Steelflower in Snow

by Lilith Saintcrow

  Consume. He used the word for a shoat swallowed whole by a wingwyrm, a truly unpleasant feat. I let the warming breath cycle through me once more, twice. It helped. “Steel should guard against such witchery.”

  “And you shall have mine.” There it was again, the play on words, the allusion to the more intimate aspects of the twin-bond. His eyebrow did not rise, nor did he smile, but it was no doubt close.

  I tipped my head back, rolled it left and right to dispel some of the aching. It did not help. There was no soothing to be found in this conversation, and I suspected it would turn even less pleasant before long.

  I was not disappointed. “Durran.” Redfist had turned grave, his mouth vanishing into his beard, and the burr in his tradetongue mangled D’ri’s name. “I know that look of yours.”

  “I am asking her to leave this place.” Darik’s quiet gravity was unaltered by tradetongue. Bladed cheekbones stood out, harsh mountain-bones to rival those upon the horizon, taking their stark beauty from G’maihallan. “Those things are dangerous to our women.”

  I bit my lip, rolled my head a little more. My headache intensified instead of easing, of course. Once pain settles in the skull, it is not easily routed.

  The quality of their silence warned me. I brought my chin back down and caught the subtle flickers in their expressions—men, reaching an understanding without words. They think being born without a trouser-string means women cannot decipher such looks.

  “A fast sled, and guards.” Redfist straightened, and his palm cupped the Needleslay’s shoulder, polishing it with a soft, absent motion. She sagged, as if a weight had been taken from her. “Ye may take Kaia back to Antai, and—”

  “There will be no taking me anywhere, thank you.” I focused on the warming breath, inhaling smoothly, tapping my body’s small fires to echo the larger one crackle-eating its fuel to warm the room. “You may treat your women as cattle here, Redfist, but I am not to be herded.”

  “I knew you would not see reason,” D’ri murmured. But softly, and his mind was a closed fist, an internal withdrawing. We gave each other what privacy we could, within the twinbond.

  Or, more precisely, he gave me the distance I needed, and I gave him all the closeness I could stand.

  Well enough. If I were less tired, I might have told him of a certain village in the Pesh borderlands, of a deep foul thing hiding in a cave, and the look on wan villagers’ faces when I brought the unnatural thing’s misshapen, dripping head to their fear-fueled bonfire one balmy spring night, avenging their missing children.

  They had not been grateful for long, those tillers of thin soil, but by the time their welcome began to fade, I was already gone.

  “Redfist.” I grasped firmly at my patience, thinning rapidly with each day in this icy hell. At least in Antai these two had not harassed me so. “Are you telling me you no longer wish my sword at your back?” My tradetongue, salted deeply with Skaialan, was an unhappy sound at best.

  The ruddy giant opened his mouth, and I thought he would say, yes, that is what I am telling you, lass, now begone with your elvish princeling. Instead, the barbarian coughed, and Darik’s eyes narrowed, reading the terrain as a strategist might.

  “I…lass, you are welcome with me, as long as you choose to stay.” Rainak Redfist coughed again. Perhaps more words were crowding his throat, unable to struggle free. “But you should listen to your corjhan there.”

  “I hear both of you perfectly well.” With that, I strode for the door, each footstep brittle as the hold I had on my temper.

  I could not blame my childhood Yada’Adais, or the Moon, or any other god. I, and I alone, had set myself upon this road.

  It was too late now to pretend to be other than I was.

  No Unlearning

  I do not know where Darik slept that night; he did not return to the cold, cavernous room given over to our use. Nor did Redfist, but that did not bother me much.

  What did were the dreams, treading the same groove in my sleeping, over and over again like a pacing beast.

  I charged. Not straight for them—though that would have been satisfying—but to the left, where the shadows were deepest. Boots stamping, my legs complaining, ice underfoot and my left knee threatening to buckle again before silence descended upon me. It was not the killing snow-quiet I had discovered after my mother’s death, but the white-hot clarity of battlerage. There is a moment, when the body has been pushed past endurance and your enemies are still all about you, when the last reserves inside a sellsword—those crockery jars full of burn-the-mouth, sweetheavy turit jam—are smashed. Muscle may pull from bone, bone may break, but the sellsword will not feel it for hours. The Shainakh call it nahrappan, the Hain a term that has to do with a cornered animal, and in G’mai it is called the s’tarei’s last kiss, and it is said that even after an adai’s death a s’tarei may perform one last action, laying waste to his opponents.

  The Skaialan call it berserk, and there are tales of their warriors fighting naked except for crimson chalk-paint, touched by Kroth’s heavy hand and driven mad.

  Pain vanished. My dotani clove frozen air with a low sweet sound, blurring in a low arc as I turned sideways, skipping from cobble to cobble with no grace but a great deal of speed. The far-left Black Brother had an axe, and all thought left me as it moved, hefted as if it weighed less than a straw. Their soft, collective grasping burned away, I left the ground and flew, turning at the last moment, the arc halting and cutting down, sinking through fur and leather, snap-grinding on bone, and the Black Brother’s mouth opened wet-loose as his arm separated, neatly cloven. The axe, its momentum inescapable, sheared to the side, and since his left hand was the brace for the haft it arced neatly into his next-door compatriot, sinking in with the heavy sound of well-seasoned wood.

  Their child-high screams rose, but I was already past, and Mother Moon, I longed to turn back. The burning in my veins, the sweet-hot rage, demanded it.

  Instead, I put my head down and bolted. Thump-thud, thump-thud, the street familiar now, each shadow turning bright-sharp as my pupils swelled, the taste in my mouth sour copper and katai candy. The Keep loomed ever closer, and if I could reach the end there was a narrow housefront with a door left deliberately unlocked. Once inside, I could be up the stairs and out a high window, onto the roof-road again, up and down while the foul glove-net closed on empty air. There was an easy way into the Keep from there, if D’ri had reached it and secured the knotted rope…

  A whistle-crunch. Another high childlike cry behind me as a heavy black-fletched arrow, its curve aimed high and sharp to give it added force as it fell, pierced a pursuer’s skull, shattering it in a spray of bone and grey matter.

  Kaia! Thin and very far away, struggling to reach me through the rage. Kaia, down!

  My feet tangled in an invisible skein, and I fell…

  Once, twice, however many times I woke in that room, the low keening of a Skaialan wind restlessly mouthed the walls. The fire turned to blackrock coals, my breath became visible, and I burrowed into the bed, curling around myself like a hibernating creature. A moro of the G’mai mountains, or a Clau laihanaura, the toads that sleep in mud waiting for their rainy season to come again. Candlemarks passed, and when the faint gray light of morning slid past the iron-bound windows and the heavy drapes covering them, I was well on my way to cursing every snow-god I had ever heard of, and every soul in the Highlands as well.

  At least the privies were not outside, here. That is a measure of luxury in their part of the world; perhaps that is why Redfist and his fellows are so hairy. They need pelts in order not to freeze to death while relieving themselves in the late watches. I made my way through the passages, halting whenever a fit of shivering threatened to take my legs from me. I avoided the sight and sound of others—they blundered through the halls with little stealth, these Skaialan giants. Movement dispelled some of the cold, the warming breath finally drove it from my arms and legs, and the pattern of Kalburn’s great keep was not d
ifficult to pierce.

  Even my traveling-cloak, fur-lined and vast enough to swallow me since it was cut for a giantess and only lately trimmed, was inadequate. It took a great deal of effort to nerve myself to it, but I finally worked my way outside, into an ice-rimed bailey with frowning walls. My ears twitched, and it took me a half-candlemark to find what I sought.

  The warriors of Skaialan practice their art in all weather, as any worth their steel must. Their dueling-grounds are not round but five-cornered, each point marked with cardinal pillars, open to the sky so Kroth may witness all. I did not wish a duel, I simply wanted the training-yard, and found one. Flail, pike, shield, their massive straight swords—meant for hacking, not slashing, grace, or speed—and double-bladed axes, the single-axes always used in pairs, for knifework considered below a warrior’s dignity. A sellsword, ever alert to new technique or a subtle skill, may learn much by simply watching.

  I did not wish that, either.

  Instead, I chose a corner of their five-pointed beaten-earth space empty enough for my purposes, closed my eyes, and breathed deep. Cold like a meat-knife stinging throat and nose, the clash-slither of blades or thocking of weighted wood, grunts and curses and foul exhalations.

  Yes. This was, as far as I could find in this hideous place, a familiar comfort. If I have anything resembling home in the wide wide world, it is where I hear the sounds of those who train for combat.

  My hand closed about my dotani hilt, swept the blade free with its familiar, welcoming sound. I began with the simplest of forms, holding each stroke for a moment, warming and loosening. The cloak was a hindrance, but worse was the squashing slop of ice upon dirt and scattered straw underfoot.

  Flagged stone, even with scattered hay or rushes or dirt to provide traction, is not ideal.

  The first strokes—piri-splitter, sidesweep, hilt floating up, stab and retreat, turn with the forefoot down and the heel light—unreeled. The warming breath came more easily; my shivers eased. When I had warmed enough I shrugged from the cloak and tossed it over a rack of weighted wooden practice-maces, probably dragged outside each day by trainees. My ear-tips were numb even in a nest of braids, dressed winter-fashion about the head to conserve what heat I could.

  Star-strike once, twice, again. Blurring into the third of the Great Forms, the most challenging. The minstrel’s plea, the losing toss, I drew my largest knife, my fingers unwieldy but still answering my will, and flowed into other forms. Moves learned in the Shainakh irregulars, playing out old duels or battles still echoing in my flesh—the body does not forget. It is made to remember, with training, and once it learns that trick there is no unlearning.

  Even if you wish it. Even if you long to be other than what you are. What you have made yourself.

  Breath hard and sharp, blood pumping, the cold no longer vicious but clear Karun white wine sparkling into my throat, filling my heaving lungs with starlight. I began to work in earnest then, foot stamping at the strike-moment, a kia-ah escaping me at a particularly vicious blow.

  It was Danhai I thought of, the cursed plains in winter. Summers were for campaigning, but when the screaming ice-rimed winds came across the great grass sea there was nothing but dicing, stealth-raids, and the perpetual quest to keep warm. I had thought, then, that the Danhai must be at least part ice-demon. Now, perhaps, I knew what true cold was, and it was not to be found even in the Highlands, no matter how their white winds wailed.

  There is nothing as chilling as measuring yourself—and finding a lack.

  Stamp-shuffle, blurring across a memory-field, turning as an invisible arrow whistled past—that was at night, just before the spring rains turned any track on the Plains into a quagmire of sucking black mud. A stealth-raid with Ammerdahl Rikyat, and our small cadre running across a similarly tiny party of Danhai out to cause mischief. The sound of a bowstring travels differently, at night.

  So do the cries of the dying.

  My luck will turn against me, Kaia!

  Lips skinned back from my teeth. I screamed, a short hawk-cry of frustration, and spun, dotani blurring in a solid arc of silver, striking down an invisible foe, the knife flickering as I shouldered past another, and I was in an alley in Antai again, a brat of a merchant’s son screaming he had paid for me, and he would have me, and his hired blades sought to trap me. Sick with the jai fever I’d been that winter, my body burning and shaking.

  So many battles, each one trapped in bone and muscle, pain-path and sinew. When I stepped onto the Long Road to the Moon Herself, would I carry them with me?

  I am no adai.

  The thought, as usual, filled me an unsteady, clear red liquid, too bitter to be even gall-wine. I spun and slashed in tightening circles now, a pack of baying, invisible hounds taking solid form from memory’s invisibility. Those lean shaggy creatures hunt the outskirts of Pesh, sacred to their fire-god’s lamed son. One alone you may kill with impunity, but a group is the god’s hunters, any caught drawing against them risking being stoned to death by an angry crowd. So they have grown wise and travel in packs, bold among the refuse and stone and clattering slave-chains.

  What I had been seeking came to me, quiet as a thief, all a-sudden as an assassin’s strike.

  For a single blessed moment, everything fell away. Cold, hunger, exhaustion, the tangle of honor and responsibility and need. No-space flowered inside me, the peace that comes when the battle reaches white heat and you are no longer a collection of muscles and pain-paths but something else, where every enemy is invisible because you are dancing, dancing, only with yourself.

  Dotani held high, knife braced and low, the gla-stance, used by the caged fighters in Hain when they have won a fight and one more link is struck from the debt holding them. If they die on the sands of the great arenas, impiety or shame does not attach to their families; all stain is considered expunged with blood.

  What do you seek to wipe away, Kaia?

  I no longer knew. Sides heaving, sweat freezing under my clothes and salt in my eyes stinging, I tipped my head back and cried out again, another hawk-scream. My arms dropped, and I realized a hush had fallen.

  Some of the Skaialan had stopped to watch, axes or blades hefted to their shoulders. My dotani blurred back into its sheath; I turned away from their pale, hungry gazes and found my cloak in the hands of my s’tarei, standing beside the rack of maces, his own cheeks and nose red with cold.

  Many a Song

  The skauna deep in the bowls of Kalburn’s keep was not a bath but the heat was welcome, and so were dry clothes. D’ri said nothing beyond commonplaces; nor did I. Breakfast was in the same hall as last night, a quieter affair than the great evening meal. Redfist was up to both elbows in a gigantic platter of heavily spiced chopped-fine meat trapped in thin intestinal casings, accompanied by boiled meatroot and their yeast-flower bread; my own porridge had enough sweet thick fruit syrup to rot the teeth of a Rijiin flower-seller, and the layer of condensed fat on top, I was told, was sweetened milk. No matter how unappetizing, the heaviness of the fats would fuel the warming breath, so I set to with a will, still occasionally shivering, and did not look at Emrath Needleslay, whose wide grey eyes were red-rimmed that morning. Whatever had passed between her and Redfist was private, certainly, but it hung between them even as they ate elbow-to-elbow.

  “There is news,” Darik said, finally, his own plate piled with the strange gut-meat. It smelled heavy, and oddly toothsome. “The red one was seeking you this morning, and thought you had left.” His intonation was not quite that of a s’tarei to his adai, and it stung for a brief moment.

  He had cause, and yet. The fire in the greatest hearth of the hall was a low, slumbrous beast; those who clustered the long tables could see their breath. Some great houses in the North heat their innards with the deep fire of tortured earth, Kalburn was hollowed out before such an art had reached its full stature and its harnessing of such heat is uncertain in the higher floors. They saw it as a mark of pride, those who sheltered in the stone cube
, and hardiness.

  “And you did not?” I used the form of the question that expressed arch disbelief; speaking G’mai to him was no less a thorny pleasure than it had always been. I longed for fish, for piri-sauce, for flatbread. Proper food, real food.

  “Unless you were leaving to find this Dunkast and slit his throat, I did not think it likely.” Among the mellifluous G’mai words, the Skaialan’s name was an outcropping of sterile, ugly rock.

  “Now there is an idea.” I poked my wooden spoon at the porridge. “Do you think I should?” An attempt at bleak sellsword humor.

  Ammerdahl Rikyat would have understood, and laughed, a sharp chuckle.

  Darik did not look at me, choosing instead to gaze out onto the babble of breakfast and the fire in its wide, low home. “Would you care if I did not?” His inflection was sharply formal, a parent taking a child to task.

  I pushed my chair back, swept my bowl and spoon up, and skirted the back of his chair. Stamping down the dais-steps was easy, but the problem of where to sit was not quite as simple. I settled for a half-empty table far from the great hearth, in a particularly dank corner, and did not look at the dais.

  Childish? Perhaps. Yet if even he would treat me as something to be herded or chided, it was the only response I could give without reaching for a blade.

  I have swallowed worse than that bowl of porridge, but precious little has threatened to choke me as much.

  “Wellnow. What do I see?” A broad, burring stream of tradetongue and Skaialan, low and pleasant, along the rhythm of a Skaialan accent like a torkascruagh’s plodding gait. “A walkir, come to eat with the tain.” A platter loaded with the spiced casing-meat, meatroot, and their strange bread banged upon the table, and the black-bearded fellow I had noticed last night lowered himself cautiously onto the bench on the other side. He also had an extra mug of sofin, and slid it across the wooden expanse until it halted next to my bowl.