His white beard made her think of Tu’Ren, though Garos was a barrel of a man where the man who was more an uncle to her was tall, broad and athletic, and she felt a swell that mixed with a bitter pang as she remembered how dearly she missed him.
“Well, lads,” Garos boomed. He needed no horn to get his message heard, and Iyana saw Talmir bring his mount back around the front of the milling caravan as the others either sat in the saddles or dismounted. “Here’s our returned captain. Alive as ever. And now with a tan he never boasted as well as the rest of us before.”
Talmir smirked up at him and Iyana saw the nervous smiles and glances the younger soldiers atop the wall and bordering the courtyard shared as the First Keeper jested.
“The Bronze Star himself!” Garos exclaimed, and in the place of the teasing she had expected, there was only pride and a raised fist to go along with it. The soldiers gave their voices to the air and the buildings around them finished emptying, the cheer carrying as they welcomed their wayward captain and his wayward knights.
“Sorry to say, boys and girls,” Garos dipped his head in mock sincerity, “but it looks like my time as your leader is once more cut short by this young upstart without a flicker of fire to his name or a bit of glow along his sword’s edge—though it is a sharp thing.” Ripples of laughter. Garos looked up and Iyana saw his eyes sweep the caravan and settle for a moment on the lone wagon. Her heart dipped along with his.
“No doubt we’ll learn of what was found or what wasn’t,” Garos said. His voice was more subdued, but also more earnest than before, and Iyana marveled at the way he drew every ear in the vicinity and the hearts beneath them. “Of who was lost,” another glance toward the wagon and a shuddering swallow, “and who’s returned. No doubt many will make their complaints known.” His look went harsh in a flash that nearly took her breath, and Iyana thought he must mean the Merchant Council and the counting clerks who leered from the shadows of Hearth. “But, from where I’m standing, this place looks as full as it was meant to. From where I’m standing, it appears our captain has brought back fine treasures from the home of our fathers.”
The soldiers seemed to regard the returned caravan with fresh sobriety, and even Iyana found herself parsing their company with renewed interest. The red-sashes and the gray had clustered together. They clutched reins and children tightly, knuckles blanched and eyes darting, or else focused on the imposing First Keeper and his thundering address. Ceth had hopped down from his steed but stood before his people like the ironclad prow of a warship, spiked silver hair blowing in the wind. Talmir had turned his mount around to regard them, and Iyana was only just realizing what an overwhelming spectacle it must appear to the nomads. What a threatening one it could.
Garos broke into a wide and toothy grin. He clapped once, loudly and with a force that might shatter the palms of smaller men.
“Welcome, new friends and perhaps old family,” he said, spreading his arms out wide, fingers splayed. “Welcome to our Valley, which is as modest and quaint and lovely as I am not. Welcome to our home, and perhaps to yours as well, if you’ll have it.”
Now, the cheer that went up redoubled, and not just because of the gathered crowd. Iyana craned in her saddle and saw not a bare, unoccupied cobble in the street. She saw pumping fists and bobbing children on brown shoulders stretching all the way to the crest of the hill on the edges of the Red Bowl.
She chanced a look at Ceth and saw him eyeing his fellows and the Ember atop the wall. She even saw his hands balled into fists at his sides, and her heart caught in her throat as she remembered what they were capable of.
And then he smiled, or did something as close to it as she had seen him do. He swept his gaze out to encompass the soldiers and the walls, the twisted alleys and worked metal and bright-colored sashes that must seem gaudy to him and his. But in the place of fear and uncertainty, now she saw a cautious mirth as the mood seemed to pick him up in its wake and carry him along. Martah sat rigid in her saddle, with a child on either side. She looked both frightened and overjoyed, an odd mix Iyana did not think she could duplicate if she tried.
Garos came down from the wall, as did many of the soldiers, and Iyana, Karin, Talmir and the desert caravan allowed themselves to be relieved of their horses. Iyana pressed her forehead against her own horse before a young girl led her away, and she saw Talmir keeping Creyath’s black charger close, the lone steed they kept among the crowd as the press bowed in and threatened to crush the returned Emberfolk and their new companions, despite Garos’s rumbling, booming threats.
Iyana was so taken with the myriad faces, none of whom were known to her and all of whom filled her with a sense of warmth and belonging, of being home, that she did not at first notice the tears that flowed freely or the wails that mixed with the cheers—the songs of mirth that joined with those of fresh mourning as the people of Hearth counted the living and recognized the absence of the dead.
She felt tears sting her own eyes and then saw Karin find her in the press. He guided her to a place of calm beside the wagon where the children of the desert stood as nervous and as close as they had roamed free and fast among the sparser and calmer Rivermen.
“It will not be a happy evening,” Karin said. “But it is needed. Let tomorrow’s worries come tomorrow, Yani. Tonight, we are home.” He broke into a smile as he looked at something behind her, and Iyana felt she knew what or who it was before she turned.
She was swept off her feet and spun, felt her boot fly off and hit some merchant or soldier whose complaint was lost in the surge. All she saw was red cheeks and white hair to match her own, and all she felt was strength and heat, all she smelled was pine sap from the man who built his fires the old way. She giggled like a child and squeezed Tu’Ren like she had never squeezed anyone before when he set her down, and he laughed along with her as his tears hissed and burned up into the air.
“Tu’Ren Kadeh,” Iyana whispered. She felt him nodding against her shoulder, his knotted beard brushing the small of her back like a horse’s tail.
The First Keeper of Last Lake pushed Iyana back to arms’ length, and she had to laugh at the way he squatted in the press and yet still managed to stand a head taller than she. He passed his bright blue eyes over her and smiled wistfully, shook his head with mock disapproval or pride. “What has the World made of you, I wonder?” he puzzled. “What have you made of it?”
“I’ve only seen a bit of it,” Iyana said. She could see the dunes stretching to the far horizon in her mind’s eye, the desert foxes sliding down with their pups in the soft, white bowls of sand. She left the more garish sights to the back. Plenty of time for those to come. She shook herself back into the present and saw that he watched her with curiosity tinged with concern. She couldn’t help but notice his great black-handled sword in its brown sheath as he straightened. “I am glad to be home,” she said.
“Not home, yet,” Tu’Ren said, hands on his hips as he made a show of looking around at the crowded courtyard in mock disapproval. “But, things being as they have been, and as you’ve likely seen them, Hearth’ll do for now.”
Iyana smiled. She felt someone brush against her and turned to see Ceth standing at the head of a small column—the score of desert nomads who smiled nervously at her or else glanced sidelong at the chaos about them as if on the verge of succumbing.
“Seems you’ve picked up quite a flock,” Tu’Ren said, nodding to Ceth, who nodded back, once. “Welcome, friends.” Tu’Ren leaned in toward the little girl Martah held. She flinched back at first and then reached out and touched the First Keeper on the nose, withdrawing with a shriek and giggle that had the other desert children inching forward behind legs and between trailing sashes.
“Ember!” the boy exclaimed, and the others looked to Tu’Ren with childlike awe their parents tried not to show, which only served to magnify the effect.
Iyana turned back to Tu’Ren and caugh
t him looking at the wagon they stood beside.
“Aye,” Tu’Ren said, forcing himself back into that familiar comfort. “Ember.” He leaned forward conspiratorially and the boy tried to make a grab for his nose again. “You lot are in a Valley of them, now. Careful who you brush against in these here streets and narrow ways. You just might catch a burn out of it.”
Iyana gave him an admonishing look before she realized what she was doing, and he reared back with a bellow that rivaled Garos’s own. Seeing them close together, the two were not so similar, but surely they had been born of the same maker’s mold.
“Ah,” Tu’Ren said, hands on his waist. “That’s the Iyana Ve’Ran I know. I see the desert winds have done nothing to smooth out that bit of rough in you.”
She frowned but could not keep it up for long, and as the crowd began to filter out of the yard and up onto the raised cobbles, wagon lurching along behind them, she turned back and motioned for Ceth and the others to follow. She saw Karin in their midst, switching his attention from one desert nomad to another, answering their questions or listening to their quiet exclamations. Behind them, she saw Talmir greeting another once-familiar face, a boy she knew as Jakub, and a reminder of one of the bright flames they had left in this treasure of a Valley.
“I see you’re as filthy as I left you,” Talmir said. He reached out as if to tousle the boy’s hair, but Jakub flinched back. Talmir looked the dark-haired and dark-eyed youth up and down, an appraisal that was only half in jest. He focused in on his knuckles, which were raw.
“Training in the yard, then?” Talmir asked. Jakub changed his look from sheepish to defiant in a flash that nearly broke the thin veneer of Talmir’s mock disapproval. “Who with? Garos? I’ll have to have a word with him. Trying to burn up our youth while I’m away. Who’ll be left to man the walls when you lot are gone?” He made a show of looking around, as if searching for the brutish man who was impossible to miss. The one they could both hear bellowing his long and emphatic welcomes to friends new and old as he did his best to delay efforts to clear the choked courtyard and get the grumbling merchants in from the gate with their laden carts and tired mules.
“Wasn’t Garos,” Jakub said. Talmir had to blink at him as he heard the gruffness of his voice. It sounded lower already than it had half a season before, and Talmir spun around and sidled up beside the boy, standing rigid while Jakub shifted, uncomfortable.
“No?” Talmir asked, leaning awkwardly as he tried to take a measure of the boy’s height. He stepped away and faced him head-on again. “You’ve sprouted, I think,” Talmir said, suspicious. His eyes were drawn downward and widened as he took in the black leather and oiled straps. “Or perhaps someone’s been spoiled with new boots and buckles by a certain member of the Merchant Council?” Jakub said nothing, only glared. “A particularly fetching member, no doubt.”
Talmir felt his heart quicken as he thought of her, but he knew she was not present. Perhaps she was angry with him after all. Angry for leaving. Angry for what he had left in the deserts or the state in which he’d brought it back. He kept from looking at the wagon, though his eyes lingered over the black charger that wouldn’t allow itself to be led away but rather paced and wheeled in front of the gate as if waiting.
Jakub followed his look, and when Talmir turned back to him, the rough-looking lad had smoothed his features some and brushed the dirty bangs from his eyes. He looked crestfallen, and Talmir was made acutely aware of the similar looks turned his way from the soldiers at the edges of the yard and from the older townsfolk sitting beneath their awnings and leaning out of their many-colored windows.
Talmir gave him a smile, and now he did muss up his hair, Jakub slapping him away with conviction, swatting like a disturbed cat. “Already too tall to be a runner, I think. Too bad, don’t you think, Reyna? This one would’ve made a fine addition to your regrown core.”
Karin had had been standing with the nomads, but Iyana and Tu’Ren had led them away—as far away as the press and scrum would allow—and now he hovered in the yard, unsure what to do but aching with the need to do something, same as Talmir. The First Runner approached, and he did a much better job meaning his serious inspection of Jakub. The boy tried to look unconcerned.
“He’s much taller than I am,” Jakub said after a time, jutting a soot-stained finger at Karin, who smirked.
“Is he?” Talmir wondered aloud. He looked Karin up and down and the First Runner stepped back and spread his arms apart. “Agree to disagree, I suppose.”
Jakub was veritably fuming, now. But he was too private to rage and too proud to sputter. He settled for the most wicked stare Talmir could imagine a youth producing.
Talmir squatted down, meeting the boy at eye level while Karin watched. He laid a hand on his shoulder and held him still. “There are two things you must learn above all others, at least right now,” Talmir said. Jakub leaned in, hungry. Eager. “First, you’ll have to learn to take humor in your stride.” The boy frowned, but Talmir tilted his head. “Take it from me, Jakub. Take it from him.” He jutted a thumb back at Karin, and now it was his turn to frown at the implication. “I’m sure you’ve already heard plenty from the younger men in the yard.” Jakub’s look shifted and Talmir brushed a smudge from below his eye. “They’ve been at you already, from the looks of things. A street boy, come to the yard too young to hold a sword.”
Jakub’s eyes were dry.
“They’re the same as you, is all,” Talmir said, sighing when it was evident the words were lost on the boy. He went to stand, but Jakub gripped his withdrawing hand, nearly yanking Talmir from his feet.
“Second,” Jakub said. “Second?”
“Ah, yes,” Talmir said, his face going serious, tone grave. “The second thing you’ll have to learn … is how to take a bath.”
Jakub threw his own hand back at him and ground his teeth as Talmir straightened. He nodded at Karin. “If I ever forget how filthy some of the streets in this beauteous city have become, point me in Jakub’s direction,” he said. “If ever Kenta and his men claim they’ve cleaned up the squalor, have them bring me Jakub. From now on, we judge our city’s base condition on yours, lad. I can think of no greater honor.”
He tossed a wink in at the end as he moved off, heading to the beginnings of the cobbled slope that acted as Hearth’s main throughway. Jakub and Karin took up his wake and the soldiers he passed gave their salutes. Talmir returned curt nods and tried not to blush as they glanced down at his ripped and filthy shirt and the chain that hung below his light leather armor. The metal was a ruined husk in the back of the wagon, along with the rest of the broken things they had brought back with them from the north.
Women, children and men too old to be bothered to rise shouted their thanks as the caravan passed, now swollen with the addition of hangers-on and renewed with the presence of Hearth’s youths, less dirty than Jakub and far less serious. All of them followed Garos’s booming percussions, even as they lost him in front of the wagon. Talmir kept sight of Iyana’s silver hair and Ceth’s gray sash.
He looked up, wincing as the sun lanced into his eyes and brought with it the leached colors from hanging sashes and clothes, from glass jars that sat on wooden sills and strings of charms that swung from gutters and cracked red tiles. He saw the faces of Hearth’s people—his people—and saw the pride they held for him and his. In the place of the burning guilt he had expected, Talmir let the feeling in and tried to believe it for a change. He felt heat over his chest and heard a faint buzzing, like flies over baked mud, and clutched his hand to his heart as Piell’s Bronze Star thrummed with its strange, comforting radiance.
Hearth was home, he realized. He felt it keenly for the second time—the first being the night he thought the Corrupted would break through the white shell and burn the yolk away. The yolk that was his people. The people who were his home and his heart.
Talmir smiled and felt
tears sting his sun-dried cheeks. He thought of wiping them away but gave it up, and when he met the eyes of passers-by, they glistened the same as his. It didn’t matter what they’d achieved on that long and windblown road to their ancient home. It didn’t matter what they’d lost. In the moment, all that mattered to the Emberfolk was that they had theirs back, and a few more besides.
The feeling wouldn’t last. Talmir knew it wouldn’t. Not for him, even if it might—even if he hoped it would—for some of the others. For now, he let it hold him up as his legs quaked beneath him, and as each rattle of the wagon’s loose-fitting boards brought up images that would be seared into his mind’s eye until his dying day.
They reached the crest of the Red Bowl shortly after, and there Kenta Griyen met them. Talmir threaded his way through the milling throng and found the old healer regarding him with a soft, almost pitiful expression. He extended his thin, smooth hand and Talmir took it and squeezed as the bulk of the company turned to the northern roads that would take them through the wells and across the white stone bridge to the green field below the cliffs and guard towers.
“A feast fit for heroes returned,” Kenta said warmly, indicating the bustling bowl below him. The market was as clustered as the northern sands were sparse, and Talmir saw it as a gaudy thing for a moment before he let the familiar sights, smells and sounds fill him with more pleasant memories.
“Or for those passing on,” Talmir said, his smile dropping as the wagon trundled past. Iyana and Tu’Ren led the mules, now, and both averted their eyes as Talmir looked their way.
Kenta laid a hand on Talmir’s shoulder. “Would they want anything less than a celebration in their honor? The Emberfolk have never been ones to hold vigil without salt and meat.” He smiled and Talmir returned it, almost meaning it. He felt Karin brush by him as he followed the others. “The lads have already sent for the timber. They’ll have the pyre ready by dusk.”
The Frostfire Sage Page 9
