by J. V. Jones
She had not counted on what had happened next. Somehow, as she’d sunk to her knees in the hard snow outside of Vaingate, she had lost herself to the voices. They hadn’t even allowed her a moment alone with her mother’s memory . . . simply stolen her mind clean away. Raif had pulled her back. He had touched her arm, and as he’d done so knowledge had passed between them. Ash shook her head. It was more than that, almost as if something inside her had reached out toward him—an invisible tentacle probing and binding—yet the idea of that was so distressing, she shied away from it. They were connected now, that she knew. And it was her doing, not his.
Ash frowned as she scooped snow into the horn nozzle of the waterskin. The cry of the hounds was louder now, more insistent. Almost against her will, her gloved hand rose up to the part of her arm Raif had touched.
“Ash. To the bay.”
Hauling the waterskins over her back, she obeyed Angus and crossed to where Raif held the horses. Raif did not speak as he took the skins from her. He was not like Angus; he never made conversation for the sake of passing time.
Mounting the horse wasn’t easy for Ash. The quick movement made her head spin, bringing back flashes of the dream. Surely there had been something . . . some revelation, something she had to remember? As quickly as she thought of it, the idea flitted away.
As soon as she was settled behind the saddle, Angus came striding over—not running, exactly, but moving more quickly than was his wont. His copper eyes kept flicking to the valley below. Following his gaze, Ash saw a blur of movement gliding across the packed snow. Unconsciously she squeezed the bay with her thighs. The sept had caught up with them at last.
The Sull tunnel had given them a quarter day’s start. Angus had kept them traveling through the night and on into the next day. His knowledge of the roads and ways helped, and the nearer they drew to Ille Glaive, the greater his knowledge became. He could read snow and ice like other men read books. He knew when snow lay over ice, not solid ground, where drifts were deepest, and where pond ice was thinnest and liable to crack. He could spot an animal trail lying beneath two days of snowfall and could tell when a hard frost was coming just by sniffing the wind.
He always seemed to know when it was time to move on. Ash had sat behind on the bay and felt as his shoulders stiffened for no reason that she could hear or see. Always at such times he’d kick the bay into a canter or send Raif to high ground to check the trail.
Angus knew lots of things for a man who claimed to be a humble ranger. Ash was sure he knew who she was. He never asked what she had done to warrant being chased and tormented by Marafice Eye. Nor did he show any curiosity about her second name, her position in the city, or her life before she had met him. It wasn’t politeness that halted his tongue, rather a desire that nothing be said until they reached Ille Glaive. Ash went along with this because it suited her. The longer she could put off telling either of these two men anything about herself, the better.
Angus Lok was no fool. It might suit him to play one now and then, but that wasn’t who he was.
“Northwest through the trees, Raif. Then hard along the stream.” Angus gave the bay its head, and they took off after Raif at full gallop.
Ash held on tightly as the bay charged through the spruces. Behind her she could hear the high, excited braying of the hounds. A horn blared, brash and triumphant, growing louder and louder as seconds passed. The hair on Ash’s neck prickled. Was Marafice Eye one of the seven?
“Hounds are a quarter league ahead of the sept,” Angus said, perhaps speaking to calm her. “And likely they’ve been traveling through the night.”
Ash struggled for his meaning. “So their horses will be tired?”
“Aye. Unless they’ve been given false strength.”
“Like the ghostmeal?”
“As close as damnation would have it.” Angus kicked the bay up a bank. White breath pumped from the gelding’s nostrils in thick bursts. Raif had already gained the stream and was now waiting for them to catch up. “Damn the lad,” hissed Angus under his breath. “He gets that from his brother—infernal waiting.”
Ash watched as Raif turned the gray, a strange tightness pulling at her chest. She hadn’t known Raif had a brother, hadn’t thought of him as having any family other than Angus. For some reason she had thought he was an orphan . . . like her.
Raif reached over Moose’s dock and slid his bow from its soft leather case. With practiced movements he strung and braced the bow, rolling the twine between his fingers as he tied a series of knots. His face was gray with shadows, his eyes focused on the road below. Can he see the sept from where he’s sitting? Ash wondered. The thought turned her cold.
She had seen what he could do with a bow. That day at Vaingate, while Marafice Eye and the others had watched his arrows, Ash had watched his face. Even through the grating she had seen the hunter’s glint in his eyes, recognized death as a presence behind them. Even now, days later, the memory chilled her like cold breath upon her spine.
“No!” Angus screamed. “No arrows. Not at the men.”
Raif, who had taken an arrow from his case and was in the process of raising it to his bow, halted in midnocking. Ash frowned. She had thought he had no arrows left. Where had they come from? As the bay drew nearer she saw the arrow was crudely shaped, whittled from pine, not hardwood, fletched with horsehair and tipped with flint. He had made it himself. But when? Ash answered her own question: while she had slept through the night.
“Do not target the men. Any of them. Understand?” Angus’ voice was harsh as he flanked Moose. “One of them is a magic user—we have no way of knowing which. Sight his heart and you give him a weapon to kill you.”
“But—”
“No, Raif. Do not question me on this. There’s no time to explain. When the dogs get close, shoot at them if you must. For now, though, put the arrow away. Distance is our best protection.” With that Angus kicked on ahead, leaving Raif to the ridge top and the stream. Moments later Ash heard Moose gaining speed behind them. She breathed a sigh of relief.
Below the ridge, the spruces rippled like things made out of water, not wood. Ash tried to spot the sept, but every tree and brush moving in the wind looked like a horseman. Ahead, the ground began to level off. The stream slowed, and cords of ice smoke rose from its partially frozen surface. The impact of the bay’s hooves along the bank was enough to crack shore ice as they passed. Ash’s heart beat fast in her chest. There was a fierceness in her, and she wanted to ride and ride and never stop.
She still couldn’t believe she was free. Sixteen years she had lived in Spire Vanis. Sixteen years of being watched, cosseted, and confined. All she knew was within the city; all her dreams had ended five paces south of Vaingate. When she was younger, Penthero Iss had taken pains to teach her about the world in which they lived. He had brought her books, beautiful fantastic books, painstakingly written in High Hand, illustrated by master engravers, and colored by oathbound scribes. Ash had seen the tall spiraling form of the Cloistress Tower at Owl’s Reach, surrounded by its ring of petrified trees; she’d studied the ruins at Morning Star, the giant steps that led nowhere, and the runners of silver ivy that climbed them year by year; she’d gazed upon the vast stonefields of Trance Vor, the iron cairns sunk deep into the soil of Hanging Valley, the Towerlode at Linn, the sheer cliffs that rose around Raven Head, and the golden walls of Ille Glaive with their windows shaped like tears. She had seen the world from those books, yet she had never once dreamed she’d be part of it.
Spire Vanis was her home. Mask Fortress was her home. Now she was riding around a lake she had only read of in books, on her way to a city she knew only through lines of ink. She supposed it felt like freedom, if freedom was a fall into the unknown.
“Cross the stream!” Angus called. Raif was ahead of them again, leading Moose along the bank with a tight rein. On Angus’ word, he descended the shallow slope to the water’s edge.
The stream was frozen along its ba
nks, yet green water still ran at its center, frothing over unseen rocks. Ash feared for Moose. She saw his hooves break rotten ice, watched his momentary hesitation as he fought his natural instinct to back away. Raif stroked his neck, spoke soft words that Ash couldn’t hear. Slowly Moose moved forward through the shore ice into the center of the stream.
The bay, who as far as Ash could tell had a name that Angus preferred no one to know, knew no such fear. It was almost as if he had been ice trained, for he seemed to test the ice before he broke it. When they came to a small runoff pool where the water was mostly undisturbed by the stream’s current, the bay made no attempt to break the ice at all: He simply knew it was thick enough to take the combined weight of himself and his riders. Angus said nothing during the process, but Ash could tell he was proud of his horse as he scratched the bay’s neck and shoulders continually.
As they scrambled out of the ice on the far side of the stream, the lead hound broke from the trees. Snapping and snarling, it made for the bank, its orange-and-black body humped with ribs, its docked tail quivering like a second snout. A second emerged a moment later, then another. Suddenly the sound of their calls was unbearable. The pitch changed, growing higher and more frenzied. They had the quarry in their sights.
Angus turned the bay in the last of the ice. Freezing water splashed as high as Ash’s face. The bay’s tail whipped against her thighs.
“Carry on along the bank!” called Angus to Raif. “They’ll cross long that way. If we’re lucky, we’ll lose some to the water.”
Ash didn’t understand what he meant, but Raif did and he turned Moose quickly, staying as close to the stream as he could. With Moose’s hooves barely a pace above the shore ice, horse and rider broke into a gallop. Angus followed suit, the bay keeping perfect pace.
Ash risked glancing back, then wished she hadn’t. Half a dozen dogs swarmed like wasps on the far bank. Yellow teeth glinted in ice-reflected light. Pink-and-black gums wet with saliva reminded her of scorched flesh.
As Moose and the bay picked up speed, the dogs began to shadow them along the bank. Soon Ash didn’t need to turn her head to see the dogs, as they pulled level with Moose within a matter of seconds. Only the stream separated them now. Then, as Ash looked, the first of the dogs scrambled onto the shore ice. Ash dug her fingernails into Angus’ buckskin coat to stop herself from crying out. The dog skidded over the ice effortlessly, its weight not great enough to break the surface. Others followed, howling and shaking their heads like things possessed.
Only when they entered the water did Ash begin to understand what Angus had meant by “crossing long.” The dogs, seeing how their quarry was racing ahead of them while they splashed in the water, actually began swimming upstream, rather than take the shortest route across. If Angus had simply ridden away from the stream and out of the dogs’ sights, the dogs would have crossed in a straight line. This way he tormented them into trying to keep pace.
Not all the dogs were fooled, and some began to swim through the froth toward the far bank. Seeing their sleek wet heads bobbing toward the shore ice, Raif reined in Moose. “Keep going!” he shouted to Angus as he kicked Moose onto the rise above the bank. Already he had one of the pine arrows in his hand.
Ash felt Angus’ body stiffen. He drew breath to speak yet stopped himself at the last moment, perhaps deciding it was better not to repeat his earlier warning. Despite Raif’s cry, he pulled on the bay’s reins, slowing the gelding to a trot. “How many dogs?”
It took Ash a moment to realize Angus was speaking to her. She glanced over her shoulder at the stream. One dog had already reached the far shore and was shaking its body viciously, spraying a fine mist of water droplets into the air. Another two dogs were skating over the shore ice toward the bank. A fourth was trying to scramble onto the ice from the water but was obviously tired, as the current kept tugging it back. A fifth dog was still in the free-flowing water at the center of the stream, paddling furiously. The sixth had fallen back. Ash watched as its small head went under, saw panic in its amber eyes as it emerged once more from the froth.
Thuc.
Glancing in the direction of the soft, knuckle-snapping sound, Ash saw Raif sitting high in his saddle, his left arm absorbing the shock of the recoiling bow, his eyes focused on the bank below. The first dog was dead. Ash pressed her hand against her mouth, holding her breath. It was a terrible thing . . . terrible . . . to be able to kill another being so surely.
“Five dogs,” she heard her voice say. Even as she spoke, Raif’s second arrow found another heart.
As the third dog tore toward Raif, the spruces on the far bank came alive with noise and movement. Branches thrashed air, snow spewed upward in a glittering arc. Seven silhouettes came into view. Swift moving, dark as beasts that hunted by night, they rode in a close V formation with only the space of a child’s hand between them. The Rive Watch. Ash had seen them ride that way before, watching them from the high windows of the Cask as they drove a wedge into an armed and angry mob. A man had been hung, a popular rogue and ladies’ man, and the people of Spire Vanis had taken offense at his death. Not the fact of his death, rather the manner of it, for Penthero Iss had ordered his handsome face cut off and then stitched on backward. Ash swallowed hard. Sometimes her foster father did things like that just to see what such horrors would look like.
The riot had been quelled within an hour. Marafice Eye had spearheaded the first sept. Just the rumor of his presence had been enough to take the fight from the crowd. No one in the city, not even Penthero Iss, was stupid enough not to fear the Knife.
“No, Raif!” Angus screamed at the top of his voice. “No more shooting!” He spun the bay, depriving Ash of her view of the sept.
Ash lost sense of what was happening as she was forced to hang on to Angus as they crashed through shore ice and frozen reeds toward Raif. Suddenly a dog exploded from nowhere. Ash felt air pump against her thigh, then the dog’s muzzle sprang open, ripping hair and skin from the bay’s rump. The horse screamed and bucked. Angus bunched the reins in his fist. “Take the knife from my belt.”
Ash did as she was told. The dog danced around the bay’s rear hooves, then launched itself once more at its rump. Ash’s only thought was for the bay. Already she could see two holes full of blood where the dog’s canines had bit deepest. Anger made her lash out violently, uselessly, at the dog’s snout. Angus whipped the bay’s head back, making the horse wheel so quickly, the dog was left snapping air. Ash cursed her own uselessness.
“Wait until its snout touches horseflesh.” Angus’ voice was low, almost threatening. His teeth were clenched.
Ash readjusted her grip on the knife. The hilt was carved from rootwood, but some unseen metal at the center made it heavy in the hand. As she waited for the dog to attack, she risked glancing back across the stream. The sept was clear of the trees now. The lead rider shouted an order, and the V bore down upon the stream. The leader was huge, dressed in the black and the red of the Watch, with the Killhound sewn above his heart and a black iron bird helm forming a cage around his face. Ash looked into the shadows behind the helm, and slowly, so slowly, her belly shrank to the size of a fist. Marafice Eye rode at the head of the sept.
Something dark streaked below her. A muzzle packed with teeth came straight for her thigh. Ash shifted back in horror. Small orange eyes closed in self-protection as the dog sank its fangs into her thigh. Shock and pain tore through her like a jolt from a lance. Hot tears filled her eyes. Rage drove the knife. She hardly knew what she was doing, hardly bothered to place the blow, yet she drove the blade in with all the force she possessed. Bone split with a wet crack. The dog’s eyes opened, and its jaws sprang apart. As the creature fell away from her body, Ash yanked the knife back. She wasn’t about to lose her blade to a dead dog.
“I said horseflesh. Not girlflesh.” Angus seemed angry. He drove the bay up the slope in silence, making his way toward Raif. Ash held her hand to her thigh and pressed. She was angry herself.
She had expected Angus to praise her.
Raif waited for them at the top of the hill. He had stowed his bow and now had a short double-edged sword in his hand. Two dogs lay butchered by Moose’s hocks. Both Moose and Raif were scratched and bloody. Raif was breathing heavily, and his face was all angles and grayness. It takes something from him, she thought with cold certainty. Killing the things he does, the way he does, hurts him in some way.
Catching a glimpse of something dark and sparkling over his shoulder, Ash strained to see more. The Black Spill stretched out in the valley below them like a beast under glass. Ledges of ice crusted the shoreline, supporting great frozen piers that extended toward the heart of the lake and the black steaming water that ran there. A haze of mist floating above the surface mirrored each curve and break of the shore, forming a ghost lake above the Spill.
Ash breathed softly, letting her hand relax against her thigh. The eastern shore of the Black Spill, where the Maker of Souls had shown himself to the Condemned Man, Rob Ruce, who went on to take Ille Glaive; where the Red Priest had washed his hands of the blood of the Five Sisters, who saw visions and spoke in Old Tongue; where Samrel of Spire Vanis had met to exchange hostages with the Clan King Hoggie Dhoone; and where Sorissina of the Elms had drowned beneath the ice as she followed her lover’s calls into the mist. Ash sat, transfixed for the briefest moment, and watched the play of light and shadow on the surface of the lake. She had always felt a kinship for Sorissina of the Elms: She had been a foundling, too.
“Cut the saddlebags.”
Ash was brought back to the present by the sound of Angus’ voice. Before she could decide whether or not he was speaking to her, he jumped down from the horse. His boots crunched snow as he moved to inspect the wounds on the bay’s rump. “I said cut the saddlebags.”
Ash exchanged a glance with Raif.
“Both of you. Hurry. Ash. Move forward into the saddle.” Angus opened the saddlebag on his near side and took out a handful of small hide-bound packages, then slipped them beneath his tunic. He moved quickly, continually looking over his shoulder to check the progress of the sept.
