A Crown for Cold Silver

by Alex Marshall

  Maybe that was the problem—maybe Sullen was just in the wrong sort of song. Maybe instead of a great warrior or trickster his lot was always to play the dullard, bumbling into trouble to the amusement of any listeners. The Song of Sullen Half-wit, the Horned Wolf without a brain in his skull or a fang in his jaws. There was a song he could hum by heart, even if the words escaped him…

  Stalking back to his tent, he saw Grandfather still set up in front of the small fire he had built for the old man before going after his uncle. Great.

  “What’s the word, laddie?” Grandfather asked as Sullen steadied himself and stepped out of the shadows.

  “Nothing, Fa.” Giving him a talking-to could wait until morning, or longer—why ruin a perfectly bad night by stirring up Grandfather? Sullen dipped into the tent, and closed his eyes in impotent frustration as the old man called after him:

  “Come on out, laddie, we need to talk. Got a beedi rolled and ripe for the ripping.”

  Sullen fished around in the dark tent until he found his bandolier of sun-knives, then a water jug, and then a strip of cured horse to snack on, and only when he couldn’t stall any longer he came back out and sat down heavily across the fire.

  “My, but you’re in a mood tonight,” Grandfather said when Sullen took out a whetstone and set to sharpening the multiple blades on each of his branching knives.

  “What?” Sullen said around a mouthful of meat, not looking up from his work.

  “I don’t expect nor welcome all the gory details of your courtship with that prissy girl, but if you want to tell me what’s irked—”

  Sullen stood, letting the bandolier fall into the dirt save for the knife he gripped in his fist. “Last time, Fa. Blood or no, last time. She’s got a name. And she deserves better from scrawny old dogs she gave a place by her fire.”

  Grandfather sneered up at Sullen, but for once he didn’t say anything smart, just gave a curt nod. That would have to do. Sullen sat back down as Grandfather set a braid of pinestraw aflame and lit his beedi.

  “Shall we talk about your uncle, then?” said Grandfather, holding in his smoke and offering the smoldering cone. “Or that Zosia woman?”

  Sullen turned down the sweet-smelling saam, much as he wanted it. He couldn’t stand to be any closer to Grandfather at present. “Whatever you want. They got right, looked like. Drank ’round a fire. Like you do.”

  “Well, touching as that is, I’m mostly curious as to why you mean to murder them both,” said Grandfather, taking another long pull, his fingers as dark and wrinkled as the leaf between them.

  Sullen went all chilly, didn’t know what to say. “Huh?”

  “Huh,” said Grandfather. “Huh. You might be black as the god of the Jackals to these pasty-arse fools, but you’re clear as branch water to me, pup. You’ve been killing them with those lion eyes of yours ever since you first peeped ’em, same as you’ve been doing something else with your eyes to that… to General Ji-hyeon Bong, Second Daughter of Jun-hwan and Kang-ho, Future Queen of Samoth, and however the rest of it goes.”

  “You think if I give ’em a look it means something?” said Sullen, embarrassed that Grandfather had seen through him so fast and so sure. Embarrassed, and maybe a little relieved. It was the scariest thing out there, keeping your own counsel when affairs got complex. “You think if it looks like I give ’em a look, it means shit?”

  “Heed me, Sullen,” said Grandfather, but for a change his tone seemed conciliatory instead of chiding. “Whatever else they are, neither my son nor that friend of his are stupid. I seen what you were thinking, and you weren’t even thinking it at me. I’d tell you to be wary, except I respect you too much to treat you as a child. You know what you’re about. But I’ve been sitting here all night pondering your surly mug, boy, and for the life of me and the life of your mother, I can’t reckon why you mean either of them trouble.”

  “For serious?” Sullen stopped sharpening his knife. “After hearing you yuck-mouth him every day since I can remember, you don’t know why I aim to kick Uncle Craven’s arse? You and Ma been telling me how bad he needs it since before he even left us! Probably whispered it to her belly before I even busted out, before he even came back.”

  “Ahhhhh,” said Grandfather, puffing on his beedi. “That’s it, then. You’re still sore on him for leaving, eh?”

  “Him leaving don’t mean shit,” said Sullen, wishing there was a way to make the words sound proud instead of petulant. “Good riddance. I mean, we left, didn’t we? And we left on account of you thinking he did right, cutting out on the Horned Wolves that second time.”

  “I know what I think about my son, Sullen. I’m asking what you think, though I can guess.”

  “That’s fleet,” said Sullen, shaking his head. “What do I think, then, since you already know all?”

  “I think it’s the particulars of how he did it,” said Grandfather, and there was some comfort there to soften the sting. Horrible a bastard as Grandfather could be, he was good, loving, and understood Sullen in ways he didn’t always understand himself. “He cut out on us, left us to die on that battlefield, and all because he chose to stand with the Horned Wolves instead of his nephew. Instead of his own dad. We needed him most, needed him as much as anyone could ever need his kin, and he sided with the clan over us. That’ll happen. My daughter did the same, which I don’t reckon you need reminding of?”

  “Nah, it was different for her,” Sullen said quietly, still hoping after all these years that this time it would ring true to his ear. “Whole different thing.”

  “Sure it was,” said Grandfather in a way that told Sullen the old man wanted to believe every bit as much as his grandson. “I don’t reckon either of us can blame your mom for leaving us there, walking off with her brother and the rest. Shit, she’s more Horned Wolf than anyone on that damned council, so her doing it the old way, that’s fair. And what makes it so different, what this whole oryx chase comes down to, is that when you drug me back home after the battle, she was still there, part of the clan as always, but your uncle was long gone. And all these years later you’re still raw-hearted he didn’t stay with us—he was cutting out anyway, why not do it a day or three earlier, rather than leaving his kin to die on account of a principle he never lived up to nohow? That about the shape of it?”

  Sullen eyed his shimmering reflection in the blade he held, nodded. “About.”

  “Yeah, I’ve wondered that, too,” said Grandfather, and it felt like cold creek water washing the dust off your face to hear the old man admit that he didn’t know everything. “Every day since it happened, and every minute since I looked him in the eye this morn. Why. Thing is, laddie, I don’t think he knows himself.”

  “That makes it all right?”

  “Hells no! But you always know why you do something, Sullen? I sure ruddy don’t, and I’ve had a good deal more thaws than you to get the measure of myself. What matters is that you, me, him, we all got the same idea, sooner or later, that those we came up with, those we’d given our lives to, they weren’t worthy of our love, and so we all cut out on what the Horned Wolves had become. And now that we’ve finally run him to earth I think we owe our blood enough to put the question to him, and see if he can do better now than he did then. What happened when we were Horned Wolves means as much as yesterday’s morning shit; what matters is what we do goin’ forward. We’re family, Sullen, and if that doesn’t mean something, then we’re no better than the rest of our clan.”

  It was quiet for a spell after Grandfather’s wee speech, and Sullen put his knife down and went around the fire to sit beside the old man. Taking the dead beedi from him, he relit the half-burned saam and took a deep toke. Kept it in, absorbing the smoke along with the old man’s words. Grandfather, man, that guy knew some stuff. Exhaled, and let out some of the bad air he’d been holding for most of his life. “You want to go have a verse with him now? I can take us.”

  “We weren’t the only ones he’d given up for dead,” sa
id Grandfather. “If even one of those songs we heard about the two of them on the road here has even one honest refrain, they’ll be talking till dawn. Him and that Cold Zosia are tendin’ to their business, we’ll let them tend. You’re just hard on her ’cause of how she did your uncle this morn? You might hate him, but don’t like seeing your blood whooped in front of half the camp?”

  “Her? That? Nah.” Sullen took another hit, held it till his eyes watered. “She… You don’t wanna know.”

  “Thank the false gods and true ancestors I got a grandson so wise he knows me better than I know myself,” said Grandfather, taking the beedi back. “I shiver to think what I’d do, I had to have a thought of my own.”

  “Nah, Fa… She… Look, you told me you didn’t want to hear none of what that Faceless Mistress I met in that big-arse spooky temple had to say. The Soueast Arm, remember?”

  “You think I’m so dotty I can’t recollect where we was when you met a god?” Grandfather looked down at the beedi and then passed it back without taking a hit. “I wondered, after. Ever since, whenever we heard the name Zosia you got a hungry look on you. Hells, even the Horned Wolves knew about the Cobalt Queen, but you never seemed to take an interest in those songs… until that Emeritus temple. Yeah, I wondered.”

  “So you want me to spit or not?”

  “Not, not,” said Grandfather quickly, raising his palms. “These ears have done well by not having the words of the gods pass through them. But…”

  “But?”

  “But there’s a lot of gods, Sullen, many more than just the Old Watchers who made our ancestors. The Star’s got more gods down here than there are birds in the heavens, even with the Chain spreading their One True Faith shit all over. It ain’t wise to rile any of them, sure, but that don’t mean you have to take a knee before them all, or you’ll never be able to stand on your own.”

  “But you always said a shaman had to listen, and I’m not saying that’s what I am, but… shit, Fa, I don’t know.”

  “Listening is always good,” said Grandfather, staring off past the fire, into the dark between the tents. “But that ain’t the same as always doing what you’re told. You done that, you would have left me on the field and gone home with your uncle and the rest, and neither of us would be here right now.”

  Sullen nodded. He nodded a lot when Grandfather spoke. How the devils had Old Black or Rakehell gotten along so well without an ancestor to help them? “So… so as far as Zosia goes, what the Faceless Mistress said about her…”

  “I told you, boy, I don’t know, I don’t want to know, and I don’t envy you the burden you were born to. But where the gods are concerned, be very, very careful. You think Horned Wolves are petty, vengeful fuckers, well, our people don’t have a patch on the gods… And this Zosia? She walks with one, or I’m no judge of devils.”

  “What?” Sullen swallowed, fearing where this was going. “Her coyote devil, you think it…”

  “I know better than to think on such matters,” said Grandfather gravely. “But that thing’s as like to a mere devil as that Zosia is to an ape in the Bal Amon jungles. A devil king’s just what we call the god of our enemies. So whatever other voices you heed, Sullen, listen to your grandfather here—stay wary.”

  The wind whipped down through the camp, the fire crackling. Sullen threw his arm around his grandfather and said, “Pretty sure I heard you say you weren’t going to lecture me about being careful, on account I wasn’t some kid climbing dagger trees.”

  “Old folk are allowed to break their word, laddie, and blame it on senility,” said Grandfather, squirming away from Sullen’s embrace. “One of the sole benefits of being too old to remember ever being young!”

  Their laughter was short-lived, cut off by a canine whine from the side of their tent. A shadow detached itself from the darkness and tottered into their firelight on sleep-wobbly legs. Something shaped like a dog but weren’t no dog at all. Zosia’s devil. Its chalky tongue lapped noisily at its jowls as it appraised them, its black eyes swallowing the firelight instead of reflecting it. It barked once, what Sullen prayed was a friendly bark, and then strutted past their tent, disappearing into the slumbering camp of the Cobalt Company.

  “That’s us to bed, then,” said Grandfather with a shiver. “If he’s out prowling, who knows what else walks this night.”

  They went in, but for all the wisdom he’d found in Grandfather’s words, Sullen found sleep to be as evasive a quarry as any he’d hunted across the Frozen Savannahs.

  CHAPTER

  19

  Ji-hyeon slept alone. Well, slept was more of an aspiration than an accurate description. She pitched about in her sheets, occasionally punching a pillow.

  Keun-ju had asked to stay with her, and she had wanted him to, but after her all-night plotting session with Zosia, who seemed as talented a tactician as her reputation implied, a morning nap had barely prepared Ji-hyeon for endless meetings with Choi, Fennec, and her other new captain, Chevaleresse Singh. So when she finally had time for Keun-ju in the late afternoon she was already yawning, and the three presses of kaldi they had put away during their long, draining conversation imparted twitchiness to her already rattled nerves, rather than bringing alertness and clarity. She felt better, after listening to his side of events. That Fennec and her second father had thwarted Keun-ju from accompanying her out of typical old-man objections to her being in love with her Virtue Guard wasn’t all that surprising, but trying to convince her that Keun-ju had betrayed them to her first father was a dick move too far. If Zosia hadn’t shown up when she did, Keun-ju would still be stuck on Hwabun, and Ji-hyeon might have given up on him altogether.

  Yet even after hearing that what Sullen had suggested, what she had hoped, seemed to be the truth, her mood was somehow tart instead of sweet. So she had sent Keun-ju off, his pouting lip protruding through his sheer veil, to give herself time to digest everything. A good night’s sleep would set her right… if she could ever manage one.

  Keun-ju. How many times had she imagined their reunion? In her mind it had always involved a frantic stripping of clothing, jamming her tongue in his mouth to stop the flood of achingly earnest poetry, and then a furious fuck. This would be followed by a second, leisurely, completely relaxed undertaking, such as they had never been afforded under her parents’ roof. As general of the Cobalt Company, she could bed whomever she wished, they could doze off in each other’s arms, and no one could stop them… But their romance in Hwabun now seemed a lifetime ago. The Princess and the Virtue Guard was a song she knew by heart, but seeing him here, the same old Keun-ju he’d always been, while she had become a totally different woman…

  As if that were true. Rolling onto her back, she stared at the dark dome of her tent where Fellwing clung. Loath as she was to admit it to anyone, herself most of all, she hadn’t really changed all that much. She was still getting all gooshy over forbidden boys, wasn’t she? Being real, as Sullen would put it, wasn’t the truth that she felt weird about Keun-ju returning because she had finally gotten over him, finally felt the warm appeal of somebody else’s regard? She loved Keun-ju, she did… But if that were true, why wasn’t he next to her in bed? Why was she wondering how Sullen felt? Why did she miss the boy, when it had only been a day since she had last seen him? He had all but run from her tent as soon as he realized who Keun-ju was, and had made no attempt to call on her… Not that it had been very long, but still.

  Also, hey, what about the war she was waging? What about all the lives that depended on her? What about all the lives she intended to claim in her quest? What about that shit? Rolling back over, she buried a furious shout into her pillow. She immediately felt better, but then a concerned voice called from just outside her tent:

  “General?”

  “I’m fine!” she replied, scolding herself for being so childish. She was lucky the guards hadn’t stormed her tent, overhearing a muffled scream in the dead of night!

  “Can we come in, or you come out?”
called the guard, and Ji-hyeon sat up in bed, trying to keep her annoyance focused on herself rather than the people sworn to guard her life.

  “I’m coming, I’m coming,” she said and, fumbling around in the dim tent, found the bulky coat Sullen had forgotten in his haste the night before. Sliding her arms into its cavernous sleeves, she stumbled into some sandals and emerged into the night.

  “Sorry, General,” said the guard, quickly rehooding her lantern after blinding Ji-hyeon with it. “I thought I heard something. Very sorry.”

  “Yeah yeah,” grumbled Ji-hyeon, hoping it was close enough to dawn that she could just stay up. “What watch is it?”

  “Second, General,” said the other guard. “Just after midnight.”

  “Hrmph. Look, I’m going for a walk, but I don’t want you two crawling up my ass.”

  “Of course, General,” said the first guard. “Let me grab somebody from the back of your tent to replace us.”

  Ji-hyeon stomped in place to warm up, the icy stars overhead casting a wan light over the camp. There was still a bit of revelry taking place, distant songs and laughter reaching her as they had back in the west wing of Hwabun, when her parents had sent her to bed before a party ended… But in this quadrant of the camp all was quiet. When the guard returned with two others, Ji-hyeon took off at a brisk pace toward a small but steep hill that stuck up from the tents like a single tusk jutting from a fang-filled maw. Fellwing reeled back and forth above her, a deeper swatch in the quilt of moonless night.