by JA Andrews
A horse trotted up behind him and he almost smiled.
“You missed me, didn’t you?” he asked.
Sora pulled her horse up between him and the Scales. “No.”
“Good.” He felt something loosen inside him. “I didn’t miss you either.” He took a bite of flatbread.
She rode beside him calmly with her usual distant expression and he studied her out of the corner of his eye.
“Please tell me you’re here to either bring me to Killien for a thought-provoking conversation,” he said, “or to talk to me yourself. I’ll even be happy if you’re just here to tell me all the things you don’t like about me.”
This earned him the hint of a smile. “Killien is busy planning scouting routes with the rangers.”
“You’re a ranger,” he pointed out.
Her leathers were the same as always, plain and well-worn. The morning was as sunny as every spring morning on the Sweep and already warm enough that her arms were bare. The band around her arm caught his eye again, the scar below it white in the morning light.
“Wait…” He took in her leathers and the assorted weapons she wore, “you are a ranger, aren’t you?”
Sora shot him an exasperated look. “I don’t patrol the way they do. Killien trusts me to pick my own route.”
“Ahh. You mean he doesn’t want to argue with you.”
This time, the side of her mouth definitely lifted as she shook her head. “He knows I’ll keep my eyes open and go where I need to go.”
“I understand.” Will nodded. “I don’t like to argue with you either.”
She broke into a laugh that rolled across him like one of the breezes rippling across the grass.
He stared at her a minute before realizing he was grinning. He rubbed his hand across his mouth to tone it down. Feeling oddly proud of himself, he ripped off a piece of his flatbread and offered it to her. “If Killien’s busy, then you must have come here to talk to me.”
She shook her head at the bread and fixed him with a calculating look. “You are usually so clever.”
He waited for something more. “…thank you?”
“So why are you so fumbling around Ilsa?”
He stiffened. “Are you watching me?”
“Whatever the reason is,” she continued, “stop. First of all, it’s the most awkward proposition I’ve ever seen, and it causes me physical pain to see it.”
He stared at her in disgust. “I am not propositioning anyone!”
“Second, it doesn’t matter whether you’re trying to impress Ilsa or get in the good graces of Lilit. Both are such bad ideas that they’ll get you killed and poor Ilsa punished.”
Will opened his mouth to object, appalled on so many levels he didn’t know where to begin.
A cry rang out behind them and they twisted around to see a Roven ranger trotting up the column leading a young man whose hands were bound to his saddle. The prisoner’s bright, wiry red hair blazed like a flame over his panicked face. He was all elbows and knees with a thin, patchy beard. He yanked and thrashed futilely against the ropes.
With a hoarse cry, the man tried to fling himself off the horse. He started to topple to the side, his arms twisted up to the saddle horn. Sora turned to ride up beside him, shoving the man back into his saddle and holding his arm. He hurled himself from side to side, sobbing.
The ranger took up a position on the other side and they trotted the man forward. He struggled against them for a few paces before his shoulders fell and he curled forward, the sound of sobs coming muffled from his chest.
Will followed Sora, riding with her back straight, her grip on the man’s arm never wavering. They slowed when they reached the front of the clan and the ranger sent a child scurrying off to find the Torch.
Killien rode out of the crowd with Lukas flanking him and stopped, letting the rest of the clan pass them by.
“We’ve found the man who’s been spying for the Sunn, Torch,” the ranger announced, holding out a small roll of paper. “Arsen, son of Oshin. He was counting the herds. The writing matches the pages we found hidden in the spring shipment of wool for the Sunn.”
Arsen yanked his thin arms against the hands holding him.
The ranger untied Arsen from the saddle and dragged him roughly to the ground. He tried to pull away, but Sora climbed down and held him as Killien dismounted. The Torch walked up to the prisoner until he stood only inches from him.
“I’ve done nothing wrong!” Arsen tried to pull back, but they held him in place.
Will stayed on Shadow, a few paces away.
“Nothing?” Killien’s voice was quiet, and the man quailed. “We’ve intercepted two letters this winter being sent to the Sunn Clan, detailing the Morrow’s stores and herds. The one in the wool shipment numbered our rangers. And our warriors.”
Arsen’s face turned a sickly white. Hal had arrived with a handful of rangers, spreading out in a circle around them. All of their faces were dark. Will barely breathed.
“No, Torch!” Arsen sputtered “I have a cousin in the Sunn Clan, his mother was captured when we were young. We send letters to each other. Just letters. He’s a wool merchant, and he thinks that if the clans traded more—”
“You spied for the Sunn.” Killien’s face was a mask of fury.
“No! We just talked about the two clans, the things we could trade—”
“Why does a wool merchant need to know the number of our rangers? Of our warriors?”
Arsen said nothing, his eyes wide in terror.
“The Sunn have a dragon, and more stonesteeps than the rest of the Sweep put together. They force us to give them our crops, our wool, and our gold. They have no desire to trade with us.” Killien set one finger on the man’s chest and Arsen jerked back. “You betrayed the clan. You betrayed me.”
The words cut through the morning like a slice of icy winter air. Will’s hand smashed the flatbread into a lump.
Arsen’s mouth opened and closed like a fish, his body quavering and he sank down to his knees. “I didn’t…I don’t…” His voice fell to a hoarse whisper. “Mercy, Torch!”
Killien stepped back and straightened. He took a long breath and let it out, his face settling into impassivity. His gaze looked through the man and his judgment cut across the Sweep, flat and empty. “Arsen son of Oshin is found to be an enemy of the Morrow Clan.”
Arsen’s body crumbled forward until he hung from the arms of Sora and the ranger. He began to weep, a bubbling, terrified sound and Will clenched the wad of food tighter in his hand. Desperate for the man, Will looked at Hal, but his face was stony. Every Roven stood severely silent, judgment against the man already cast.
Will opened up toward Killien, looking for any hesitation or pause. A wave of adamant resolve from Killien filled his chest. It was mirrored from the Roven around him.
The man’s cries had quieted. Killien, without looking at him again, nodded to the ranger. Another ranger stepped forward with a small knife and sliced two braids out of Arsen’s beard, pulling off the silver beads and letting the hair fall to the ground.
When he pulled a silver ring off Arsen’s hand, Lukas dismounted and took it. He tilted it in the sunlight, and a watery blue stone glinted. Lukas murmured something to Killien, and at the Torch’s approving nod, slipped it into his pocket.
Killien looked past the man. “Take him to the Scales. Don’t let his blood fall on the grasses.”
Sora dropped the man’s arm with grim disapproval. She mounted her horse and rode back into the clan, her back resolutely turned to Killien. Another ranger took her place and they lifted the traitor to his feet. This time he didn’t resist as they pushed him away down the caravan.
Will watched them go, straining to see where they took him until they were out of sight behind other Roven. His breakfast sat in his stomach like a stone.
Hours later, when the shadow of the caravan stretched far to the east, Will caught sight of Sora riding out of the column. She didn�
��t say anything, just fell in beside him, her face set in a darker expression than normal.
“What will happen to the man Killien sentenced?” Will asked, his voice low.
She looked straight forward not answering for so long Will began to doubt she would.
“No one who betrays the clan is allowed to live.” Her words held no emotion. “The Morrow won’t taint the Sweep with the blood of a traitor, though. If one is found while the clan is in Porreen, they’re drowned in the sea so their spirit is pulled away with the next tide. Here, they’ll have taken him to the Scales to be burned.”
“Already?” His stomach sank at the idea of the terrified man. “There’s no inquiry? No trial?” One of the southern dukes had been accused of treason not long after Will had become a Keeper. The investigation process had been so extensive Alaric had brought Will to the capital to help with the questioning and recording. It had taken months. In the end the duke had been found guilty of theft, but not treason, and imprisoned.
“You saw the trial.”
“But…what if he was telling the truth?”
Sora turned to him, her face unreadable. “Killien didn’t believe him, and Killien is the only one that matters. Did you think the Morrow Clan tamer than others?”
The question hung in the air.
Yes, he did. When had that started? Will closed his eyes, shutting out the endless view of the Roven walking next to him, spinning his ring as his thoughts swirled. It had changed somewhere among the books and the conversation and the meals. Somewhere in the midst of discussions with Killien, the Roven had lost their fierceness in his mind.
“You come here from…” Sora paused. “Wherever you come from and think the Roven are like you. You don’t know what it is like to live as one. You didn’t grow up with the fear of raids and battles and constant war. Don’t think that because a few Roven speak to you, that they are like you. No one here is like you. No one here wants to be.”
Chapter Sixteen
On the tenth day, from the top of a high rise, a jagged, white mountaintop rose from the horizon in the north. Within hours a handful could be seen, pristinely snowy against the sky. Will strained to see the mountains as they moved up each rise, and watched until they were out of sight as they dropped into each low place, his eyes aching for something to look at besides the grass.
The appearance of the Hoarfrost Range was the only sign that he wasn’t trapped in some eternal stagnation. If they were nearing the northern edge of the Sweep, they should be at the rifts within a couple of days, and he’d made no more progress with Ilsa than to exchange quick smiles with her once through a crowd.
He’d always planned to leave the clan when they reached the rifts, but maybe he needed to convince Killien to let him stay. Maybe in the rhythm of normal life he could find more time to spend with her.
Rass found him walking beside Shadow, still stretching out the aches from sleeping on the wagon. The morning was chilly enough that Will had put on a cloak, but Rass wore the same little greyish slave shift as always, her bare feet traipsing over the grass as though it was nothing.
“Why doesn’t anyone take care of you?” The words came out harsher than he’d meant them to.
Rass looked at him in surprise. “I take care of myself. And the grass helps, of course.”
“Yes, the grass.” He ran his hand over his mouth to block all the things that wanted to come out. “Aren’t you cold?”
“No,” she said carelessly. “Yesterday was so warm I can still feel it.”
“I wish I could keep track of yesterday’s heat.” He handed her the piece of flatbread he’d been saving.
“Can’t you?” She took it and squinted up at him. “Not even with your magic?”
“What?” he asked too quickly.
“That magic that you use. Like when I first met you.”
His denial stuck in his throat. “What?” he managed again.
She gave him a little exasperated look. “At the festival you did something so the Roven didn’t pay attention to you. The magic swirled around you like a sparkly mist.”
Will’s heart felt like it was being squeezed by her tiny little hands. He opened up toward her, looking for some sense of suspicion, but she was just as cheery and curious as ever. He gathered some energy from the grass reflexively, without any clear plan of what to do with it.
Her eyes widened and her gaze flickered at the air around him.
“You’re doing it again,” she whispered.
He stopped, staring down at her, his heart pounding against his ribs like it was the wrong size for his chest. He let the energy go, letting it seep out of him and back into the world unused.
Rass glanced around with a disappointed sigh.
“You saw that? With your eyes?”
She looked at him, confused. “What other way is there to see?”
There was magic that was visible. Techniques where the vitalle glowed as it moved. But he’d just been gathering energy. No one could see that. The Keepers talked about seeing vitalle, but usually it wasn’t actual sight. It was a sense—like locating something with sound. Another Keeper could have sensed that he was drawing more energy into himself, but he’d never heard of anyone who could actually see it.
A dozen thoughts chased each other around Will’s mind.
She could reveal him to the Morrow.
Could she manipulate the energy?
Had she told anyone?
She could see it!
His fear kept being shoved aside by excitement. Her light hair, her blue eyes—could she be from Queensland? She didn’t look like it. With her wide eyes and her angular face, she looked foreign, even for a foreigner. Could she still be trained as a Keeper, though? She was so young to have any powers.
“Where are you from, Rass?”
She gave a little sigh and looked at him exasperatedly. “The grass.”
Will glanced around. The nearest Roven drove wagons and talked to each other, their voices muffled by the creaks of the wheels.
“Do you see magic often?”
Rass shrugged. “The Morrow put it on their ugly dirt buildings. And they wear it on things like rings. They put little bits of it onto their clothes, but that’s faded and weak. They don’t really have any strong magic.” She cocked her head and looked up at Will with her huge eyes the same bright blue as the sky. “I think you might, though.”
With a smile she started humming, hopping from one foot to the next.
Will considered her for a long moment, his fingers moving to his ring, spinning it slowly. “Have you told any Roven that I have magic?”
“I don’t talk to the Roven.”
“Not ever?”
“They don’t like me.”
They walked along for a few breaths in silence. “Thank you. For not telling them.”
She looked at him curiously. “Where did you learn to do magic?”
“At my home. There are other people there who can, and they taught me.”
“Is there anyone there like me?
Will shook his head. “Me and a bunch of older men. But we’ve been looking for someone like you for a very long time.”
“Are you as good at magic as you are at telling stories?”
“Not really.”
“Why not?”
Will thought back to Keeper Gerone’s constant prodding. “My teacher thought I had a motivation problem.”
“Stories are a good thing to be good at,” she assured him.
“Rass, can you do anything with magic?”
She opened her mouth to answer. Before she could say anything her brow dove down into a frown. “The mean lady is coming.”
Sora rode down the caravan toward them and Rass scampered off into the grass. Will watched the little slave girl go with a strange mixture of worry and fondness. She looked stronger. Her legs and arms had lost some of their gauntness. But as she left, it felt like she pulled something away with her, leaving him feeling more vulnerable.
Will mounted Shadow as Sora came up to him.
They’d fallen into a pattern of sorts. Usually not long after the caravan had started, while the duskiness of dawn still spread across the never-ending grass, she would come by and either bring him to Killien, or ride beside him. If she hadn’t arrived by the time the sun was completely above the Scales, Will knew she wouldn’t come. Some days she would answer questions about the Roven, but he’d given up asking her any personal questions days ago. Those were met with biting sarcasm.
It was the days where every question was met with a silent scowl that he didn’t know what to do with. Because on those days she would ride beside him for hours barely speaking, showing no interest in him, but not leaving.
He’d asked if she was on some sort of guard duty, sent by Killien to keep track of him, but she only responded with a scathing remark about not being Killien’s guard dog. On those days Will pulled out a book and read, letting her stew in silence and trying not to think about her too much.
But during the days she was gone Will found himself watching for her, and this morning he felt a surprising amount of pleasure as she rode up.
“Good morning,” he offered, testing the waters.
Her face was grave and she nodded absently to him. “Killien wants you.”
Will motioned for her to lead the way. “Did you find anything interesting out ranging?”
A flicker of something distasteful crossed her face, but she didn’t answer.
“Are you still looking for signs of frost goblins?” The urgency of the search had faded from his mind. It had been days since he’d heard Killien mention it, and while the Roven still built fires around the edges of the caravan at night, most of them seemed to be out of habit, not fear.
“No,” she answered dryly. “We thought we’d just stop looking and pretend we’d never heard reports of them.
“I just…no one seems worried about them anymore.”
“Anyone intelligent is.”
Will looked out over the grasslands. “Have you found any?”