“It’s hard the first time,” he said, hissing to her side. “Give me your hand. I’ll show you.”
Within minutes, her knees were bent, her arms widespread, and her feet chopping at the ice. But she didn’t fall.
“Don’t try to walk,” Sandr said. “Push with one foot, glide on the other.”
“Easy for you,” she said. “You know what you’re doing.”
“This time. I was worse than you when I started.”
“Flatterer.”
“Maybe you’re worth flattering. No, like that. That’s it.
That’s
it!”
Cithin’s body caught the trick, and she found herself gliding. Not quite as gracefully and certainly as Sandr, but closer. The ice sped under her, white and grey and black in the moonlight. The night tasted like the fortified wine and moved like a river flowing around her. Sandr whooped and took her hand, and together they raced the length of the mill pond, the grooves of their skates tracing white lines in the dim.
From the banks, one of the mules commented with a grunt and flick of his haunch. The wind of Cithin’s passage whuffled in her ears. She felt herself grinning and spinning. The knot in her belly was a memory, a dream, a thing that happened to another person. She fell twice more, but it only seemed funny. The ice was cloud and sky, and she had learned how to fly. It creaked and groaned under her weight, and Sandr clapped his hands as she made an elaborate and awkward curtsey in the center of the pond.
“Race me,” he shouted. “There and back.”
Like an arrow from a bow, Sandr sped for the far bank, and Cithrin followed him. Her legs ached, and her heart beat like a boulder rolling down a hill, her numb face made itself a mask. Sandr reached the edge of the ice, pushed off from the snow, and sped past her, going back toward her cart. Cithrin turned too, pushing faster, harder. In the middle of the pond, the ice darkened and complained, but then she was over it, almost at Sandr’s back, skating beside him, past him. Almost past him.
Her skate slammed into the snow and the dead, winter-killed reeds. The moon-blued ground rose up and hit her so hard she couldn’t breathe. Sandr lay beside her, his eyes wide, his cheeks as red as if she’d pinched them. The look of surprise and concern on his face was so comic that, when she could, Cithrin started laughing.
Sandr’s laughter twinned with hers, and he threw a handful of snow in the air, the flakes drifting down around them like dandelion fluff. And then he rolled to her, resting his weight against her side. His lips were on hers.
Oh,
she thought. And then, half a breath later, she tried kissing him back.
It wasn’t as awkward as she’d expected it to be. His arms shifted around her, his body entirely on hers now, pressing her into the snow that didn’t seem cold at all. His hand fumbled at her jacket, and then the thick wool sweater. His fingers found her skin. She felt herself arching up, pressing herself into the touch almost as if she were watching it be done. She heard her breath grow ragged.
“Cithrin,” Sandr said. “You need to… You need to know…”
“Don’t,” she said.
He stopped, pulling back. His hand retreated from her
breasts. Contrition narrowed his face. She felt a flare of impatience.
“Don’t
talk,
I mean,” she said.
She’d always known about sex in a general way. Cam had talked about it in dour, stern, and warning tones. She’d seen the mummers in the spring carnival dancing through the torchlit streets in masks and nothing more. Perhaps there should have been no mystery. And still, as she undid her belt and pushed down the rough pants, she wondered whether this was what Besel had done with all those other girls. All the ones that weren’t her. Had it been like this for them? She’d heard it hurt the first time. She wondered what that would feel like. Sandr’s bare flanks shone nearly as pale as the snow. Concentration possessed him as he tried to pry off his skates without rising up.
I hope it’s all right that I don’t love him,
she thought.
A roar came out of nowhere, deep and violent and sudden. Sandr rose up into the air, his weight gone, his eyes round in surprise. Cithrin grabbed for her waistband. Her first thought was that a monstrous bird had come down from the sky and plucked him away.
Captain Wester threw Sandr out onto the ice, where he landed awkward and skidding. The captain’s sword hissed out of its scabbard, and he moved toward Sandr, cursing in three languages. Cithrin rose to her knees, tugging at her clothing. Sandr stumbled back, his still-erect penis bobbing comically, and slipped.
“I wasn’t forcing her,” Sandr squeaked. “I wasn’t forcing.”
“Do I care?” Wester shouted, pointing with his sword at the wineskin half covered by snow. “You get her stupid drunk to get her knees apart, and you want a good-conduct medal?”
“I’m not drunk,” Cithrin said, realizing that she likely was. Wester ignored her.
“Touch her again, son, and I cut something off you. Best pray it’s a finger.”
Sandr opened his mouth, but only a high whine came out.
“Stop it!” Cithrin shouted. “Leave him alone!”
Wester turned to her, rage in his eyes. Taller than she was, twice as broad, and with naked steel in his hand, he made the small, still part of her mind tell her to be quiet. Wine and embarrassment and anger washed her forward.
“Who are you to tell him what he can and can’t?” she said. “Who are you to tell
me
?”
“I am the man who’s saving your life. And you will do as I say,” Wester shouted, but she thought there was a new confusion in his eyes. “I won’t have you turning into a whore.”
The word bit. Cithrin balled her fists until her knuckles ached. Blood lit her cheeks and roared in her ears. When she spoke, she shrieked.
“I wasn’t going to
charge him
!”
Wester looked at her as if seeing her for the first time. The confusion deepened, knitting his brow, and something like amusement plucked at his mouth. And then—inexplicably—anguish.
“Captain,” a new voice growled, and the Tralgu loomed out of the darkness.
“Not a good time, Yardem,” Wester said.
“Took that from the shouting, sir. There’s soldiers.”
Wester changed between one heartbeat and the next. His face cleared, his body pulled back a degree. Their confrontation evaporated, and Cithrin felt herself unnerved by the sudden shift. It seemed unfair that the captain had abandoned their conflict with things still unsettled.
“Where?” Wester asked.
“Camped over the ridge to the east,” the Tralgu said. “Two dozen. Antean banner, Vanai tents.”
“Well, God smiled,” Wester said. “Any chance their scouts overlooked us?”
“None.”
“Did they see you?”
“No.”
Cithrin’s rage collapsed as the words fought through the wine fumes and trailing remnants of anger. Wester was already pacing the length of her cart. He considered Sandr still wobbling on his skates, the half-buried wineskin, the pond with the white scoring of blade tracks still on the ice.
“Sandr,” he said. “Get Master Kit.”
“Yes, sir,” Sandr said and awkwardly scampered off toward the mill house.
Wester sheathed his sword absentmindedly. His eyes shifted across the landscape, searching for something. Cithrin waited, her heart in her throat. They couldn’t run. Against two dozen, they couldn’t fight. Any goodwill she might have expected from Wester was certainly gone now.
The seconds stretched by endlessly. Wester took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“We’ll need a broom,” he said.
T
he bitterly cold predawn breeze murmured through the walls of Geder’s tent and set the flame on his oil lamp dancing. He leaned closer, then cursed softly and turned up the wick. The flame brightened and then smoked. He backed it down slowly until the smoke disappeared. In the brighter light, the pale ink grew, if not clear, at least legible. He stuck his hands into his armpits for warmth and leaned in closer.
And so it came that in these final days, the three great factions entered into a war of both blood and terrible cunning such that measureless stone ships flew through the skies with great iron thorns that slaughtered dragons as they flew and also deep pods found manners to hide themselves from their enemies until they should be forgotten that they might attack an unprotected enemy and also swords envenomed to slay both master and slave. The mighty silver-scaled Morade, maddest and mightiest of the warring clutch-mates, fashioned a tool more devious than the world had known, and in the high mountains south of Haakapel (which, Geder thought, would be Hallskar now) and east of Sammer (which Geder was almost certain was the fifth-polis name for the Keshet), he forged the Righteous Servant to whom none could lie nor no one could long disbelieve, and its sigil
was of cardinal and intercardinal showing the eight directions of the world in which no falsehood could hide, and in this great Morade found his subtlest power.
He rubbed his eyes. The thick, yellowed pages of the book smelled of dust and mold and the odd sweet binder’s glue that no one had used in half a thousand years. When he’d found it in the deep shadows of a rag-and-bone shop in Vanai, it delighted him. As he struggled through his translation, his enthusiasm waned.
The author claimed to have copied and translated a much older scroll, long since lost, that dated back to the first generations after the fall of the Dragon Empire. That was, for the first part, a framing device for speculative essay so trite and overdone that Geder’s heart sank when he read it. In the second part, it meant that everything else in the essay was presented as legitimate history, which he found less interesting. And finally, the author had embraced long sentences and complex grammar in an attempt to make the text feel authentic, and it made every page an endurance test. By the time Geder reached the verbs, he had to turn back and remind himself what they were talking about.
If he’d been back in Vanai, he would have put the work aside. But Sir Alan Klin, Protector of Vanai, had heard of the caravan smuggling out the secret wealth of the city and made its recovery his first priority. This meant sending his favorites along the dragon’s roads to Carse, and every man’s status after that took his search party farther and farther from the likely hunting grounds until Jorey Kalliam was left with the Dry Wastes, Fallon Broot on the sea road to Elassae, and Geder Palliako leading two dozen half-mutinous Timzinae soldiers through the icy mud of the southernmost of the Free Cities.
In their weeks on the farmer’s tracks and game trails, they’d found three caravans. Small affairs hardly more than three carts each, and all of them tracking winter goods between local cities and towns. In between, days of mud and nights of nagging cold wore on Geder. And as poor a companion as his essay on the powers of dragons to unmake lies might be, it outshone the soldiers. At the end of the day, he curled into his bed, sleeping while the others drank and sang and cursed the snow. In the mornings, he rose with the cook, reading and translating and pretending that he was anywhere besides here.
A discreet scratch came at the door, and his squire stepped in along with the Timzinae who acted as his second. The squire carried a tray with a shaped-bone bowl of stewed oats with raisins and an earthenware bottle of hot, dark, oily water that pretended to be coffee. The Timzinae made a formal salute. Geder closed the book as the squire laid his food out before him.
“What are the scouts saying?” Geder asked.
“The carts haven’t moved,” his second said. “They aren’t more than two hours’ march.”
“Well, no hurry then,” Geder said with more cheer than he felt. “Tell the men we’ll break camp after we eat and have this done with by midday.”
“And after?”
“South and west,” Geder said around a mouthful of oats. “That’s where the road goes.”
The second nodded and saluted again, turned on his heel, and left. Geder had the feeling that there was contempt in the movement, but he might only have been seeing what he expected to see. As he ate, the seams of his tent began to grow more distinct. Voices rose, men calling to each other, horses complaining, the chopping sound of planks coming
down from the cooking platform. Outside, the sky moved from darkness to grey to a blue-and-white daybreak more light than warmth. By the time the weak sun had taken the worst chill from the air, Geder was mounted, and his men ready to march. According to the scouts, the newly sighted caravan was at least a decent size.
Still, Geder didn’t have any real hope for more than another disappointing search and sullen locals until he saw the Tralgu.
It was sitting on the outermost cart, its ears pricked forward with an interest that didn’t show in the rest of its face. Wester’s second was supposed to be a Tralgu. Geder swept his eyes over the carts huddled around the old mill, counting under his breath. Information was always sketchy, memory unreliable, and carts in a rough group could be hard to count, but it was near enough to what they’d been searching for that Geder’s heart began to beat a little faster.
A Timzinae in a thick wool robe walked down the road toward them. Geder motioned, and his six archers fanned out on the road behind him. The Tralgu sat forward and flicked an ear.