:
“She’s a conjuror,” Dekklis said.
That, Istel understood. Softly, instantly, he stepped back and drew again: “Then break her fingers.”
That was fear on the half-blood’s face now, stark as winter, cracking sharp into the quiet. “We’re in the Wild, yeah? What do you think I can do?”
Dekklis considered. She knew enough to read rank in those earrings, and three gold meant the half-blood was no Adept. She sat somewhere above apprentice, second-ranked in three disciplines, certainly dangerous—but Dekklis had the woman’s wrists in shackles, didn’t she, had a league of forest sprawled around her, and the woman hadn’t resisted yet. Hadn’t tried. So Dekklis waved stand down to Istel. Repeated the gesture when he didn’t, and glared until his bowstring went straight.
“She can’t conjure out here,” Dek said. “We’ve got her.—So tell me your name, half-blood.”
The woman drew breath, held it, spat it out. “Snow.”
“That’s your name?”
“That’s the white stuff on the ground. Yes, that’s my name.”
“I don’t think so. That’s a shortname. Tell me what your mother called you.”
For a heartbeat, Dekklis thought she’d refuse. She had that look. Then the half-blood shrugged and pulled on a smirk too cool by half, too controlled, to be anything but armor.
“Snowdenaelikk.” She held her breath just a jot, between the first syllable and the rest.
It wasn’t a Dvergir name. Sounded outlander. Alviri, maybe. Maybe even Taliri, or skraeling. The sort of name a freeborn Dvergir, Illhari daughter didn’t get, as a rule.
Dekklis raised both brows. “Your mother chose that? Or your father?”
It was an insult, of exactly the sort Snow must’ve heard her whole life. Even Istel blinked. Snow grinned.
“And I’d thought you were highborn, from that accent. Maybe not.”
Chiding her manners, now. Rightfully, too, Dekklis thought, which just irritated her further. She shrugged. “I’m a First Scout, Sixth Cohort. Just a soldier.”
“Motherless hell you are. Family castoff? Exile? Too many sisters to buy you a seat in the Senate, but enough for a legion commission, yeah?”
Istel reached over, took the chain, and wrenched. “Civil tongue,” he murmured. “Yeah, conjuror?”
That narrow jaw tightened. “Or you cut it out?”
“Something like.”
Anger flickered. Defiance. “Safer if you break my hands, yeah? You don’t learn anything if I’m mute.”
“Leave be,” Dekklis snapped. Glared at Istel, at Snow. “No one’s cutting out tongues. Or breaking hands. We’re just asking questions.”
The half-blood rattled her manacles. “Persuasive.”
“Precaution.”
“That’s what it’s called.”
“Answer some questions, maybe I’ll take those off. Let you go.”
“Toadshit. Your First Spear would have your head.”
“Think he’d rather have yours. Might be more inclined to let you keep it if you cooperate.”
That scored. Felt good, yeah, to see doubt flicker in dark, blue eyes. “Ask your questions.”
“Long way from Cardik, aren’t you?”
“That’s what you’re wondering? Yes. Clearly.”
Maybe she should’ve let Istel break something. Teach a little respect. This Snow had no fear of consequences. “You want to say where your partner is?”
The half-blood’s face closed tight as city gates against raiders. “You killed him, yeah? At least I think you did.”
“You mean the boy in the tent back at Davni.” Who hadn’t seen twenty winters, when this woman was her age, more or less. Thirty winters and a bit. “I don’t think so. There was another set of tracks, beside yours, in the riverbed. My people are chasing someone out there right now, with dogs.”
A smile, sliver-sharp. “Must be a ghost. The angry dead can walk, yeah?”
Almost a full day awake now, on both sides of a blizzard, and Kenjak and Ollu waiting in the dark every time she blinked—and this half-blood Illhari commoner with her dry cloak and dry boots stood there baiting her. Dekklis uncurled a casual backfist that snapped Snow’s head sideways and split skin. That, for consequences.
“I think you should worry about the angry living, yeah? My First Spear isn’t patient. His interrogators aren’t. That boy Kenjak was his brother. You savvy that?”
The conjuror probed at her lip with a deliberate tongue-tip. Spat afterward and left red in the snow. And said, cold and quiet: “You have to cut the head off the corpse. Did you cut off his head, Scout? No? Then I’d worry. The angry dead look for vengeance.”
Decapitation. Angry dead. Ghosts. Dekklis raised her hand again, to strike that defiance off the half-blood’s face, to beat some sense into her.
“Dek.” Just that, from Istel, and the red haze burned away like fog at noon. She dropped her fist.
“Hold her,” she said, disgusted, and turned sharply downslope. Stepped harder than scouts usually did, pounded her own tracks into the snow.
That hadn’t gone well. That woman had a way of goading Dek out of her better sense. But she’d learned some things, too. Whatever her accent and parentage, Snowdenaelikk had been Academy trained. That took money, more than any Suburban mother might have. The highborn sent their extras into those walls: daughters and even sons, from the more liberal Houses. But the Academy took a measure of Suburban girl-brats on talent, who would owe allegiance to no House at all, and everything to the Academy. An unHoused citizen might get rank, recognition, respect, regardless of birth. But if that had been Snow’s path, it begged asking why she’d left Illharek for life on the border, in Cardik, among the Alviri, who still thought that witches should burn. Had to be another reason. Another several. She must run with the gangs up in the Warren, which meant she was out here on cartel business. Smuggling, most likely. And she had sworn in the Laughing God’s name, which made her a heretic twice over. Since the Purge, Illhari were supposed to swear by no gods at all. And the Laughing God was a man’s order, no women among its godsworn. Maybe they’d raised standards in the two hundred years since the Purge.
Rurik wouldn’t care this woman wasn’t guilty of murdering Kenjak, wouldn’t care she was a citizen, wouldn’t hesitate at breaking bones to get answers. Say ghosts to Rurik, and this Illhari half-blood might find herself left with troopers who’d known the deceased and the rest of the camp gone suddenly deaf and blind. No one would notice another corpse in Davni. So best Dekklis find something, anything, to give him, besides Snowdenaelikk.
Focus on what wasn’t. No campsite. No fire-circle, no curling smoke. Not enough gear on the half-blood’s person for survival in a winter wilderness. There were boot tracks in the snow, partial and scattered, that might backtrail to a camp, but those tracks disappeared partway down the hill, where the wind had pushed up drifts and blasted the earth bare. There was nothing here but trees, a dense collection of wide-skirted spruce as old as Cardik. A swath of fresh snow with no marks on it. So the half-blood had flown, then. She and her ghost partner.
Dekklis pulled a lungful of cold air and held it. Blew it out in a plume that looked too much like smoke, like Davni, like Ollu’s pyre. There’d be another storm later. There were already clouds invading the blue, grey and solid as shadow. No way she
wanted to be out here for it, not with this hostile prisoner, and not with people who skewered the living and carved sorcery into the stake. Taliri might do the first. But the second—hell and damn. Conjuring didn’t work in the Wild. If it did, she wouldn’t have her prisoner. She and Istel would be twin smears of grease in the snow.
She turned her gaze upslope, where the trees cut a silhouette into the gathering clouds, where Istel waited, frown visible even from here—watching the half-blood, whose attention followed Dekklis, with the wind shredding her topknot and whipping strands across her face.
You could ask her, Dek.
Right. And expect any truth, any cooperation, from a woman with chains on her wrists and blood on her mouth.
But a village had burned, and someone had mutilated legion soldiers and maybe worked some kind of conjuring out in the Wild, and that was the real threat to Cardik. To all of the Illhari Republic. They had a new enemy out there in the forest, and this woman—whatever else she might be—wasn’t that enemy. But maybe she could help them find out who. Maybe she would, if Dekklis could bargain with her, and protect her from Rurik afterward.
A whistle cut through the silence. One long blast, three short, another long, faint over the crest of the hill. Teslin and Barkett, coming back. The half-blood and Istel turned together and looked toward the sound. Dekklis heard the woman’s voice, saw Istel stiffen. Guessed the content, the tone, but Istel didn’t hit her. Istel could manage his temper.
All right. Then she could manage Teslin and Barkett. Dekklis pursed her own lips and whistled back
acknowledged, we’re coming
and started upslope in the next breath. And she hoped, because the Illhari didn’t pray anymore, that the half-blood would cooperate.
Snow decided that the sudden chorus of whistling was a good indicator that Veiko hadn’t got caught. She glanced and added the scout Istel’s face as confirmation: dismay on his features, and attention slivering downslope toward his partner.
Although if they had caught Veiko, well. Might make her life easier. Let them catch an outlander with a guilty axe, and they’d forget about her for a while. She only needed a scatter of minutes alone with the shackles. They were good steel, good locks—but nothing beyond her skill and practice. Nothing beyond her powers of improvisation, either. The scout had taken her blades, yeah, but she hadn’t examined any seams. All Snow needed was a little time, a little distraction. Might get both, if they’d got Veiko after all.
If.
Sour knot in her belly that tasted like guilt. Veiko didn’t deserve the legion, did he? He’d committed no crime, except helping her. Skraeling and half-blood—neither one all that rare, on the borders of Illharek’s territory, but together would damn him.
So be glad he’s free.
Sure. Glad. And be more glad the scout, this Dekklis, had given up her search for the campsite before she’d gotten another twenty fucking steps. Be thankful for a bounty of shadows tangled in between branches and trunk. Be thankful she’d managed a solid shadow-weaving.
Briel stirred in those shadows. A near-sending crowded Snow’s vision to grey: a promise of wings and blood and fury. Briel would help. Briel would come now, would slash out of the sky and tear and cut and—
No.
Snow’s chest ached with the force of both heartbeats. She imposed her own sending, gory and vivid imaginings of arrows and Briel’s fragile wings. The svartjagr’s presence shriveled like a cave-slug in sunlight. But she didn’t disappear altogether. Clung to Snow’s awareness like a bat to cave walls, which was brave for Briel.
Find Veiko, Snow wished her. When I’m gone. Don’t follow me. Find him.
Shit, and then what? Lead him on another chase, to another rescue? Owe him again? And why should he help her a third time?
Pressure on her wrists, not gentle: Istel wanted her to move, neither leading nor following but pacing her, more or less, so he could see her hands. At least he didn’t have an arrow nocked and drawn. The best threat he could manage now was the long knife in his belt, if she fought him. Long knife and two free hands, yeah, she’d look like Ollu when he finished.
Or Kenjak. Impaled, Laughing God. The sour in her belly curdled all the way to sick. Desecrating the dead was one thing, but that kind of murder—fuck and damn. Who would do that was one worry, and she had a few ideas. But the more pressing concern was what the legion would do to her if they thought she was responsible. She’d be lucky to die before sunset. Be lucky if the citizen’s sigil on her skin mattered at all when they picked the punishment.
The scouts knew better. But bet on their mercy, yeah, sooner expect the sky to rain toads. At least the highborn woman looked unhappy, coming back up the slope. Doubt and distress as she fell in beside them. Irritation, too, when the next whistle came. She shifted into a jog, Istel with her, and Snow looped a fistful of slack in the chain and concentrated on keeping both footing and breath.
“You’re good at that,” said the woman. “Knowing where to step.”
“Practice.”
“In the snow? I wouldn’t expect that from a native Illhari. Not a lot of uneven ground Below. You must’ve come to Cardik a long time ago.”
Snow caught her wounded lip between her teeth and bit to fresh blood. Spat again. Her mouth hurt. Reminder, yeah, to watch that particular orifice. Keep it shut. Besides, she needed all her air for running in snow and uphill. Again. Twice in a week, fuck and damn, this wasn’t a habit she wanted to keep.
Might not become one if they kill you.
There was a thought.
The scout tried again. “How many years did you spend in the Academy?”
Snow risked a full-faced stare and hoped she didn’t ram herself into a tree. The scout was a small woman, no taller than Istel, safe from most branches. “You want to talk, we slow it down, yeah?”
Another gesture, and they dropped to a walk. “Listen, Snow. There’s something I want you to see.”
“Inside of a cell?”
“First Spear Rurik sent a detachment to retrieve the dead and secure the site. There’s something there I think needs your expertise.”
“You want a bone set, you’ll have to unchain me.”
A grimace. A glare. And still softly, patiently: “Whoever killed K’Hess Kenjak carved symbols into the stake. I want you to look at them. Tell me what they say.”
“Whoever’s probably Taliri, and last I heard we didn’t manage to Purge them. Guess a prayer. A sacrifice. We Illhari used to make them, when we still had our gods.”
“It’s not prayer. It’s some kind of conjuring.”
“I thought you were just a soldier. Now you read glyphs, too? Is that legion-standard?”
“I’m fourth daughter Szanys Dekklis.”
Laughing God. Szanys was as old a House as K’Hess. “Did Illharek export all its highborn, of a sudden?”
“Just look at the symbols. Tell me what they say.”
“I don’t read Taliri.”
“So then you won’t understand it, and it’s not sorcery, and that answers my question.”
“You let me go if I do.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Then I can’t read anything.”
Istel jerked at her wrists, pulled the slack through her fingers. So typically male. Snow peeled a smile for him. “You think that’ll help?”
“Istel,” Dekklis said. Then, “Listen. I can’t unlock you. But I can turn my back once you’ve done what I’ve asked. Say, oh, for the time it takes to sing ‘Jukainnen’s Lament.’ That should be long enough, yeah?”
No simple scout, this one, no rebel daughter in disgrace. Smart woman. Dangerous. “Your word. Your oath as a Szanys, that you’ll turn your back when I’ve looked at your sorcery and told you it’s Taliri prayers. You, and the rest of the soldiers.”
Hesitation, half a beat. Then a sharp nod. “My oath, on my House, on the blood of my foremothers.”
Szanys had a reputation for honor in Illharek. This one mig
ht keep her word, yeah, even to a half-blood conjuring outlaw.
“Done.” Tsabrak would call her a fool, but she’d have to live long enough to tell him the story.
“Dek,” Istel murmured. “They’re close.”
They, yeah, guess who that was. The other half of the whistling chorus. More scouts, two, another male-female pairing. Big man, bigger woman, neither of whom looked as if they should emerge from trees and shadow without sound.
Dekklis’s whole manner shifted. Straighter, suddenly, a small woman seeming much taller. Authority settled on her shoulders like a cloak.
“Teslin. Barkett.”
The female pulled a deep breath. “I see you had luck, Dek.”
“Toadshit luck.” Dekklis shrugged. “We may’ve found her, but we couldn’t find the campsite.”
“Can’t be far,” said the man. “She’s not dressed for travel. How hard can it—”
“You look,” snapped Istel. “See how well you do.”
“Hsst. Barkett. Shut up. If Dek says it’s not down there, it’s not.” Teslin scowled. “The motherless toadfucker lost us on the other side of the ridge.”
“Diversion,” said Dekklis. “Trying to draw us off her.”
“Maybe,” said Teslin, and from Barkett, low-voiced: “What’re you smiling about, half-blood?”
Snow shrugged. “Maybe you should worry. He’s better at this than you are.”
“That a threat?” Barkett took a step, and Istel ebbed between them. Threaten her fingers, yeah, he would, and her tongue. But he wouldn’t let anyone else try it. Funny, on another day. But there was no humor at all on Istel’s face, or on Barkett’s. And on another day Snow would’ve appreciated that, too, two soldiers at odds over a prisoner. Less now, being that prisoner, with her hands locked together.
“Him, is it?” Teslin’s gaze lingered past comfort. Hard eyes in a hard face, her mouth puckered tight and disgusted. Thank the God that this woman hadn’t caught her. But she might wish her pair of scouts was a bit larger. Fuck if she hadn’t got the runts on her side.
