Snowtear

by S. B. Davidson

“Ever hear of a needle in a haystack?”

  “In all fairness, it would be two needles. Much better odds.”

  “Oh, in that case, this isn’t stupid in the least,” Uther said.

  As Uther gave a perturbed huff, they passed under a twenty-foot archway of oak. Posted at the rarely-closed city gate, four guards in matching, blue, boiled leather tunics hardly took time away from their card game to take notice of Riken and Uther.

  “Makes you feel all manner of safe,” Riken said when they were out of earshot of the negligent sentinels.

  “Hardly any cause for worry,” Uther said as the cobblestone road faded to dirt and began its decline toward the docks. “Mountains on all sides and a frozen sea to her east, Winter Moon is the most secure city in all of Cryshal. Even Freedom, with its saffrom wall, holds not a candle to it. Security detail is more a punishment for braggarts than a requirement. Let them allay their boredom how they wish.”

  “Wish I could find someone to pay me to mill about playing cards,” Riken said, though he knew Uther had the right of it.

  In the ten thousand cycles since its establishment after the Three Races War, Winter Moon had never been successfully raided. The monumental feat had only been attempted once, when the leader of some great Southern Tribe had set his sights on the glorious city, with its overabundance of resources and minerals. The man, Estorr Grannt, had sent fifty thousand warriors into Keltion’s Vision, where they’d ransacked the Southern portion of the city and stolen a hundred ships. Another forty thousand able-bodied soldiers, Grannt had sent into the Pristinus Mountains to assail Winter Moon from its west. Of those who’d braved the treacherous Frozen Sea, only ten of the great vessels reached Winter Moon’s shores. Archers, pyrons, and aquarians painted the coast crimson with the blood of their five thousand remaining crew before the invaders’ swords ever had chance to meet the opposition. The forty thousand sent into Pristinus, their cries of battle never fell upon the ears of Winter Moon’s unconcerned public. For cycles afterward, hunters and explorers would occasionally come upon their remains. They weren’t given proper burials.

  “Now, where would I be if I was a needle?” Uther asked the air around him.

  “Well, don’t you have a fine disposition this morn,” Riken said as they rounded a shallow hill and the Frozen Sea came into view. “Enjoying the company of your new houseguests, are you?”

  Uther snorted, but even with the sun reflecting off the icy water and assaulting his vision, Riken had little trouble noticing the huge man’s face flush red. Riken knew Jatta and her mother had been staying with Uther since the fire at her place. He also knew the man had a soft spot for women in need. From then until they reached the docks, Uther kept his snide comments to himself.

  The first thing one noticed about the docks was its deficiency of boats. The next was the pungent smell held hostage in the air.

  The layer of ice glistening on the Frozen Sea’s surface was at least a foot thick this time of cycle, and would only grow deeper as fall gave way to winter. Their lifeblood’s lack of hospitality was little hindrance to the local fishermen. Thirty yards northeast of the docks, around a hundred wooden shanties peppered the glacier veneer. Sheltered within, fishermen cut openings in the floorboards, chopped and drilled holes until they reached water, then hauled in as good a day’s catch as any of their ilk in Cryshal’s warmer climates.

  At day’s end, they towed their haul to the large processing house on the south end of the docks that paid by the pound. From there, the fish were divvied up and circulated among a few dozen meat shops in the city, which packaged it, sold it to citizens, and circulated it into the multitude of inns throughout the city.

  Couple the aromas of the fishhouse, the lumberyard, and the three vast warehouses that stored goods brought in twice a cycle from Crystalline – spices, furs, produce, fine apparel, weapons, lumber, liquors, and books – and it bred a musty, fishy, spicy fragrance disparate from anything any nostrils on Cryshal could ever experience elsewhere.

  “Where to first?” Uther asked, his face having mercifully returned to its natural hue.

  “Judging by the clay you found,” Riken said, staring north, “I figure my two friends worked the lumberyard.”

  The lumberyard was a colossal, two-story, stone building that employed about three hundred workers. In it, they processed vast amounts of traded timber as well as that harvested from Pristinus.

  After waiting for a couple wagons carting crates to pass by, Riken and Uther crossed the dirt road and headed toward the sounds of chopping and sawing. The way was easy enough until they reached the clay fields, where Riken’s boots started sinking into the blue earth. Every step was an ordeal, and following each sucking sound, Riken cursed himself for wearing his new boots on this trip. Once, the ground swallowed his entire foot, and he fell forward. Uther, having no such difficulties, gripped him by the shoulders and jerked him out of the muck, smiling when Riken had to wipe his blue hands on his new trousers.

  “Smirk all you want,” Riken said, digging at the grime between his fingers. “Least I own things nice enough to mess up.”

  Uther let the comment go, but didn’t offer his hand the next time Riken plummeted to the ground.

  When finally they reached the lumberyard’s wide, redwood porch, Riken turned back and spat on the offending field of clay.

  “That’ll learn it,” Uther said.

  Riken said nothing, only sat on one of the benches fastened to the railing and began removing the excess grunge from his clothing with hard angry slaps. When he’d formulated a tall pile of the blue clay at his feet, he stood and looked at Uther.

  “Missed a spot,” the man said, tapping his nose.

  Riken touched his own, and immediately realized the folly when he felt a missed gob of clay from his finger smudge all over his nose.

  “Ass,” he said, tipping his head and wiping at his dirty nose with the bottom of his silk shirt.

  “There,” Uther said. “Now you got it. Where to? The foreman?”

  Riken shook his head. “Nay, man’s got a few hundred men and women under him. He wouldn’t no more recall two of their faces than he’d know how to birth a baby from his own loins.”

  “So?”

  “So…there,” he said, pointing to a shoddy pine building on the other end of the long porch.

  “Alehouse?”

  “Aye. A foreman might not know his own crew, but a barmaid knows ever last thing about the boys who fill her coin purse, from what they like to wet their whistle with to how they like to wet other things.”

  Uther nodded his agreement.

  The sign atop the alehouse read “Woodland” and, presently, housed around fifty off-duty yarders happily spending whatever meager wages they’d just been paid. The floors were choked with sawdust, wet with blood and sweat and cheap ale. All the patrons wore heavy overcoats and huddled around two hearths on differing ends of the spacious room to stave off the gelid sea winds blowing through the curtained windows. Someone had gotten the idea that dozens of stripped animals skulls fixed to the walls was a choice decoration scheme. If they’d taken the time to ask him, Riken could’ve told them it wasn’t, but they hadn’t, so the grotesque adornments remained. Each set of hollow eyes stared at him as if their downfall had been his doing.

  Riken maneuvered through the tight throng to a bar that looked like it had been pieced together by a couple of toddlers with shorter than average attention spans. Uther’s substantial girth would’ve made his progression harder if people hadn’t been so kind as to move politely out of his path. Riken wondered why he himself was never paid such respect.

  The barmaid had a red birthmark in the shape of a leaf covering one whole cheek. She probably didn’t care much for it, but it did her the considerate service of drawing the eye away from rest of her ugly face. She had stringy, ashen hair and a thin, slightly crooked nose. She wore a heavy, cotton dress of faded black and looked like she hadn’t met a person she liked in at least three cen
ts.

  “Whatta you want?” she demanded in a deep drawl, not bothering to look up from the wooden cup she was washing with a dirty rag.

  “Two mugs,” Riken said, weighing the threat of disease from drinking out of the filthy cups against his considerable thirst.

  “A kyn’ll buy you four,” the woman said, “unless you’d like some black bread to go with ‘em.”

  “Four will be fine. We’ve mighty thirsts.”

  “Two of you new to the yard? Your friend there looks like he knows his way ‘round hard labor, but you…?”

  “Me?”

  “You look like the thin scraps that end up floatin’ in the Frozen.”

  “Nicest thing anyone’s said to me in weeks,” Riken said as she poured two mugs of ale.

  “Huh?”

  “We’re not workers, Min,” he said. “We’re looking for a couple, though. Thought you might be able to help us.”

  “Their names?” the woman asked, surprising Riken. He’d figured on having to work much harder to pry information from this tight-knit circle. Maybe the smell of coin drifting off him overpowered the stink of fish.

  “Don’t have their names, but I can describe them to you.”

  The woman placed a mug on a shelf behind her, grabbed another, then gave Riken a look that said she didn’t have time for dawdling. Riken obliged her need for fleetness, not wanting to keep her from her important duties. Halfway through a rough description of his two attackers, the old woman dropped the cup down on the bar.

  “Afraid you wasted a trip over from the good side o’ town,” she said.

  “Why’s that?” Riken asked.

  “They’re dead.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “But then, you already knew that, huh?”

  “I need to know who they were, Min.”

  “Name’s were Firth and Wenton Glaison,” she said, narrowing her eyes at Riken and gnawing at her bottom lip. “Good boys, they were. Wenton, he was the blonde one. Firth had the freckles. Hard workers, those two. Thoughtful, paid their tabs on time every week, never started fights. Was mighty sad to hear of their bad end.”

  “Glaison?”

  “Aye. So you know how they died?”

  “I heard tell,” Riken said.

  “Torn apart by vicious animals,” she said, shaking her head, causing the loose skin of her neck to jiggle. “Tore their poor mumma up somethin’ awful, I hear.”

  “Their mumma?” Riken asked, leaning on the dusty countertop.

  “Aye. Saintly woman, that Be’. Good mother to those boys. Raised ‘em right, I’ll tell you. Hate to think what she’s goin’ through now. I wouldn’t know, never having young ‘uns of my own, but it’s gotta be terrible to go through this all over again.”

  “Again?”

  “Aye,” the barmaid said. “Be’ lost a young ‘un some time back. Little girl, if I remember right, went missing. Just terrible what that woman’s been through, and now this to top it off.”

  “Be’ Glaison?” Riken asked.

  “Aye, Beatrix,” the woman said, replacing another mug. It didn’t look much cleaner than when she’d started. “Saintly woman. Raised them two right.”

  “You said that.”

  The woman eyed Riken for a moment, as if she couldn’t figure out if she’d just been insulted or not. “That’ll be a kyn for the drinks, then you two can go.”

  Riken fished a coin from his pocket and spun it on the bar, then nudged Uther with his shoulder to draw the man’s attention away from a well-endowed yarder with curly, brown hair in a thick, bearskin overcoat. Uther looked none too pleased at breaking eye contact with the maid, but he downed his ale in a gulp and followed Riken out.

  On the deck, staring out into the silvery vastness of the Frozen Sea, Riken’s mind whirled. Beatrix Glaison? Could it be the same woman? The beautiful dance of the afternoon sun’s rays playing on the ice was lost on him as Riken contemplated what the old barmaid had told him.

  “What?” Uther asked, staring out as if he might ascertain what Riken was looking at.

  “Beatrix,” Riken said, more to himself than to his friend. “She had a daughter.”

  “Lot of women do.”

  “She went missing.”

  “Seems to be happening a lot of late.”

  “This was a long time ago,” Riken said.

  “So?”

  “She’s their mother. Was… their mother.”

  “The two who attacked you,” Uther said. “This Beatrix was their mumma?”

  “Aye.”

  “And you think you know her?”

  A brisk wind swept through their path, biting at Riken’s face. He grabbed the ends of his overcoat, hugged himself as they made their way back toward the lumberyard.

  “I think so, aye,” he said.

  “We going to talk to her?”

  “Think we’re going to have to do more than talk,” Riken said, suddenly feeling as hollow as the eyes of the ancient beasts back on Woodland’s walls.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sefen answered the Ullimars’ door.

  Riken would’ve taken more pleasure in the abrasions on the manservant’s face if he didn’t have more pressing business weighing him down

  “Good day, mons. Come for more accusations and intimidation?” Sefen asked as Riken and Uther entered.

  “Fresh out for the time being,” Riken said, handing his overcoat to the man, who draped it over his arm. “Stick around, though. I’m sure I could come up with some if you’d like.”

  “Perhaps later.”

  “Exactly.”

  Cool as the underside of a pillow, Sefen asked, “What can I do for you fine gentlemen?”

  “We need to speak with Beatrix,” Riken said.

  “In reference to?”

  “In reference to our own fucking business, friend. Where is she?”

  “I’ll go and fetch her,” Sefen said.

  “You do that,” Riken said as the manservant placed their coats in the hall closet, then flittered off to retrieve the woman.

  “Don’t like that man,” Uther said when they were alone in the foyer.

  “Doubt his own mother does,” Riken said.

  As they waited, Riken used the allotted time to look himself over in a silver-framed mirror hung on the wall above an antique writing desk and mourn his soiled attire. Mon Pomitear would never go hungry with him as a customer.

  Uther stood staring at his own reflection in the freshly-shined, marble floor. Despite his imposing size, the man seemed wholly intimidated by the opulent surroundings. Funny, Riken thought. In the Arena where Uther earned his prize money, even taking on three fierce combatants at once wouldn’t warrant a moment’s anxiety. But besieged by a roomful of overpriced furniture and paintings dating back to before his great grandparents shed their swaddling clothes, he fidgeted like he was staring down the mouth of a lion.

  Riken considered mentioning the absurd illogicality, but that might be like goading a cornered dog, and his bones were still sore from his encounter with Beatrix Glaison’s offspring. He wasn’t sure if the compensation for mocking his friend’s discomfort was worth the probability of bodily harm.

  “Mon Snowtear,” Beatrix said, coming through the archway from the hall and dispelling Riken’s conundrum.

  “Min Glaison,” Riken said.

  The plump elderly woman’s face sagged at the sound of her surname. The act seemed to age her an extra fifty cycles. She stared at the two men for a long moment.

  “Let’s sit in the den,” she said. “The Min doesn’t like the help to be in there unless we’re polishing the floor or dusting the furniture, but she’s upstairs bathing in wine at the moment, and I doubt I’ll be on their coin much longer, anyhow.”

  “Whatever you wish,” Riken said, then he and Uther followed Beatrix down the hallway.

  In the den, Beatrix asked, “Can I get you anything to drink? It’s possible the Min hasn’t disposed of it all.”


  “Nay, Min,” Riken said, waiting for her to sit on the leather couch, then taking a seat in the matching chair. Uther, looking no less at ease in the enormous room, remained standing, fiddling with an errant thread on his wool pants. “You know why we’re here then?”

  “Aye. Though I figured with your reputation, you would have come around sooner. I guess the rumors of your prowess have been somewhat exaggerated.”

  “That, and unforeseen complications in the form of club-wielding callers to my door,” Riken said, crossing his legs.

  Beatrix frowned sadly, closed her eyes.

  “For that, I would apologize,” she said, “but…”

  When a lone tear blinked from her eye, Riken said, “My apologies for your sons, Min. I had no other recourse.”

  “They wouldn’t have killed you. I just wanted to scare you.”

  “You succeeded.”

  “They were good boys,” she said, her voice cracking for the first time. The slip seemed utterly foreign to her.

  “I’m sure they were,” Riken said, at odds with himself for pitying the woman responsible for his brutal attack. Looking at her, he didn’t see the hardened criminal he’d figured he would when encountering Sage Ullimar’s kidnapper. He saw a frail, beaten mother, bereft at the loss of her two sons. The authoritative aura she’d carried on their trip to Anastasia’s home was gone, replaced by overwhelming defeat. Riken pushed his sympathetic feeling aside, determined to focus on the task at hand. “Min, where is Sage Ullimar?”

  Beatrix lifted her head, opened her eyes, swallowed hard.

  “She’s gone,” she said, her head dropping again as if tied to the weights of a merchant’s scale.

  “You…”

  “Nay, I didn’t kill her.”

  “Then?”

  “It’s true, I did take her,” the old woman said. She put her hands together in a peak, then sunk her face into them, covering her broad nose and mouth. “I…I wanted them to feel what it was like…to lose a child. I just wanted them to feel a small portion of what I’ve lived with for so many cycles, since they…but I didn’t mean for…I didn’t know.”

  “Didn’t know what, Min?” Riken asked, uncrossing his legs and leaning forward in the chair. “Where is she?”