Mapping Winter

by Marta Randall

  He thought about it, his frown deepening. “No. I don’t think so.” He glanced up. “In Minst, dead people are burned.”

  “And in the Outlands, they are left atop rocks, for the vultures to eat.”

  The boy’s face wrinkled with disgust. “That’s horrible!”

  “More horrible than building a stool out of Auntie Petha’s femurs, and sitting on it?”

  His lips pressed into a straight line. Kieve looked back to the garden. The castle’s noises seemed very far away. In the silence she thought about Gadyn’s sack of money and the line of Cairun’s jaw. Neither thought led to any place she wished to be. After a moment she put them both aside and went through a gate into the walk between the apartments and the outer curtain. Pyrs’s boots crunched in the snow behind her.

  They came out of the walk into the sunlight of the main ward just as a group of riders clattered across the ward and toward the main gate. Kieve put her hand on the boy’s shoulder. They stood against the wall as the riders danced around provisioners’ wagons, and Balor Cook’s minions shouted at everyone. One horse reared a little. Its rider controlled it. In the bright sunlight Kieve couldn’t focus on the rider’s face, but one of his followers, closer by, wore Baron Kelyn’s muted colors. The baron called to his companions and led them at a canter from the ward. It looked as though his entire household was decamping and for a moment she thought it meant that Cadoc had died. The riders vanished and the ward returned to its normal morning cacophony of wagons and people and the clatter of weapons practice. In the small space between the armory and the curtain, cadets took turns at the wooden swords and shields. The practice master shouted and cursed and shouted again. Ilach, arms crossed, leaned against the armory and watched them. Kieve walked around the edge of the ward and stood beside him.

  “Baron Kelyn has left,” she said.

  The commander nodded. “Lord Gadyn offered to allow the Baron to support him,” he said, his voice low. “I believe that the Baron spurned the offer.”

  “And feels the need to retreat?” she said, surprised.

  “He delivered the message while Gadyn was here, at practice. I thought the lord would run him through, so angry was he. This is your bondslave?”

  Kieve nodded. Ilach had a reputed soft spot for children, but she had not seen it yet.

  Ilach hunkered down, balancing on his toes, and looked at the boy. “Good morning. Kieve Rider does not usually buy children. Why did she buy you?”

  The boy pressed his lips together.

  “Tell him,” Kieve said. “The truth this time.”

  “I put a burr under Traveler’s shoe and she caught me,” he muttered.

  “I see. Are you repentant?”

  He shot Kieve a quick, defiant glance. Ilach smiled at him and stood and walked into the practice yard, calling to one of the cadets.

  Pyrs followed her into the yard by the Lords Stables. She sent him in to see to the horses. He almost danced away, his bright hair disappearing into the shadows of the stables. She chewed her lip, watching him go.

  * * * *

  She selected a sheet of paper from the blanks in the map cabinet and tacked it onto her worktable under the window, and mixed up a small pot of ink, trickling water into the pot until the ink was light grey. Gaura, still sullen, sat in a corner mending one of Kieve’s shirts. Her temper had been sweetened only a little when Kieve gave her the three stivers she needed for birthing prayers. A pair of servants clattered and banged in the other room as they packed her belongings. That morning Pyrs had come back from the horses with four strands of tail hair, two grey and two black, and lay on his belly before the stove knotting them together to make a necklet. Now he slipped it over his head and came to stand by her shoulder. Kieve laid her ink pot and tools along the side of the table beside the paper and opened her book to the notes she had taken of the traverse around Stormbringer’s abyss. It wasn’t complete, of course, but it would suffice. Clean winter sunlight lay across the paper and framed shadows behind the ink pot. She frowned, her fingers dancing along the edge of the worktable as she converted paces. The boy stared at her fingers. She glanced at him and straightened a little.

  “I am converting paces,” she said. “Do you remember the second time I sent you for my scarf? Do you remember how the earth lay?”

  He frowned, then his forehead cleared. “Yes, mistress. There was a dip in the ground, like a small valley. I had to go down, then up the other side.”

  “Just so. Traveler’s paces are different in those places, as I have marked them, so I must compute them differently from the paces he took along even ground.”

  “Why?”

  “To know the distance. A map must tell you what is on the land, how big it is, and how far away.”

  “How can you do that?” he said. “How can you know that this is so far, and the other is more, or less? How do you make a map say that?”

  “Watch.” She shook her fingers to loosen them, then laid the T-square along the paper and, in one corner, drew a line and notched it at regular intervals. It took much longer than usual, as she learned to trust her vision. The pale ink was no more than a suggestion along the page. Later, she would go over the map in darker ink. This was a scale, she told him, and explained that the notches on the scale each represented a portion of a league. She shook her hands again, staring from the blank sheet to her notebook, before taking a pen and marking the first station on the map. She laid out her T-square to intersect the line. Then, using the protractor, she laid out the line of the first compass reading, drawing a stroke so light that it was almost invisible. She consulted the notebook and marked off the distance, set in the mark for the second station, and moved the T-square to intersect that mark. Pyrs had the protractor ready before she asked for it.

  “It is not perfect,” she said as she worked. “That will have to wait for a surveying crew. But this will be enough to tell them what is there, and where each thing is.”

  “Just the lines, mistress?” Pyrs said. “They can tell all that?”

  “Be patient. I am not done yet.”

  When the lines were laid out she stood and stretched and sent Gaura for a pot of ale. Gaura grumbled that the bondslave should do it. Kieve said, “Would you rather stand here and hand me sticks and ink pots?” The servant stopped mumbling and left the room.

  Pyrs slipped out after her. In a few minutes they returned together, the boy carrying the ale and a loaf of black bread. Kieve watched them. Gaura supervised the laying out of bread and soft cheese before returning to her stool and her mending. Pyrs gave Kieve a wide-eyed look and cut the bread. He smeared one piece with cheese and gave it to her, keeping a second for himself.

  Someone knocked. Kieve flipped a length of cloth over her worktable while Gaura put aside the mending and opened the door. One of the packers stuck his head through the curtained doorway to the other room. Kieve frowned at him and he retreated.

  A man entered, thin and jointed like a puppet, all angles and stiff lines. He bowed and when he straightened she recognized Humka, the Lady Drysi’s seminarian.

  “Mistress, at your service,” he said. “My Lady Drysi commends me to you and asks your indulgence in receiving a small token, only that, of her regard.”

  Without waiting for Kieve’s response he snapped his fingers. A page, a dark-haired boy about Pyrs’ age and size, came around him and held out a wrapped package.

  “May I?” Humka said, nodding toward Kieve’s covered worktable.

  “No. No, over there.”

  “Just so.” He walked to the larger table and waited while the page pushed aside a pile of mending. The seminarian unwrapped the package. Kieve caught her breath.

  It was the figure of a horse, made of a lace of spun gold. About one hand tall and as long, it stood as if caught in a canter, posed so that it seemed barely to touch the tabletop. Light curved through it and cast the slightest of shadows.

  “It is—it is beautiful,” Kieve said. Her fingers reached to touc
h it.

  Humka, who had been looking beyond her at Pyrs, said “Pish. It is but a framework. My Lady Drysi asks to know your favorite gems, so that she may have it set accordingly.”

  She closed her hands. “Lady Drysi wishes to bejewel this?”

  “Just so, and would know your pleasure. Rubies, she thinks, would do well, and she has them in a number of shades. Or are you more partial to the blue stones?”

  Kieve looked from the small sculpture to Humka. They watched each other while she thought it through.

  Finally she said, “Master Humka, please give your mistress my respect and my regrets. It is beautiful but I cannot accept.”

  The seminarian’s eyes widened. “Am I to understand that you will not take it regardless of its finish?”

  Kieve nodded. “It would not be wise, Master Humka.”

  “Ah.” He looked about the room at her crystal lamp, porcelain bowl, delicate glass sculpture. “I see. But you do accept gifts.”

  Kieve’s shoulders tightened. “Yes. From friends.”

  “The Lady Drysi will be sadden to learn that you do not count her among them,” he said.

  Kieve bit back a response. Humka snapped his fingers again. The page re-wrapped the horse. “My lady can be a very good friend indeed,” Humka murmured. “With your permission, Rider, neither she nor I will deem this refusal final. Perhaps you would do us the favor of reconsidering her gift. As that from a friend.” He bowed and looked again at Pyrs, who stood near the page. “They are a handsome set,” the seminarian said. “Much like the light and dark of each other, matching opposites.”

  He bowed and departed, the page trotting behind him. Gaura closed the door. Servant and boy looked at her.

  “Pyrs, you had best stay far from him,” she said, and reached for her bread and cheese. A handsome set, she thought. She glanced at the boy, who bit into a hunk of bread and looked back at her.

  “Perhaps he didn’t hear about how I break things,” the boy said around a mouthful of food. Kieve grunted.

  The packers came out of the back room and said that they were done save for the clothes Kieve had laid aside. She put coins in their hands and they left, relieved to be gone.

  Gaura cleared the remains of the meal. Kieve lifted the cloth away from her worktable and stared at the lines and points and compass marks. For a moment she was able to see them as she had first seen them so many years ago, a baffling code that she could not begin to decipher. She reached down and put her fingertip by the second station. Humka and his mistress left her mind.

  “Pyrs. We came around a tip of rock and saw Stormbringer for the first time, and stopped the horses and I sent you back for my scarf. When you brought it back we sat for a while longer while I looked around and made notes. Do you remember what we saw?”

  The boy stared at the paper. “The rock was—it was maybe as tall as Unig’s inn, and straight up or nearly. Then the ground was flat until where we were. Maybe as wide as the yard outside, between the stable and the wall.”

  She nodded but he didn’t see, his gaze on something not in the room. He turned his head to the other side. “And there was Stormbringer, but before that—no, wait.”

  She waited.

  “We were here, and then the ground was flat until the edge. And beyond that was a tree, but I could only see the top of it because it started down in the—in the—”

  “In the gorge,” Kieve said.

  “Yes. And there were other trees, farther away on Stormbringer, but so far that they were just shapes, not limbs and trunks.”

  “Good. How far away, do you think?”

  He shook his head, frowning. “I don’t know. I don’t know how to do that.”

  She took a breath and stopped herself from asking if he wanted to learn. Instead she said, “Very good,” and sat and brought the notebook close. Following the flank details she had noted, she began to fill in the map, drawing the rocks and trees, the lip of the cliff, the rough details of Stormbringer himself across the blank part that was the abyss. Pyrs hovered by her shoulder, handing her fresh pens while the map came to life under her fingers.

  When someone knocked at the door she jerked her head up. She grabbed the cloth and draped it over the table. Gaura opened the door and knelt awkwardly.

  Cairun looked over her head. He pushed back his hood. He wore his hair cropped to his shoulders and loose around his face, a cloud of darkness.

  “Rise,” he said, not looking at the servant. She did so and backed away. Cairun came in after her, looking only at Kieve. She went to one knee.

  “No,” he said. “Stand for me, Rider.”

  When she rose he said, “I would speak to you alone.”

  She forced herself to look away from him. At her gesture Gaura took Pyrs’ shoulder and pushed the boy ahead of her from the room and in that moment Kieve moved farther from Cairun. She put her hand to the pitcher.

  “Ale, my Lord?”

  “Yes. Yes, I would like that.”

  Kieve poured the ale and held the cup to him. “I am waiting to listen, Lord.”

  He sipped the ale, watching her over the cup’s lip.

  “I am not here on Gadyn’s behalf,” he said, lowering the cup, “but on my own. I ask only that you consider what I say and that you decide soon.”

  She nodded.

  “You were never happy here,” he said to her surprise. “You never wished to be a Herald Rider, did you?”

  “I am happy in my Guild,” she said with care.

  He inclined his head. “It is not quite the same thing.” He pulled a chair from the table and sat, his cloak spread open around him. “A Rider oaths for a five-year term, I know. But that period is not mandatory, is it? One could oath for ten years. Or two. Or a week.”

  When she didn’t respond he said, “I have told you what I wish here. Much the same that you do, I think—a way to leave Dalmorat Province soon, and with few entanglements. And you do not wish to be a Herald Rider. You want to ride into unknown lands. You want to be—what is the word for them, within your guild?”

  She wet her lips. “Explorers.”

  “Just so. Explorers. And your guild will not let you go.” Again she didn’t respond. “I do not know why.”

  “You have made a quick study of me, Lord.”

  “Perhaps not that quick. Most of this I knew this morning. But I did not know you this morning.”

  “And now you do?” He shook his head a little. “What I want, Lord Cairun, should have little to do with the succession in Dalmorat.”

  He smiled and, as before, it transformed his face, lighting it from within. “No, it should not, but of course it does.” He leaned forward in the chair. “Rider, I can make it happen. I can send you there.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t see how—”

  “I can do it from Koerstadt. Listen, I have thought it through. Once I am Dalmorat’s steward in the capital, I will have funds of my own, and discretion with some of the province funds. You need only oath for a little time, just until the spring, just long enough to make sure that Gadyn takes the sword and I have my place in Koerstadt. Then, if your guild will not send you to the Explorers, be a Herald Rider and oath to me, and I will send you to map Dalmorat’s northern border.”

  Tall straight mountains with clouds at their tops, falling to their roots and leaping up again, and the air like cold wine.

  She stood without moving, looking at him. He nodded and set the ale cup down and rose.

  “Don’t answer me yet, Rider. Think about it, think with care.” He touched her cheek with one finger. “Then, when you have thought, let me know.” He pushed the door open and left.

  After a while the door opened again. Gaura stuck her head in. “Mistress?”

  Kieve turned to her and put aside Cairun’s proposal, put it into a tiny room in her mind and closed doors on it. Her cheek still felt the touch of his finger. She would think on it later, not now. As he had said, she had a little time.

  Before s
he was ready to put aside the map she had been interrupted twice further, once by a man in Taryn’s livery who came to remind her of his lord’s invitation to the Crescent Bathhouse that night, and next by Adwyr’s servant Anfri, who held out the sack of money she had spurned that morning and asked if she knew how she was going to pay for a boy and a horse. She had no answer, in truth she had again forgotten the debt and that as much as anything else led her to drive Anfri from the room, money sack still in hand. Pyrs looked alarmed.

  “Rider, if Unig comes to get the money and you don’t have it—”

  “Be quiet,” she said. Still angry, she rolled the map and slid it into the cabinet, then set her inkpot and tools into their places, letting them snap and clatter as she put them away. Yet another knock sounded.

  “What?” she yelled, furious.

  A thin youth came into the room and bowed. When he straightened he looked at Kieve with frank curiosity.

  “Rider, I’m Lapsi. Do you remember me?”

  “No. Should I?”

  “Maybe not. I was still in the children’s dorms when you left. I’m Master Jenci’s apprentice,” he said. When she didn’t respond, he added, “Just as you were.”

  “Indeed,” she said. The boy looked like a colt. “Guildmasters don’t have apprentices.”

  He dipped his head. “They made him guildmaster only recently, and they didn’t have time to find another master for me. I don’t want another master, and Master Jenci said that perhaps—that perhaps since I was his apprentice and that—”

  “Hush,” she said. “Enough. I understand. Tell me why you are here.”

  “He asks your presence,” Lapsi said. “In his rooms. At once, he says. He says it should not take much time.”

  Kieve hesitated, looking down at him. “Why, Lapsi?”