Scarlet and the White Wolf, #1

by Kirby Crow

  Scarlet accepted the gift in silence. Their fingers brushed when Liall handed it over, and the touch seemed to sing into his skin, crying out for more. Liall withdrew hastily and felt at the front of his coat, searching for the outlines of the two copper coins around his neck on their leather thong, the coins Scarlet had given him to pay his toll.

  “Use it well,” he said reluctantly, wishing he had the courage to take Scarlet’s hand again. “And farewell, Scarlet of Lysia.”

  Scarlet bowed his head in a respectful farewell, hiding those expressive eyes. Liall turned and walked down the path to the Sea Road, more miserable than he had ever expected to feel at this parting.

  SCARLET FOUND HIS OLD satchel with the broken strap on the floor of the valley outside of Lysia. It was empty, of course. Stragglers from the retreating Aralyrin army must have found it, or perhaps it was only looters come to pick the leavings from his murdered village. He had been keeping the last of the bone buttons Scaja had carved in a little pocket in the side. That, too, was empty. He sighed, telling himself it was for the best. Now he understood why Byzan women never wore their mother’s jewelry, but gave it away to their own daughters as soon as they were old enough not to lose it or break it. He could never have worn the buttons, not without feeling Scaja’s gentle hand on his wrist or brushing his throat, and that would not necessarily be a comfort.

  The Kasiri abandoned Whetstone Pass when the wet weather broke, two days after Liall departed. The krait traveled with Scarlet, Shansi, and Annaya down the mountain and provided them with warm clothes and enough food to get to Nantua or even Ankar. Peysho hugged Scarlet impulsively and Kio pressed a few sellivar in his hand.

  “For your sister,” Kio said gruffly, and turned away.

  Scarlet waved as their gaudy wagons and ribbon-bedecked oxen turned east toward Dorogi, and then the three of them turned north to Zarabek and thence on to Nantua, where Shansi’s parents lived. But first, they had to cross what was left of Lysia.

  They skirted the worst of the carnage by taking the wooded path around the northern side of the village, but the smell of smoke lingered. Occasionally, a puff of ash would drift by on the wind and Annaya’s eyes would brim with tears that she impatiently wiped away. As for Scarlet, he was comforted by the weight of Liall’s red dagger in his boot and the long-knives at his waist. He was done with weeping for his family, and vowed silently to protect the ones he had left with his life.

  There was no avoiding the fields, and they had to walk through the raw, plowed earth that had been harrowed just weeks before and would now never be planted. They came to Jerivet’s large field, then Imeno’s, and then finally Scaja’s.

  Annaya halted without a word and Shansi stopped, looking at the pair of them with pity. Shansi probably did not know it was their father’s land, but he sensed there was something of import here. Scarlet stood stiffly beside Annaya and grieved with her in silence. The little templon that Scaja had tended so carefully and lovingly throughout the years was tilted on its side. One of the tiny castle walls had been chopped off cleanly, as if struck by a sword. Inside, the god’s paper clothing was all rain-soaked and coming apart.

  There was no help for it, but Scarlet righted the templon and packed dirt around its base with his boot heel. Pure meanness, it was, to destroy even their shrines. Annaya looked around but could not find the missing piece of wall, and she stood helplessly with her hand in Shansi’s. Scarlet realized she was waiting for him to pray.

  The words of the cantos flowed through his mind: On danaee Deva shani. But they would not emerge from his throat.

  “We are done here,” he said, and strode off across the field.

  They followed him. In short time, they were curving back down the hills to the east, toward the last bit of the Owl Road, which would take them to Tradepoint and thence to Skeld’s Ferry. He had been dreading what they would find at Tradepoint, but as they drew near, he saw that the timbered building was still standing and that Deni was outside working. Zsu saw them walking and froze, then recognized Annaya.

  Both girls shrieked each other’s name and Scarlet shook Deni’s hand as the girls hugged and danced around them.

  “We’d given you up for dead,” Deni grinned. He was Scarlet’s age and a sturdy, typical Byzan lad, very loyal to his family. His father waved at them from the porch and smiled to see Zsu so happy.

  “Thank Deva!” the elder called out. “Some of the villagers fled this way when the Aralyrin came, but not many.” His face was grayer than Scarlet remembered, and much older. “Not many at all.”

  “Who?” Scarlet asked, eager to know.

  Deni named several men and two women that were neither related to his family nor close to them. Scarlet’s heart sank. “Where did they say they were going?”

  Deni shrugged. “They didn’t.” He waved his arm toward the river, encompassing the world outside Lysia. “Out there.”

  Scarlet nodded, vastly depressed. “We’re on our way to Nantua. Annaya is going to marry Shansi and live there with his parents.”

  “Are you now?” the father exclaimed. “Congratulations, the both of you! Well, well. And what about you, Scarlet?” he asked. He shot a glance toward Zsu, who was chattering happily to Annaya and wiping away her tears. “We’d always hoped that Zsu and you one day would...” he trailed off.

  “I’m bound for Ankar,” Scarlet said, hoping the old man would let the matter drop. He was fond of Zsu but nothing more than that. “Going to learn leatherwork from Masdren.”

  “Ankar?” Deni’s mouth turned down in disapproval. “Are you sure? If you worked for me and dad, carrying goods on the ferry-route, you could still travel the river as much as you pleased. We know you have the world-wild. We wouldn’t try to pen you in.”

  Scarlet shook his head. “Zsu can do better than a pedlar who can’t find his way home twice in a moon.” It was an excuse and he knew it. Zsu’s prospects for a Hilurin husband had been sharply curtailed by the burning of Lysia. Now Deni and his father would have to accept that she must go much further away than they were prepared for if she wanted to marry properly, or let her take up with some less-acceptable Aralyrin soldier or merchant who traveled the river. Neither prospect was appealing, if he knew Deni.

  Deni’s disappointment showed. “You’d be a partner in the business,” he offered further. “Dad’s thinking about buying out Skeld’s Ferry too, since Kev is moving on with his sons. You’d never go hungry, Scarlet, and you’d be able to visit Annaya as much as you want, once the ferry and boats are ours.”

  The offer was more than fair: property and belonging and a decent Hilurin family who would welcome him as one of their own, no questions asked. Scarlet glanced at Zsu and saw that she and Annaya had fallen silent and were looking at him: Annaya with sadness and Zsu with some surprise.

  “You will not find another Hilurin wife so easily,” Deni urged.

  Scarlet regarded Zsu, wavering in his decision, for he was fond of them all and she was probably the prettiest girl he had ever seen, next to Annaya. She had wild black hair that reached down to her knees and large dark eyes fringed with heavy lashes, so that when she raised her eyes quickly she had the aspect of a startled deer. She was not too fussy either, and liked to climb trees and go fishing and chase after the goats.

  “And what do you want, Zsu?” he asked softly. “Would you be happy with a wandering husband?”

  She hesitated, shooting a look from her father to her brother and back to Scarlet before clasping her hands together in front of her and bowing her head. “No,” she breathed.

  “What?” Deni exclaimed, clearly not having considered she would have any objections or thoughts of her own. His father started to shout something or other, but suddenly Zsu raised her head, and there was fire in her black eyes.

  “I said no,” she stammered. She was scared but standing her ground. “I want to run the ferry myself, and when it’s slow in the winter I want to travel to Zarabek and Patra and Morturii to sell goods to t
he army camps, just like you meant for Scarlet to do.”

  “Scarlet is a man!” her father roared, ponderous with his anger in the way that only old men can be.

  Deni gaped in shock. “You’ll do no such thing!”

  “I will so!” Zsu shot back, her little hands balled into fists. “I’ve got the wilding and I’ll do as I please, and if you try to stop me or marry me off or put me in chains I’ll run far, far away and never come back!”

  Scarlet could see that their visit had thrown a hornet’s nest into the lap of Zsu’s family. He apologized and promised a future visit and hurried toward Skeld’s Ferry, hearing Deni’s protests and the father’s bellowing for nearly a mile.

  Annaya smirked at him as they walked in the spring sun. The air was chilly but not too much, and moving kept them warm.

  “What?”

  “Zsu. You thought you could just take her or leave her.” She smirked again, very satisfied.

  “Did you know she had the wilding?”

  “Oh yes,” she said wisely. “I’ve always known.”

  “You might have told me,” he said crossly.

  She only giggled again and whispered to Shansi behind her hand, and he was annoyed even more.

  Women! “I do like Zsu very much, you know,” he said.

  “But you don’t love her.”

  He had only Scaja’s teachings to go by, a typical Hilurin who thought little of passion but much of loyalty and constancy. “Well, is that necessary?”

  “It might be, to Zsu.” She had some fire of her own, his sister, and it showed in her narrowed eyes. “Dad didn’t know everything about women, you know. Mum just liked to let him think he did.”

  It irked him to suddenly realize that Linhona and Annaya had shared an altogether foreign, feminine world that excluded him and that he had never known about. Scarlet would hear no more disrespect to Scaja, so he set his teeth and walked faster, not speaking to Annaya until nightfall.

  ANNAYA NEARLY DROWNED Scarlet with tears, but she could not convince him to stay in Nantua. It was a larger village than Lysia, the surrounding countryside flatter, and (he thought) uglier, with less color and also no high view from the foothills of the Nerit. The village itself was hardly prosperous, even less so than Lysia, and there had been a grain blight the previous year that left a deep scar on the place. Scarlet knew that he would never feel at home there, and six days after arriving in Nantua, he was ready to leave again.

  “Ankar is no place for a Byzan,” Annaya had argued in the warm, central room of Shansi’s house. In the next room, Shansi’s mother was putting the dishes on the table for supper. His parents had a large home, if a bit bare, and there was more than enough space for all of them. “What will you do for company? The only friend you have there is Masdren.”

  All true, but he was itching to get away and beyond reasoning. His old home was gone and he was not ready to try creating a new one. Life on the road had also lost its allure. He needed something different.

  “Stay,” Annaya begged. “We could build a house for the three of us, and you could still be a pedlar.”

  Scarlet thought privately that she was almost as sad as he that he was giving up the life of a pedlar. She had always loved hearing the stories of his adventures and near-misses on the road, and he told her things that he had never told Scaja. For the first time, he wondered what it might have been like for her, a Hilurin girl shut away in a house, knowing she would never have adventures of her own. She had lived her adventures through him, and now he was taking them away from her. He said as much to her, apologetically, and was surprised when she laughed at him and pushed his shoulder.

  “Scarlet, you want-wit. If I’d wanted to run the roads, I would have. Do you think Scaja could have stopped me? He couldn’t stop you.”

  Again, he had misjudged her, and he stammered and his ears turned pink, angry at himself for making yet another wrong assumption about someone else. Would he never stop doing that?

  “I don’t have the wilding, love,” Annaya said. “I never did. We don’t want the same things, and what’s best for me isn’t what’s best for you. I want Shansi and my own home and children that I can teach to love everything Mum and Dad taught me to love. But you... you’re scared, my brother. That’s all. Just plain scared, and you’re running to Ankar hoping Masdren will hide it for you.”

  “He’s offered to teach me!”

  “To do what?” she scorned. “Diaper his brats? You don’t want to be a leathersmith, Scarlet. You’re meant for the road!”

  Had that ever been true? It was a question he could not ask her, because it was tied up in what he had suffered at Cadan’s hands and the many dangers he had weathered in his travels before that. He sighed. “I’m just tired of it all, Annaya.”

  Her dark eyes narrowed. For a moment, she looked very much like Linhona in one of her moods. “This is about the Kasiri chieftain, isn’t it?”

  He looked away. “Don’t be foolish, girl.”

  “Don’t you girl me! I have eyes. You’d have stayed in the camp with him, but he left and now you’ve given up living to spite him.” She smoothed her skirt and folded her white hands in her lap. “In case you hadn’t noticed, he’s not here to see you pout.”

  “Annaya!” he cried, shocked. Scaja had known about the difference in him, and perhaps Linhona, but he was certain Annaya had not.

  “It’s true. He’s left and you’re sulking. Why don’t you just follow him, you ninny?”

  Scarlet sat up straight as if he would bolt out of his chair, and his mouth opened and closed like a gaping fish. After a long moment of panic, he sank back in his seat.

  “He didn’t ask me,” he said at last. His chest ached a little, as if a soft lump of pain were lodged under his breastbone. “He didn’t want me to come with him. What he wanted me for would have lasted only a single night. Beyond that, I was nothing to him.”

  Annaya reached for his hand. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” he said, pulling away and standing. “At least he didn’t lie to me. I couldn’t have borne that.” He could hear Shansi clearing his throat diplomatically in the next room. Supper was ready, but the smith must have been unwilling to intrude on the argument between siblings.

  “Won’t you stay? Even for a little while?”

  He sighed heavily. Annaya meant well, but she was not thinking ahead to a time when a brother would be a bother, when there were children in the bed that was supposed to be his and not enough soup in the pot to go around. Her house would never be his parent’s house, and Annaya was starting her own family with Shansi. Nantua could not be his new Lysia. All that was dead.

  Annaya made one last reproach before he left. It was in the form of a gift: a leather pedlar’s satchel with a deep pouch and sturdy pockets. On the oil-polished flap was a word in curling letters, deeply embossed in red dye.

  He ran his hand over it admiringly, the bitterness of their last argument forgotten. “It’s beautiful, Annaya. Did you have this done? What does it say?”

  “I did it myself. It’s your name, Scarlet.”

  His brow wrinkled in puzzlement. His sister could not read or write any more than he could. As far as he knew, neither could Shansi. “But how? Who helped you?”

  “Linhona taught me. It was the one thing I ever asked her to teach me of reading.”

  She did not wait for him to speak, but embraced him tightly, her little hands digging into his shoulders. “I’m going to miss you, brother.”

  SO HE LEFT. IT SEEMED that all he had done since meeting Liall was shed parts of his life that he had never intended to lose. He could not talk to Annaya about it, and it was more than not wanting to share how much pain he was in. He was not able to share it. Perhaps it was just the way the gods made him. He could not complain about that, but he regretted that he was parting with Annaya so badly.

  She did not understand. With Annaya, it was always damn the winds and too bad if it rained harder. She had never been a quiet
girl, and true to form, she was not about to start now. They spent the last night shouting at each other, and in the morning she had sent him off with a fierce hug and tears in her eyes. He crossed the river back into Byzantur at noon, and by the time he was too far down the road to Patra to turn back and apologize, he wanted to.

  Sometimes the answer’s right in front of us. We’re just moving too fast to see it.

  They were Scaja’s words, and Scarlet was shortly to discover how prophetic they were. If he had not been so lost in regret, he would have seen the faint smudges of color slipping through the edge of the woods alongside the path long before he drew near to them.

  “WELL, WELL! IT’S THE wolf cub. We heard the gypsies had gone east. Did they leave you behind?” Scarlet’s mouth was suddenly dry and he knew he had been vastly stupid. It was scar-faced Cadan and three Aralyrin soldiers blocking his way on the Iron Path. They had come up so sudden from the trees that he had seen only shadows slipping from behind tree trunks, silent as wraiths in the quiet day. They were as fearsome as wraiths, too; armed men with a look of bored villainy.

  No sense asking what they wanted. Scarlet tried to bluff his way out. “Stand aside and let me pass.”

  “Bold orders from the bedmate of a thieving Kasiri,” Cadan said, his palms resting on the hilts of his knives. His right leg was wrapped in some kind of leather splint below the knee and he stood with his heel up, not resting his full weight on it.

  “I’m not—!” The denial was half out before he could stop it. He shook his head. “Get out of my way!” Scarlet’s voice was brave, but inside he had begun to shiver. This former Kasiri soldier had meant to murder him once, for no more reason than revenge on another man. His fingers inched toward the long-knives at his hips, but Cadan only stared at him, smiling coldly in silence. There were four against one. To draw a weapon now would mean his death, and Cadan knew it.