by K. Eason
“I’m thinking,” said Szanys Dekklis, “that Snow, here, is a conjuror out of Illharek. I’m thinking she should see Kenjak’s pole. What’s carved there. See if she can read it.”
“She’s a what?”
Dekklis shrugged. “She’s a conjuror and a chirurgeon. Claims she’s the one fixed Kenjak’s arm. And that makes sense. She’s Academy trained. See? Rings in her ears. The hair? That’s the mark,” the small woman added casually, as if that were a fact everyone knew. Everyone did, in Illharek.
But here, Teslin and Barkett did not know, clear enough. Laughing God. Surrounded by rustics, wasn’t she, people who’d never seen witchfire daylight on Illharek’s spires, except for fourth daughter Szanys Dekklis. Tsabrak wouldn’t believe this, if she got back to report. But then, “Jukainnen’s Lament” might give her enough time to get free of the shackles, maybe half a dozen steps. Dekklis hadn’t promised time past that. Istel could still put an arrow in her back. Teslin and Barkett could run her down.
Idiot, Snow, that’s what you are.
Kenjak had been the First Spear’s brother. They wouldn’t just let her go. They didn’t dare. Her skin prickled, too cold for sweat. She’d get her opportunity, on the honor of Szanys. Wait for that, and use it, and hope.
Dear Laughing God.
Or pray, which was its own foolishness. Illhari law forbade it. Official Senate mandate, wrapped in cool reason, held that gods weren’t reliable. True enough, on all counts. But her motives and the Laughing God’s matched more often than not.
What, it’s his will that you’re locked up right now, then?
Or it amused him. Idiot, yeah, to trust in the God.
“I don’t think she killed Kenjak,” Dekklis was saying. “There’s not enough blood on her.”
“Maybe she’s got two shirts.”
“There’s blood on these sleeves. And then why would she set the bone?”
Teslin thought about it. Snow imagined a grinding sound, and smoke curling on the edges. “All right.”
But the man, Barkett, frowned. “Dek. I don’t think it’s wise.”
“No one asked you—”
“Fuck off, Istel—”
“Fuck off, both of you. Dek’s got rank, and I agree with her.” Teslin pushed up close to Snow. Big woman, even among Dvergiri, almost as tall as an Alvir man. Pretty clear that she counted on her size to intimidate. Might’ve worked two days ago, yeah, before Veiko’s towering, alien, axe-wielding presence.
“Where’s your partner, half-blood?”
This again. Laughing God. No imagination in the legion. Then again, Teslin’s casual backhand might break her jaw. Prudence. Sense. Watch her temper.
“You think the First Scout hasn’t already asked that?”
“Mouth on that one,” muttered Barkett.
Dekklis joined Istel, a casual touching of shoulders that hedged Teslin out of striking range, that added a two-body barrier between Snow and possible harm.
“She says,” Dekklis said, deadpan, “that he’s a ghost. Angry dead.”
“Ghost.” Teslin’s eyes narrowed into amber slits. “Ghost’s got boots? Ghost’s got dogs?”
Ghost’s got away, Snowdenaelikk thought, and managed not to say it. And wished that ghost: Keep running.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The storm fell out of the sky at dusk. There had been flurries since midafternoon, and increasing grey, as Veiko worked his way back to the campsite. He meant to go faster. Had been, until a fear that wasn’t his seized his chest and belly, left him sweating and reliant on a naked oak for support.
That was Briel’s fear. Briel’s anger came after, soon enough, clouded his vision red and forced another stop, this one crouched in a scatter of boulders. He gripped the rocks until his hands ached, that time, and willed her to stop, please. He shut her out, finally, or she gave up: a sudden blank, like the numb a wound feels after pain. Snowdenaelikk called it sending, said it was as natural to svartjagr as barking was to dogs.
There’s no witchery in it, Veiko. It’s how the packs talk to each other. Wolves howl. Svartjagr send.
But it was uncanny, nonetheless. Uncomfortable, to have an animal
but she isn’t, quite, is she?
intruding on his wits. At least Briel hadn’t blinded him.
He had intended to lead the trouble away and return for Snowdenaelikk. Evidently something had gone wrong. Plans often did. A fool trusted fate. A wise man relied on his wits. And a wise man did not, he was certain, share those wits with a bat-winged, snake-necked thief of flatcakes.
Dogs were more sensible companions. They confined their communication to honest noises, to ears and tail and things any man might see for himself. Solid, reliable creatures. And good use against wood-wise Illhari soldiers—Helgi and Logi’s doing, and no room for his vanity, that he’d escaped so cleanly. Those scouts after him had been quick, faster than he’d expected. And quieter, and two of them to his one. He had been a hunter most of his life. Had been hunted, too. But never with quite this skill, or this determination. He might have thanked his ancestors, when the soldiers finally abandoned his trail. Might have, except for Briel’s sending, which told him Snow was neither safe nor where he had left her.
So his ancestors had not yet forgiven him. Or Snow had made a mistake. Even so, she wasn’t helpless. Carried one weapon openly, and several concealed, and was clearly accustomed to dangerous activities and their consequences. Briel’s distress was no sure indication that she was hurt.
Tell yourself that.
He tried, instead and again, to tell himself nothing. Mind the snowfall, thicker now. Climb the last hill. Listen at the top for strange noises. Watch Helgi’s ears, and Logi’s tail, and gauge from their signals what waited on the other side. Two black noses worked the wind, but ears and tails stayed upright. So. Nothing worth their alarm.
But Briel had been frightened. Had been angry. So Veiko let himself think of her, fragile black wings and a narrow head very skilled at getting into packs and under blankets. Got back sullen nothing for his trouble, a blot of solid chill in his chest that said she could hear, but that she wasn’t answering.
Contrary animal. Difficult. Snowdenaelikk’s face swam up out of memory, the smile that pulled on one half of her mouth. Her voice, too, slipping like water over the edges of words.
Logi chuffed. Snowdenaelikk vanished. And Veiko found himself having traveled a good five paces without watching where he put his feet. Instinct might’ve kept him on rocks and bare patches. Not wits. Not sense. And he couldn’t blame Briel for that lapse, either. The ache in his chest was his own this time.
Worry profited no one. What did: minding his surroundings, which meant Helgi, whose muzzle skimmed circles around a churned patch of snow. He growled when Veiko crouched beside him, which counted for Helgi’s opinion on what he’d found.
There were tracks, the edges eroding with fresh snowfall. Veiko recognized Snowdenaelikk’s narrow tread. Counted three others, maybe four, in the scuff and jumble. The trail led west again, toward the road and the riverbed where they’d left Kenjak.
Helgi whined and scratched at the snow. There, beside the trail: another mark in the snow, no footprint, and small as a fingertip, round and sunken. Liquid would do that in snow. Veiko’s stomach knotted and sank. He could not be sure of the color, not in the storm-light, but Helgi’s hackles and Helgi’s flat ears warned him. Veiko touched a finger to the spot anyway, sniffed and tasted.
Blood. Of course it was. And it would be hers, too, sure as fire was hot. There was another spot of it, some several paces up the trail. And a third, farther on. Intervals, too uneven for coincidence.
So she was injured, then, and in custody, and leaving a trail for him. He wondered if they had dragged her from the campsite. If he’d lost his gear as well as his guest, his own survival became that much more of a challenge, and her retrieval much less likely.
Retrieval now, is it?
A man owed his guests safety, and he had fai
led badly in that. But a camp wasn’t a hearthside. No one had taken Snow from his home.
What home is that, Veiko?
An outlaw had none, except his own fireside. And if by that reckoning Snowdenaelikk became part of his household, well, there were no elders here to protest his reasoning. The Illhari soldiers had taken Snowdenaelikk.
He would get her back.
Veiko squinted through the gloom. Storm-dusk now, all the colors washed grey. Snow falling thick and straight. He could just make out the spruce from here, a wide wedge among more slender trees. Helgi’s rump poked out between the branches, pale smear against dark needles. That tail, he noted, was waving. The ache in his chest loosed a notch. Perhaps the soldiers had not found the campsite. Perhaps he might still have the rest of his gear. His arrows and bow.
A foolish hope. But he clung to it anyway and wondered if Briel would have allowed a looting, as she had so clearly allowed Snowdenaelikk’s capture.
A single flash across his vision, lightning bright, and then the branches burst outward in a shower of white and sharp needles. Instinct kept him quiet, though he almost choked on the shout in his throat, and on his own heart slamming after it. He dropped and dodged and twisted, raised his axe to deflect
Briel
whatever came.
The svartjagr angled away at the last, a whistle of air across bone and membrane. She missed the axe blade. Keened as she reached open air, a damned-soul shriek that raised hair on his arms. She circled the tree once and landed on the branches above him.
Veiko lowered his axe slowly. Tremors all through his arm, his chest, his legs. Fear. Shock. His own anger, warm and growing hotter. Had Briel charged him like that the first time, he’d have shot her for certain.
This time he did stumble, at the raw wave of Briel in his head. An image of Briel broken and bleeding, with arrows in her wings. He could see every feather on the fletching, crimson and black stripes. Legion colors. Legion fletching. Veiko held his eyes wide against it. Made himself see the snow-dusted branches, white on twilight grey. Strangled out, “Briel, stop.”
The image brightened, one last flash, and then Veiko’s eyes were his own again. He braced for blindness, told himself it never lasted, Snowdenaelikk swore as much. But his vision cleared. Steadied. There was the tree in front of him and a pair of worried dogs. And when he looked up into the grey and snow-spit—a darker shape in the branches, red-eyed and watching.
“Chrrip.” Plaintive. Terrified. Maybe apologetic.
“Did someone shoot at you?”
“Chrrip.” She hopped lower, loosed another cascade of snow. Stretched her narrow head toward him, on that slender, fragile neck. Another sending ghosted his awareness, mostly impression, sensation. Warm and gentle hands. Smoke and spice. And over that, more fear and a seething frustration, pure Briel, a need to do and not to wait.
Worry, he understood. His anger smoked away. “We will go,” he told her. “Soon.”
Then Veiko readjusted his grip on the axe, moved the branches, and ducked under the tree. If it was twilight outside, then the inside of the tree was full night. No sign of the fire-ring, or the packs. The blackness pressed on him. Absolute, solid, and he was suddenly sure that he wasn’t under the tree any longer, that if he took a single step he’d fall into a chasm with no bottom.
Panic crowded the air from his lungs. He lurched backward, flailed with the axe, and cut the branches wide. Grey light leaked through the gap and dissolved where it touched the unnatural, solid black.
This time his shiver had nothing to do with cold.
She had said any Dvergir could weave the shadows. Had shown him, around this very fire—pull and push, light for dark. A long-ago gift from the Laughing God, she’d said, forgotten deliberately, except within the Academy’s walls. A child’s trick, that simple. Not witchery.
Well. Children feared the dark. Men did not. Veiko gritted his teeth and braved the shadows again. He could smell the remnants of campfire, wet dog, the scent that was Snowdenaelikk. Could hear the chuff and rustle of the dogs outside, and the wind’s push through the needles. He let his smile crawl onto his lips, where no one could see it. Held it like a shield while he found bow and pack and furs and fled back under the open sky. Another round of tremors as the darkness worked its way out of his bones, which made settling two packs on his shoulders that much more of a challenge. By the time he strung the bow, his hands were steady again.
“Can you find her?”
The dogs looked as he spoke, ears cupped and attentive. But they didn’t understand him. Didn’t answer. Couldn’t, being dogs. But he wasn’t talking to them, either.
“Chrrip.” The svartjagr launched from the tree in a whisper of needles and fragile skin wings. In the twilight, through the falling snow, she was nearly invisible.
Veiko didn’t need to see her to know where she was. Didn’t need his dogs, this time, to follow Snow’s tracks or her blood on the snow. He followed Briel into the forest, and the storm drew down over him like a blanket.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Dekklis never saw the Taliri. Never heard them. One moment, she was dreaming supper, and the next—heard a gurgle from Barkett, as he twisted and flailed and fell. A fractured heartbeat as she marked the shaft poking out of his face, and saw the fletching, and understood what it meant.
Cloaked and hooded shapes spilled off the bank, half a dozen, then twice that. A blur of violence that left her disarmed and facedown in the snow, clinging to consciousness. She hadn’t fought back when they chained her. Hadn’t fought back when they jerked her back onto her feet and shuffle-marched everyone up the ridge. Toward, she realized muzzily, the legion patrol’s campsite.
Pink and red licked off the cloud-layer, and smoke tangled with the charcoal stink of cooking meat. Too much light for a campfire, too bright and too big. It was, she realized, a bonfire. Realized in the next heartbeat that the roasting meat was not animal, no, nor edible, nor ever meant to be. Oh foremothers, those were her people burning.
There had been eighteen of them—the four scouts, the rest regular infantry—dispatched to retrieve Kenjak and Ollu. Dekklis tried to count bodies as their escort marched them past the fire. They’d been dead awhile. Fresh snow collected on faces, smearing the features. Dekklis hoped for Taliri among the dead and saw only legion armor and snow churned red. The carved pole presided, naked, over the clearing. Dekklis saw the half-blood looking at it as they passed.
She would ask Snow later what she saw on that pole. Because there would be a later. Believe that. For now: Keep her chin up, feet moving, eyes defocused. Pretend there weren’t
too many
Taliri milling around the campsite, looting and sorting equipment belonging to people she knew. Pretend she couldn’t see the smug expressions of their guards or hear the shouts they traded with their fellow raiders. The Taliri wanted a reaction out of her, well, they could go rot.
Foremothers knew Teslin was proving entertainment enough, running a bloody-mouthed litany of threats and helpless outrage. Istel, at least, kept his silence, but Istel had fought back hard and bled for it. They’d put him on the end of the chain, behind the half-blood, and Dekklis couldn’t see how bad he was. Didn’t dare turn and look and ask, with these motherless toadshits hovering. No telling what they understood. No way she would give them
Istel
a lever to use against her.
Their captors stopped, finally, at the far end of the camp. Huddled together in rapid and foreign conversation that spiked briefly loud. Then they peeled away, one after another, until only a single broad male remained. The Talir looped their chain around a stout, leafless oak and stepped out of range. Folded arms, hip cocked, his hand loose on the hilt of a stolen legion sword.
Take that as evidence, then, what threat they ranked. Eleven soldiers dead and burning already. Another damaged four posed no danger.
She could count herself lucky to be alive. She could count herself stupid, too, for having missed al
l the clues of ambush.
Complacence. Arrogance. Classic Illhari failings since the Republic’s founding.
Well. Balance those faults against tenacity, ingenuity, training—
What, this a motherless recruitment speech?
It was luck she needed. Luck, and the rest of the Sixth.
Or a lockpick.
Legion shackles were two bracelets joined by a linked chain. The Taliri version had leather-wrapped bracelets connected by a rigid steel bar, welded to a ring with a chain running through it, stringing the prisoners along like beads. It was a smart system, if you didn’t have to wear it yourself. Prisoners couldn’t get their own hands together. Couldn’t move, either, without rattling the whole business and dragging on everyone’s wrists. So it was bad enough when the half-blood slithered over to Istel. Rattle, clank, and the guard’s narrow-eyed stare. Dekklis reckoned he couldn’t see much through the snowfall. Reckoned, when he didn’t move, that he didn’t much care what one prisoner did to another. But then Teslin heaved herself up and began pacing, staggering, the length and limit of the chain. The snow swirled around her, eddied and clumped in strange patterns.
That was nervous energy, and anger, and grief. Teslin had a temper. Had a certain lack of sense, too, under some kinds of stress.
So Dekklis let Teslin pace. Tried to ignore the rattle and the guard’s stare. Winced every time Teslin ran out of slack, jerked around, and started back. Dekklis knew there was something wrong with her ribs, yeah, knives every time she drew breath. Bruises, she hoped. Not broken. But Istel. Dekklis caught glimpses, between Teslin’s pacings. He slumped in the snow like a sack of meal. The half-blood had both hands on him, doing—hell. Whatever chirurgeons did.
It was more in line with the half-blood’s self-interest to let Istel bleed out, to Dekklis’s reckoning. But there she was, her gloves stripped and crumpled like skin in the snow, her hands slick and wet. Her breath steamed grey, mingling with Istel’s where their heads almost touched. Dekklis couldn’t hear what she said—might be murmuring comfort or something more arcane. Or profane, if she’d got to praying. Dekklis stared hard at Snow’s gloves and tried to remember if the God’s cult had been much for healing. Thieving, extortion, smuggling, murder, yes, those she recalled. A man’s god, a criminal god, whose cult had been subject to persecution even before the Purge. Dekklis recalled her nurse’s voice and wrinkled face, Pasi’s fair Alviri skin gone pallid as mushrooms in sunless Illharek.
