Steelflower in Snow

by Lilith Saintcrow

  How was it possible for a child to change so quickly?

  I grabbed his shoulders. No longer so thin—at least he had eaten well, and the cold had not melted flesh from him. Instead, he had gained weight. “How. Did you. Get. Here?”

  “Rode a pig, cha.” As if it were the most natural thing in the world. “Big long one say tha’ fine creatures. Gavvy lutebanger hates ’em, say bad as a ship. Storm was mun, but we—”

  “Atyarik?” All strength threatened to leave my legs. “Gavrin? Janaire? Here?”

  “A’course. Was gonna come mysel’, cha, and they caught up two days outa Antai. Good thing, too.” His smile, wide and trusting, beamed up at me. My hands were claws upon his young shoulders, but he did not seem to mind.

  “Kaia.” Darik, somewhat slowly, put away his own knife. “Am I dreaming, or are we both?”

  “I seem to remember leaving you all safe in Antai,” I muttered darkly. “And they…they bring you here. By the Moon, I swear I shall—”

  “Breakfast!” Diyan bounced on the bed, perhaps to break my hold upon him or to distract me from swearing some manner of vengeance. He, at least, had a healthy regard for my temper. “Big red one say we eat well here, cha? Mun fakka last night.”

  “He still speaks another tongue entirely.” Darik addressed the empty air over our foster-son’s tousled head. “Now I suspect I am not dreaming. Come, little one, let me look at you. Have you kept your training fresh?”

  “Oh, cha!” The boy wriggled out of my grasp and off the bed, bare feet landing on cold flooring with a jarring thump. “Long one say I am quick as a farrat. Fat as one, too.” He stretched, showing the new length in his arms, expecting our admiration.

  I was not disposed to give him aught but a scolding. “D’ri.” My tone rivaled the Howl for sharpness. “He says Atyarik, and Janaire—”

  “Yes.” My s’tarei nodded. “I did not think they would lag so far behind, though. Come, Diyan. It is too cold to wander with naked paws.”

  I settled on my haunches, my feet sinking into the bed’s indifferent stuffing. My ankles ached, and the cold had not broken. It had, if anything, intensified.

  I had left them safely in Antai. What madness had possessed them to come here?

  From Diyan’s chatter I learned they had left Antai a few weeks behind us, but where we had led the weather, it had slowed them. He was too excited to give many details beyond bandits and several references to Atyarik’s fascination with torkascruagh. There were stories of Janaire calling fire from the air, and several ill-defined “heroics” on Gavrin’s part.

  Truly, the world had turned upside-down.

  The great eating-hall was full of murmurs that morning, and there they were. Janaire, her soft Gavridar face sharper now and vivid with the cold, rose from the bench a moment before Atyarik, severe in his s’tarei blank and a great furred black cloak, followed suit. The half-Pesh lutebanger Gavrin, hunched over a massive platter of spiced, ground gutmeat, blinked owlishly when Diyan appeared leading us, a proud shepherd returning two strays to the herd. A new lute-case, not the battered old one, rested upon the bench beside Gavrin, and he was accorded respectful space by the tain filling the rest of the table. I could not tell whether the guards were to keep watch on these new arrivals, or had been drawn by Janaire’s sleek, beautiful exoticism.

  Redfist, for once, was not at Emrath’s side but seated across from the G’mai. He rose too, bumping the table, and his grin was the widest I’d seen it since Antai. “K’ai!” he called. “Look what the winds blew in, aye!”

  My jaw set so tight it threatened to crack itself; I let D’ri and Diyan precede me. An excited babble rose and swirled, Atyarik clapping D’ri on the shoulder, Diyan ducking under Janaire’s arm to accept a half-hug with the ease of long familiarity. It was Gavrin who watched me solemnly, his uneasy half-Pesh complexion paling. Jorath Blacknose sat on the other side of Gavrin’s lute-case, and his gaze, following our minstrel’s, was disconcertingly direct.

  They looked…well. Atyarik was a little leaner and more somber, and Janaire’s G’mai dresses were covered by layers of wool and fur, and Gavrin’s sleeves, of course, were a little too short. Later, I learned it was he who had taken the lead, for the Skaialan hold bards in high honor if they have any skill at all, considering them sacred to Kroth’s youngest brother whose strange flat unbellied lute makes the wind rise or fall. Even their bandits will often let a lutebanger go in peace with enough supplies to reach the next settlement.

  Kaia? D’ri’s inner voice, reaching me over a great distance. A great white wasteland opened inside me, to match the one without. He glanced back at me, but the others had claimed his attention, and he was too well-bred not to greet a fellow s’tarei and adai.

  A hush fell, or perhaps I simply stopped hearing the slurping, banging, jesting, shouting that is the Skaialan at their meals. The fire took none of the stone-chill away, merely blunted its edge a fraction. I watched Diyan’s mouth move, Darik listening close as Atyarik and Janaire spoke rapidly, no doubt telling of their journey and its many wonders. My arms crossed over my chest, my fingers digging through layers to almost bruise my biceps, I held Gavrin’s gaze for a few heartbeats. He chewed, thoughtfully, and when the silence descended around me, it was a relief.

  I turned and left the eating-hall. A half-candlemark later, crunching through snow that had not been swept from the keep’s battlements, I watched as a long dark snake worked its way down the northern road, spreading to encompass the arm Kalburn had lain across that trade-route. Banners, pulled taut in a stinging wind that whipped snow from the ground and rasped it against every surface, were black blots with strange snarling crimson blood-spots caught upon their folds.

  My merry troupe of outcasts had stupidly followed us into the jaws of a Highland winter. And Dunkast, the Ferulaine with his witchery, his unholy gem, and his intent to kill Rainak Redfist had arrived as well.

  Taking Kalburn Too

  When the Lady of Kalburn receives an envoy, she does so in her great hall under the massive, wax- and tallow-dripping chandelier. If it is one of her vassals with business, a few of the tain most closely connected to the affair by kinship or interest will be in attendance; if it is a matter to be judged, only those unconnected are brought into the hall, to protect their lady from outbursts of temper and the claimants from rending each other in her presence. This time, Emrath Needleslay was receiving her husband, and rows of tain faced outward before her dais. She sat upon her stone bench, straight-backed, the same blue stone ear-drops glittering alongside her neck and a heavy torc of their pale gold clasped about the high collar of her fine indigo dress, its great mantle worked with bright sunny embroidery inside its lapels and floor-brushing sleeves. Her golden hair, the top half braided into a crown and the lower into a complex rope that reached her hips, glinted.

  To her right, his ruddy arms crossed over his barrel chest, Redfist glowered. He had made no attempt at fineness of costume today, and it was just as well.

  Torches flared along the walls, an extravagance in the middle of the day. Either that, or Emrath wanted all the light she could cast upon her husband. A cunning system of highly polished trash-metal discs tilted at precise angles in honeycomb passages brings light into many interior rooms of Kalburn’s keep, but the overcast today prevented much of their effectiveness.

  I kept to the shadows along the left-hand wall. D’ri and the other G’mai, tightly grouped, were behind the first row of tain on the right side of the steps. I made no attempt to join them, despite D’ri’s sudden, painful attention blooming in the deep spaces of the taran’adai.

  If there was to be violence, he would defend the others. I had other plans.

  We waited perhaps a quarter-candlemark, while Dunkast, who had been greeted at the keep’s great door by Emrath, cooled his heels in the hall outside like any other supplicant. Emrath did not speak, nor did Redfist, and the tain rustled and shifted with whispers.

  Finally, the Needleslay stirred, and
nodded. Her tain took a collective breath, and I studied their faces from my vantage point. All pasty, most bearded—Jorath Blacknose was an exception, and there were one or two others—and, to a man, stiff-necked. The whites of their eyes showed a little too wide; their hands were too tight upon sword or axe-hilt. The flail-users, useless in even this broad space, carried two single-axes apiece, and looked sour at the change.

  I knew the slight metallic aroma that clung to their keltas and sour sweat, to their clenched jaws and white knuckles.

  Fear.

  The two tain at the double door reached for large vertical handles, and pulled, muscles flickering in their bare calves. A silhouette in the widening doorway was neither monstrous nor twisted, and that was the first surprise.

  The second was that he was not tall, nor overly broad. Among the giants of the North he was merely average, and I might have expected him to move with the bantiness of a fowl who knows his size and must compensate with the willingness to attack first. Instead, he stepped quietly, flanked only by two of his own tain, both a half-head larger than him and dark-haired in red-and-yellow keltas.

  Dunkast the Ferulaine was neither dark nor blond, but somewhere between. His gaze was bright blue, though, much brighter than Redfist’s, and there was something in the shape of his jaw reminiscent of my giant ginger-furred friend. He carried no weapon, and neither did his two tain, but neither of his guards seemed nervous at all.

  He paused a bare five paces inside the door, passing his gaze over the hall, unhurried. I drew further back into an angle where the torchlight did not reach, and my hand ached for a hilt, any hilt.

  The thing, the witched gem he had found in some Northern cave or tomb, sat upon his chest, plainly visible since he wore no cloak or over-mantle despite the cold.

  Its back had been carved flat to rest against its wearer, and its curved front cut with facets I could not count at a glance, each one apparently a different size. Its chain, of heavy black metal, became paler near the stone’s glittering setting, for either the jewelsmith had known some art for fusing metal to carven stone links, or the black clot held in the setting was spreading mineral fingers through its prison.

  Either prospect sent a cool trickle of dread down my spine.

  His scrape-shaven cheeks were ruddy, but not, as the rest of the Skaialans’, from the cold. Instead, it seemed a surfeit of blood surged under his pale Northern skin, and his lips were rubescent too, like a Rijiin courtesan’s carmine mouth. I looked closer—the roots of his hair were lighter than the tips, and that was exceedingly odd. The sun had not bleached those strands, nor had an honest wind.

  I studied the gem, too. It did not look witched, but then, I was no judge of such things.

  At least, I had not been before Darik had brought himself to upend my life. Still, I felt nothing but my own silence, the quiet of an assassin lying in wait. Redfist, on the dais, inhaled sharply, silently.

  Dunkast finished his survey of the hall. His reddened lips twitched, sardonic amusement plucking at their raw edges. I restrained the urge to draw back further; my hip already brushed the stone wall. An adder under a rock knows only patience, the Thieves’ Guild says.

  I wondered briefly how many nights Sorche Smahua’s-kin spent lying in shadow-wait, dreaming of striking me down. When you know what your quarry looks like, it is easy to fill your skull with imagining their death, in various permutations. Sometimes it may even be a comfort, or a means of discerning where one’s plans may go awry. Like every habit of dreaming while awake, it has its drawbacks.

  You may imagine your enemy’s death, and it leads naturally to imagining your own.

  “Needleslay.” Dunkast Ferulaine’s voice was neither high nor low. Simply…average, like the rest of him. It was passing strange, and I stilled even further. The gem…it did not reflect a gleam, from mirrorlight or flame. “Ye be keeping ill company in my absence, wife.”

  No, any light simply fell into the black eye upon the Ferulaine’s chest. Fell…or was eaten, trapped below those facets.

  Consumed.

  Redfist looked ready to stride from the dais and challenge him immediately, but it was Emrath who spoke, clear and measured, her back straight and her skirts arranged as beautifully as a G’mai girl’s. “All of Kalburn saw him strike the Anvil, Ferulaine.”

  Dunkast Ferulaine’s gaze fell upon Janaire and the two s’tarei with her upon the dais steps. “Perhaps his elvish witched it.”

  Would everyone in this frozen, uncivilized wasteland use that gods-be-damned word? I kept myself so still I barely breathed, air filtering into and out of my lungs with the silence of a calm sea slow-lapping a choke-sand shore.

  “Ye think Kroth Himself so weak as to allow witching?” Emrath’s laugh held no amusement, but a great deal of contempt. Her jewels glittered, and so did her eyes, a hard gleam. There was steel in the Lady of Kalburn, and it needed only a strike against her edge to show the spark. “Or is that what ye planned to do, if I could be forced to walk to the Stones at your side?”

  “And the man ye walked instead is hiding behind yer tain and yer skirts.” Dunkast’s faint smile stretched, as a night-hunting eyebird will open its beak. “I see him standing there. Hello, Rainak.”

  “Dunkast.” Redfist shook his head. “Ye’ve changed. Again.”

  My hand crept for my dotani hilt. The light-drinking gem…something about the setting teased at memory and intuition both. My eyes half-closed, vision sharpening. When you see something you know but do not expect, miles away from any place it should be, it is easy to convince yourself your own senses are lying. The Shainakh call it mind-that-balks, and the last word can also be applied to a horse that will not do as it’s told.

  Kaahai.

  “Not so much.” Dunkast’s hand lifted. His fingertips were reddened too, and the cool trickle of dread down my back turned to a river of shiverflesh.

  Three sinuous carven lines, knotted and re-knotted, over and over again, nestled around the gem’s blind, hungry eye. Of course it was familiar. The only question was, how had it traveled this far North? Oh, it was possible, I supposed. More than possible. Suddenly, the floury paleness of the giants here held an altogether more sinister cast.

  What if, instead of not deigning to go north to conquer the savage barbarians, the Pensari had instead…moved south? Or perhaps a remnant of them had gone north, fleeing the curse and wrack of all their kin, leaving their treasures in a cold cave to be pawed over by barbarians?

  “Not so much,” Dunkast repeated, his blushing fingertips stroking the gem’s setting. For a moment, the undulating triple-line knots seemed to move, following his caress. “I was always thus. Ye did not see it. And neither did he.”

  Redfist surged forward, his kelta swinging angrily. The tain parted for him, and I tensed. But he stopped a few paces beyond their last row, and faced Dunkast over empty flagstones scattered with rush and sweetstraw, moisture collecting in the corners from our collective breath and the earth’s own heat rising from skauna and deep earthfire shafts below.

  Our great, ruddy barbarian held his once-brother’s blue gaze, and his own was hot with fury. “How did ye kill him, Dunkast? Poison? Or did ye sneak into his tent and strangle him before yer bastards attacked in the dark? Our father.”

  “He was no father to me.” Dunkast smiled outright, the surfaces of his lips cracking as if he was desert-dry. The ice can steal moisture from you as well as vital heat, but the canyons in his mouthflesh did not bleed, for all they were vivid crimson. “He was a red-eyed buggering fool, and deserved his fate.”

  Redfist pitched forward, and for a moment I thought the battle-rage would take him and we would have an end to the whole affair in short order. I shifted my own weight, my hand closing about my dotani hilt and the decision bending my left knee—first, I would take the Ferulaine tain on the right, a piri-splitter strike to drive him back and if it opened his throat, so much the better. The one to the left I would have to lunge for, and much would depend on whe
ther or not he had a weapon hidden in his kelta.

  Striking down the unarmed, and a guest of this household besides, did not particularly bother me at the moment. Not with that hideous thing upon Dunkast’s chest, its alien gaze sharpening as if it sensed bloodshed approaching and liked the thought. The Ferulaine’s head tilted slightly and his pupils swelled, swallowing the blue of his irises as his chin made a strange, fluid motion, his neck moving subtly as if full of fluid, instead of a column of stacked bone and strap-muscles. “Ah.” Those pupils swiveled to point in my general direction, and his head made another strange little movement. “There is your witchling bitch. A man who keeps more than one woman loses all of them, Rainak.”

  “My companion is a wal’kir, come from Kroth himself to watch me take your head.” Redfist’s throat filled with a wet, grinding noise, and he spat. The gobbet, flung a fair distance, splattered on the rushes just before Dunkast’s boots.

  The Skaialan hold such a thing to be a grave insult indeed.

  “I challenge ye, Dunkast Ferulaine.” Redfist did not take another step, but his tone drove the other man heel-back, rocking upon the latter portion of his boots, for it was cold as the White Howl itself. “Ye shall answer for accusing me of kinslaying, for yer crimes, and for that thing you wear, unholy in Krom’s sight. Tomorrow, at noon, on the Great Ground of Kalburn. Now get ye gone, and trouble my lady Needleslay no more.”

  “Your lady Needleslay is my wife—” The bland amusement had left Dunkast, and his pupils shrank again. Whatever he had expected, it was not this. A rippling murmur went through the assembled Kalburn tain, and the gem’s setting had ceased its twitching. Some other current filled the room, fey and crackling, and I did not need to look at the dais-steps to know it was Janaire, her dark, beautiful eyes wide and Atyarik’s hand to her shoulder, who provided that clarifying force.