by K. Eason
She thought he meant Dekklis, or Teslin, or Istel. Took her a moment and the Talir’s impatient boot to figure otherwise. “Illhari,” the guard said, and jerked the chain. Get up didn’t need translation.
Snow slipped, in rising, and palm-planted and pressed the pick into the snow. Put a boot on it in the next motion. Please, Laughing God, Dekklis noticed. Please, she picked it up before the guard did. Ugly motherless toadshit, scowling with his blunt Taliri features. A solid people, the Taliri, stone-hard. This one had agate eyes, flecked gold, buried in deep sockets.
Fuck and damn, she’d seen more wit from Logi.
The Talir produced his own key and rattled her back to freedom. Instinct, to rub the liberated flesh. Her fingers were cold as the metal had been. He let her shackles drop. Gestured, chin and shoulder, toward the fire, and when she didn’t move, shoved her, one-handed.
“Go,” he said. “She waits.”
Who? she thought of asking. Didn’t, as Dekklis saved her, murmured “Snow” and “Over there, left, look” in a tolerable approximation of Illhari street-cant.
So Snow turned, with what she hoped was appropriate nonchalance. And there, the who: a woman, striding away from the bonfire. Shadows dripped from the folds of her cloak, eddied around her feet like living ink. Hair long and unbound, reddish and warm in the fireglow. Honey-gold eyes stared out of wide Taliri cheekbones and past a proud, definitely Dvergiri nose. Another half-blood.
Who stopped, halfway between fire and trees. “Snowdenaelikk.” Her Dvergiri was less precise than Veiko’s. Stiffer. “I am pleased to have found you. I worried when I saw the legion come to Davni.”
Hear a feather drop in that silence. Feel three pairs of eyes—hell, no, two and a half—scorching the back of her head. Only one way this woman would know her name. Tsabrak’s motherless courier, right there, Tsabrak’s toadshit orders ringing clear in her head.
Wait for the courier . . . She’ll find you.
But he hadn’t warned her about another half-blood. Some of that was Tsabrak, who liked to keep his own counsel. Make his own plans. Keep secrets, even from her. Probably thought it was a great joke to surprise her.
Manipulative, motherless, honorless—
“Half-blood,” said Dekklis. Curious flatness to her voice, which Snow took for you motherless toadshit and you traitor combined.
Three easy steps to the forest, yeah, just fucking run. She let the guard guide her forward. This new half-blood was tallish, curved like an oil lamp under cloak and Talir tunic. She pulled Snow’s sword out from under her cloak. Offered it sheathed and balanced between her palms. The ends of the belt dangled like limp arms, a scant fingerlength from the snow.
“My apologies for your rough treatment. My people did not recognize you among the soldiers.”
Snow nodded, in what she hoped was a good approximation of mollified offense. Looped and settled the belt on her hips, under the cloak, and wondered if she dared ask for the rest of her knives. Damn Dekklis anyway, for her diligence. She felt naked.
“My thanks,” she said in unlovely Taliri. “But I don’t think we’ve met.”
“You may call me Ehkla.” The half-blood offered a bow. “You are unharmed?”
A polite people, the Taliri, when they weren’t burning towns and impaling the wounded. “More or less.”
“Good.” A nod, grave and slow, as if Snow’s health were the most important matter. “And your companion?”
“Dead.”
A second bow. “We regret the loss.”
“Don’t. He was an idiot. I’m here for whatever you’ve got. Let’s get to that.”
Snow held her right hand up then, palm out, and tilted it toward the firelight. The Laughing God’s glyph wasn’t easy to see, black ink on black skin.
Shadows of a shadow, Tsabrak said. Just like we are.
Tsabrak liked his drama. More
honest
accurate if they called themselves thieves and assassins. Or better, merchants, just the sort who dodged tariffs and taxes and Senate inspections and did business in the alleys. Call them those things, along with heretic, for honoring
serving, Snowdenaelikk, we serve
“The Laughing God,” Ehkla murmured. “Unusual, to find a woman in his service.”
“I don’t serve him,” Snow snapped. Tsabrak had allowed the godmark on a woman’s flesh, but not the oaths. She wasn’t sure she’d have taken them, anyway. Serve didn’t suit her. “I work with the God. Like you do.”
“I?” Ehkla laughed and opened her own palm. “I do not work with the God.”
And it was not the Laughing God’s jagged black mark there, no. Round series of loops, this mark, bloodslick red and gleaming. It made Snow’s head ache to look at it, made her skin prickle like parchment too close to a flame. Sweat carved a channel down her ribs, chilled where the wind sliced down to skin. This was Tsabrak’s idea of ally, was it? Better off without, if he’d asked her. Which he fucking hadn’t.
Ehkla smiled. Nodded. “You recognize her mark.”
Tsabrak’s eyes lit like that, too, when he had a new audience. Fanatic gleam that Snow had mistaken once for attractive. She liked it even less on Ehkla’s face.
“No. Sorry. Should I?”
“Tal’Shik led the Illhari out of the darkness. Tal’Shik—”
“Told the highborn godsworn to burn the God’s temples. Yeah. Now I remember. Heard a lecture on her once, ‘Why the Senate Conducted the Purge.’ Listen. I’m here for whatever you’ve got for Tsabrak, yeah? Let’s get to that.”
Ehkla looked at her. Her breath smoked out in a long, slow exhale. “The Senate betrayed Tal’Shik. Her daughters—”
“She might’ve had allies if she hadn’t killed everyone else. Delivery.”
Another long breath, in and out. Watch the shift in Ehkla’s eyes and consider that picking fights with Tal’Shik’s
motherless half-blood Talir
godsworn wasn’t the wisest choice, no, not if Tsabrak wanted an alliance.
Fuck the alliance. You want to walk out of here, yeah? Be polite.
Snow was on the teetering brink of apology, excuses clotting against the back of her teeth, when Ehkla jerked out a tiny nod.
“No delivery. A message. Davni.”
“What’s it mean, hey, Taliri raided here?”
“Your master understands.”
Master. Right. Razor-cut subtle, this one. Snow peeled her own smile. “I should get back, then, and tell him. Don’t want him to get mad, yeah? He might beat me.”
Ehkla floated a glance past her shoulder, at Dekklis and Teslin and Istel. “You should wait. There is an Illhari cohort on the road.”
“I’ll get past them.”
“It’s not safe.”
Damn right it wasn’t, and the legion the least of her worries. Riverbed full of Taliri, yeah, motherless forest full of them. Rather face the storm naked, except she wouldn’t have to with Veiko out there. If she hurried
wait, Briel
she might catch him before he
died
tried a rescue that she didn’t need.
Tell him to run, yeah? Do that, Briel, and I’ll let you have all the flatcakes.
“We will provide you an escort when the storm breaks.”
“I’ll leave now. And alone. Master’s orders, yeah?”
Ehkla’s smile made another appearance. Lingered this time, like a nightmare on waking. Shadows spilled from her cloak and pooled around Snowdenaelikk’s boots like
blood
water from a cracked bucket. Began to rise on the leather. The shadows stopped when Snow glared at them, but they did not recede.
“It’s a Dvergir skill,” Ehkla said, in the same tone Tsabrak might say highborn or female. “It can be useful. Do you know it?”
A Dvergir trick, simple as breathing, except the Dvergir version didn’t bring a cold with it that soaked all the way into bone. If this was simple shadow-weaving, then Briel was a dragon. This
was godmagic, which didn’t rely on gestures and formulas and syllables uttered just so. An older kind of conjuring that the Academy didn’t teach anymore. Call it prayer, and remember the runes on the pole. Ehkla wasn’t worried about backlash. All the advantage was on her side.
Snow looked up. Damn near impaled herself on Ehkla’s smirk. Ehkla’s godmagic shadows surged over Snow’s boots. Felt like a carpet of teeth, digging for purchase in the leather. Crawling up her leg, fuck and damn.
Wisdom said shake off the shadows, turn her back on this woman, and walk out of here. Conjuring in the Wild was begging for backlash, begging for another rearrangement of trees and turf. Last time she’d made this riverbed. This time she might end up bones and buried.
Wisdom could go eat toadshit.
Snow held out her hand. Witchfire collected in her palm, blue and cold and swirled out of nothing. This, too, was a Dvergir trick, simple as breathing, for those who’d learned how. This that passed for natural light Below, that lit Illharek’s windows and towers. But the conjuring wasn’t trivial now, surrounded by forest and snow and open sky. Discomfort spread from her chest to her belly and into her bones. Pressed up against real pain and stopped. Ebbed away, as the Wild chose to ignore her trespass.
Or the God loved her after all. Maybe that.
Focus.
Snow closed her fist around the witchfire. Tipped her palm and slow-spilled it, like wax from a candle. The blue flames struck the shadows, spread and flared and burned. Tiny bonfire in the snow, heatless, smokeless, that still raised sweat on her skin. It devoured Ehkla’s shadows. Chased them back to Ehkla’s boots and stopped. And slowly, as Snow willed it, the witchfire sank back into nothing.
Her former teachers would have been pleased with her effort. Tsabrak might have been impressed. Veiko, hell, Veiko would probably look a lot like Ehkla did, flat lips and narrow-eyed disapproval.
And then a man shouted from the far side of the bonfire. Warning, terror—and silence, suddenly and abruptly.
Fuck and damn, Briel, I said wait.
Except this wasn’t Veiko’s attack that sent the Talir scout hurtling off the steep bank. Certainly not Veiko’s arrows sprouting out of his back, red-and-black fletched.
All of that in a heartbeat, before Snow’s gaze tangled with Ehkla’s, twinned shock and horror making a pair of them. Then Ehkla spun toward the disturbance and raised a palm and said
a name
something that hurt all the way to bone. Power that wasn’t conjuring built on the wrong side of Snow’s skin, white and hot and lethal.
She didn’t think. Struck, knuckles to the side of Ehkla’s head, and Ehkla’s godmagic curdled into a recognizable sentiment.
Taliri or Dvergiri, motherless toadfucker had the same venom behind it.
“Snow!” Dekklis shouted.
Snow curled a shoulder and dove. Harder than it looked, that half-frozen mud. Slicker, too. She skidded sidelong, ended up on hip and elbow instead of neatly back on her feet. An arrow punched into the dirt in front of her. For a suspended second, she saw every bristle on the red-and-black fletching.
Then the arrow dissolved like salt in water. One second, solid, and then gone, as if it had turned to falling snow.
Losing her mind, maybe, except there were still screams and shouts and chaos all around her. The Taliri thought the attack was real enough. And there was a hole in the snow where that arrow had been. Damn good bet there’d’ve been a hole in her flesh, too, had it hit her.
So there was a third conjuror out there, too, with an Adept’s talent and no sense, throwing that kind of power around out here.
You should criticize, yeah?
Except witchfire was minor. This, this—
Whump, and a second burst of snow and dirt, close enough that the clods peppered her cheek.
—this was something to think about later, from a very long and safe distance.
She rolled onto one knee, got the second foot under her. Sucked a breath and pointed herself up the riverbed. Sprinted, in a ragged line, and wished the arrows elsewhere.
An Illhari trooper appeared then, swirled out of snow and wind. Nothing and there, that fast, blood-vivid. He drew his sword and lunged at a passing Talir, cutting him down in a silent, bright spray. And then the trooper looked at her and flashed white teeth in a familiar Dvergir face.
The angry dead can walk.
Oh Laughing God. And climb down from poles, too, apparently.
Run, half-blood, said K’Hess Kenjak.
Damn good suggestion.
Snow pulled shadows from between roots, and grooves in the bark, and the narrow places between evergreen needles. All of the dark, drawn out of the places where the fire had cornered it, every scrap of it she could hold in mind and skill.
And then, with shaking hands, she pulled the bonfire black.
The soldiers blurred out of the storm and became solid, much as any man might. Veiko heard the clink and creak of their gear, and their muttered, rapid Dvergiri. But Helgi swerved to avoid one, with an un-Helgi yip, and Logi pressed up against his knee hard enough to threaten his balance. And it was then that Veiko noticed the cold, beyond the storm’s doing. There was rime on the dogs’ fur and on his cloak. And when he looked down, he saw fog swirling around his ankles.
He understood where he was then, and how K’Hess Kenjak meant to sneak among the Taliri. Understood who these soldiers must be, and shivered.
“Chrrip.”
Veiko rolled his eyes sideways. Briel rode on his left shoulder, claws dug through wool and leather and into the flesh underneath. She rapped her chin on his skull, exactly as his mother had, when he was a child.
Don’t be an idiot, Veiko.
Far too late for that. Living men should not walk the ghost roads. Living men should not bargain with the dead, either, but he’d done that, and of his own volition. He was gathering a great many such should nots of late, for a hunter and a crofter’s son.
“Skraeling.” Kenjak angled in front of him, solid in the ghost road. Muddy boots, hair slipping its queue, a scrape on one cheek that still oozed. He had a sword in his hand, and his arm was unbroken. “We are here.”
By no means could Veiko confirm that. There might be trees an arm’s length away. There might be nothing at all.
Kenjak watched him. Smiled slowly, and Veiko thought about cats and cornered rabbits.
Briel hissed, and Kenjak’s smile vanished. “Our bargain, skraeling.”
Unwise, like so many other things, and a gamble—short-term stupidity against greater gain. “I remember it. You will attack first.”
“We will.”
“And you will find her.”
“We will.”
“Then you,” Veiko told Briel, “will lead her clear, and find me.”
Briel hissed again, first at him, then at Kenjak. She launched off his shoulder. For a moment Veiko thought her wings covered all the sky, and then he realized that there was a sky. Grey, and full of snow, and close enough he might touch it. The snow felt warm on his skin. The fog wisped away, and the soldiers vanished with it. Briel did, too, soundlessly.
He was alone in the riverbed, except for Helgi and Logi and the ghost of K’Hess Kenjak. Trees, dark against the snow, striped the bank above him. Faint orange glow ahead of him, faint smell of smoke. The first screams.
Skraeling. We’ve begun.
Veiko pulled a deep breath.
“Stay,” he told the dogs. He took a step closer to Kenjak. Held out his right arm. Waited. Did not close his eyes. It was not a great price to pay for the ghost-legion’s help.
And so Veiko watched as Kenjak drew his sword and slapped it down, flat first. The sword passed through his flesh like a net through water. Numb in its wake, and then cold, and then pain that smeared his vision black.
And then—cold spot on his cheek, warm breath. He blinked and found a blurry Helgi at eye level. Realized then that there was cold and wet soaking through the knees of his breeches. That his le
ft hand was knotted in dog fur, that his axe was—there, head down in the snow, dropped by his numb right hand.
His face burned. Men fought through worse wounding and did not drop their weapons or fall to their knees or forget that they had done either. Be grateful there was no one to witness it, except the dogs. Except a dead man, who—
Wasn’t there, either, when Veiko looked for him. Having collected his payment, Kenjak had gone to keep his side of the bargain. Kill the Taliri. Draw them off. Free Snowdenaelikk.
And so, without any witnesses that mattered, Veiko pulled his right arm to his chest. Imagined that he could feel his fingers curling into a fist. Imagined he could feel anything at all, from fingers to shoulder. He pushed the useless hand into his belt. Worry for it later, and hope that Snowdenaelikk’s skills extended to ghost-wounds.
If she survived. Which he was supposed to be helping to ensure.
He spat one of the words Snow had taught him in their time together under the tree, and used an uncomplaining Helgi to lever himself upright. Staggered and risked balance again, to retrieve the axe. He hefted it, left-handed and awkward. The fireglow had given way to grey and snow. Almost full dark now, with snowfall getting heavier and coming sideways when the wind gusted. A mountain storm that killed men caught in it.
Veiko thought it more likely that a sword would get him first, or an arrow. Men might fight with greater hurts than his, but men also died of lesser, and those men all had more experience in battle than he did.
Bad time to think of that, yeah?
If his better sense spoke in Snowdenaelikk’s voice now, he might welcome the blizzard.
He hefted the axe and started toward the battle noises. Fog swirled, and snow did, and he wondered if he’d managed to slip into the ghost roads again by mistake. He lost sight of the dogs. Hoped they were having better luck, finding her. Hoped Briel was.
And there—ahead, like a summoning answered. A blade-slim darkness in the fog and snow. Her little seax had broken, he saw, slivered off into a spike of itself. Pity for that man, then. At least Kenjak had kept his word. Got her loose.
Veiko drew a lungful of spirit fog and honest cold. Shouted, “Snowdenaelikk!”
