He tightened his arm around her waist. They had been like this since Lark left: in contact but not connected really, their discussions always about the trip. He wanted to talk about the baby, but the potential for a misstep was prohibitive, and no one needed to hear them fight.
“Dunno,” he mumbled.
“What if we miss it? Darkness Day.”
“It's fine. Not like the Palace is goin' anywhere. Goin' in during the Darkness Day celebration jus' feels...right, though. Y'know?”
“Like it's supposed to happen. Destined.”
“I wouldn't go that far.”
“No?” She tilted her head to look up at him, the white scarf loose around her chin and her cheeks reddened by the cold, and he found himself leaning in as if drawn—as if her lips had a gravity of their own. To be hip-to-hip like this but unable to do anything, say anything...
“It's not destined,” he murmured. “It's jus'...convenient.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I wouldn't say planning to walk a hundred and fifty miles in three days is convenient.”
“Well, it's better than doin' this in the summer.”
“Do you feel more powerful? Than when we started, I mean. The dark parts of the year are supposed to be better for you.”
He looked away to find the draft-hog of the next wagon gazing at him with adoring black eyes. With his feet dangling off the ground, he couldn't feel its life-force, but certainly felt its attention. He was just glad he had figured out how to mute the Guardian's aura enough to keep every animal in a league's radius from crawling into his lap.
“Hard t' tell,” he said. “It's only been a couple weeks since I was unbound, and with everythin' happenin'... I feel more in control, I guess. Mostly.”
Fiora pursed her lips. “So you don't have any sort of impending-victory feeling?”
“I've got a colony of moths in my gut.”
“That's nerves.”
“I know. And I don't think I'd have nerves if I was destined to win.”
“So you think we'll lose?”
“Lemme ask the gut-moths. Oh gut-moths, I beseech you, tell me—“
She rammed him with her shoulder, snickering, and he swayed with it then pushed back against her. With a squeak, she slid into Arik, who had been snoozing with his cheek against the porch wall. The skinchanger made a disgruntled sound and automatically leaned into the push.
“Augh, you're squishing me,” said Fiora.
“You started it,” replied Arik.
She responded by mashing his face with her palm. So he licked it.
The ensuing tussle nearly knocked all three of them off the ledge, and ended with Cob pulling Fiora bodily across to his other side before Arik could get too snuggly. Yawning, Arik slung a brawny arm across Cob's shoulders and said, “Jealous?” while Fiora righted herself, still giggling too hard to speak.
Flushing behind his scarf, Cob said, “No.”
“Ooh, lies. You wanted to get closer to me.”
“We can share,” said Fiora, and rested her head against Cob's shoulder with a wide-eyed look of adoration. Arik did the same on the other side. Cob considered jumping.
“Uh oh, he's got the grumpy face now,” said Fiora.
Cob exhaled heavily and made a conscious effort to let it go. He had always felt like there was a line drawn across his heart, over which he might stumble at any time and transform everything that was fun and bright into agitation and annoyance. Which was fine—he understood the concept of boundaries—except that his line kept moving, like it was explicitly trying to trip him.
He hated it, but he was learning to manage it.
“And now it's a...sad face?”
“'M not sad,” he mumbled.
“It's all right, you can be sad. I'm sad.” Fiora settled against him better, getting comfortable. “I miss Lark and Ilshenrir. And Rian. Even Dasira.”
“Thought you two hated each other.”
“We don't. Well... I don't. I can't speak for her.” She shrugged. “In honesty, I respect what she's done—not the murdering parts, but the self-determination, you know? The defiance. It's impressive. We could never be friends, but as a Breanan I can appreciate that kind of fire.”
“But you're not a Breanan.”
It just slipped out. Feeling her stiffen, he could have punched himself. But she didn't shout; she just sighed, her breath warm against his shoulder. “I am in my heart. Even if the goddess will no longer have me, I... That's what I want. I'm sorry about the baby. Sorry we messed up and sparked this new life when we probably don't have much time ourselves. And I've compromised myself; Brigyddians aren't allowed to do harm. I wasn't thinking, and I...I...”
“Hoi,” said Cob softly, concerned. She looked up at him with watery eyes, and when he pulled her close, she buried her face in the front of his white robe and gave a stifled sob.
“Hoi, Fiora, shit,” he rasped, “y'couldn't know. And it's my fault too. I didn't even think about it, and the Guardian did pike-all.”
“I'm the one who came to you in Haaraka, Cob.”
“So what? Y'can't make a baby on your own.”
“But—“
“But nothin'. I was into it too. Maybe I didn't think we were close enough t' make the first move, but I was happy enough when y'did. And I know it's been patchy since. There's jus' so much goin' on in my head, it's hard to concentrate on the real world—like I'm not allowed to. I have to deal with Enkhaelen first, and then, if there is a then...”
She nodded slightly. “You're right. The mission first. I have a duty to my former order. If using a sword means I'm breaking my vows to Brigydde...well, I didn't pledge to her anyway.”
Cob pressed his face to her hair, not sure what else to say. They had their own roads to walk, and whether they would stay parallel or diverge, or end, he couldn't begin to guess. He wouldn't be the Guardian forever, and who could gauge the state of her faith?
He'd let her go, if she wanted that. Was there something wrong with him? Love wasn't supposed to be so easily given up.
I don't love her.
Then why did his heart twist like her fingers in his robe? Why was it so comfortable to stay like this, and so difficult to pull away?
On his other side, Arik still rested against him, alert but unspeaking. Loyal to a fault. It pained Cob to think that either of them would follow him into the disaster that awaited—the disaster that Enkhaelen and the Guardian had cooperatively created for him.
I'll beat you both, he thought. I'll pull my friends through this alive, and we'll dance on your graves.
Nevermind the aftermath. Nevermind the ruins. They would slip through the cracks in the falling empire and escape into obscurity, the victorious vanished. That was winning, to him.
*****
Later in the day, the winds picked up. Granular snow and sand sheeted against the wagons, forcing Cob and his friends inside to stew among their fellow travelers. Conversation was stilted, the old folks reminiscing in bits and tatters, and the clubfooted woman was not at all pleased to be seated next to Arik and often elbowed him away. Cob grimaced as he watched the skinchanger scoot further and further into the corner, but Arik did not complain or look to him for help. He seemed accustomed to such things.
For the first time, Cob found himself wondering where Arik had come from, and how he had ended up at his side. They rarely talked, and he'd never asked. He resolved to do so soon.
Fiora stayed slumped against him, more to avoid the old woman at her other side than from any need of comfort. Her tears had dried swiftly—her nature too sunny to sustain them—and she drifted in and out of sleep, hand alternately clutching his robe and slumping limply to his leg. She snored a little too. He thought it was cute but the old couple on the opposite bench kept glaring at them.
Lunch came in the form of smoked meat, buns, butter and jam provided by the caravan, and there was enough of a pause to piss off the side of the road. Fiora, muzzy and a bit cranky, insisted on standing guard f
or the old people in case someone fell, and Cob wondered if that was Brigydde already rearing her care-giving head.
Or perhaps she'd always been like that. They'd never been together around other people, and Cob didn't think that way. For him, dignity and privacy outweighed infirmity; he'd rather be piked than have someone waiting on his business. But they had to rescue one old man from a snowdrift and corral the vague-eyed boy when he started drifting toward the woods, and while it annoyed Cob, it seemed to awaken something in Fiora. By the time they reentered the wagon, she was chattering away with the clubfooted woman—a widow from Thyda.
Yendrah, as she introduced herself, was bound for the Palace to deliver her sister's soft-headed son and herself to the healing judgment of the Light. “We should have done it years ago,” she expounded, “but my sister thought perhaps he'd grow out of it, and we never had someone to take him before. With my husband gone to bones now, I've no further responsibilities toward my clan.”
Cob saw Fiora sit forward, eyes bright with the urge to argue, so he covered her with, “How'll the Light fix him? I mean, the Light burns away impurities, it doesn't, um...”
“Give wits?” said Yendrah, then chuckled and clapped her placid nephew's shoulder. “No, it won't make you clever or pretty or strong. Not on its own. You have to be worthy of the change. The Light burns away the bad to clarify the good, and this boy has plenty of good. Soon he'll be as he always should have been.”
In his mind's eye, he saw the throne room open up to swallow Ammala Cray and her kin, and his throat tightened. “It...fixes people?”
“Of course, child. What did you think?”
“I'm not here for fixin'. Not sure about...” He looked around at the older folks, dimly aware of a baseline of pain and illness from all of them. The old man at the end of his bench was asleep again, jaw hanging open and a half-chewed samarlit leaf stuck to his lower lip; the others ate gingerly from age-spotted fingers, their bodies brittle and birdlike beneath their robes. None had escorts, and he couldn't recall the faces of those who had brought them to the wagon this morning—there so briefly and then gone.
“Well, not everything can be fixed,” said Yendrah matter-of-factly. Crossing her meaty arms over her chest, she surveyed their companions and said, “You must not be from a clan that requires this. Yours do cremation?”
He blinked. “Uh, no. Sky burial.”
Her eyes narrowed, and she grunted something in the Ridvan dialect that the Guardian translated as 'accursed bird-fuckers'. Then she said, “The way to the Light ain't through the sky. It's through the Palace. When our elders are too weak to be of use, they take the pilgrimage to bask in the undiluted radiance of the Light and shed their bodies like ash. Your folk leave them trapped in their corpses, waiting for the birds to peck them free.”
That's not how it is. Souls escape immediately; birds just eat the meat. But Cob knew better than to start that argument. He almost wished Lark was there to witness him not sticking his foot in his mouth.
“I didn't know that,” he said instead. “So what about you?”
She gestured to her twisted foot. “I've been destined for this since birth, my boy. My mother was too soft-hearted to send me off as a child, and I was useful enough for looking after the babies once I was older. Even got wed—just had to take care not to catch. But now I've got the flutter in my heart, the aches in my bones, and someone has to take Kirim to the Light. If it clarifies him, he can make it home on his own.”
“You're going there to die?” said Fiora.
Yendrah gave her a pitying look. “I'm going to pledge myself. I've already set my affairs in order. My life from now on is at the command of the Light and our Emperor. And what about yours? Why do you bear swords on the pilgrimage?”
Cob reached automatically to touch the wrapped-up pair of weapons stashed behind them on the bench. “We're goin' to get them blessed. To be prepared to fight the Darkness if it rises up.”
“Are you a soldier?”
“Yes.”
“And you, my dear?” She looked Fiora over critically. “You're a sturdy girl. You want to fight too?”
Fiora lifted her chin. “More than anything.”
“A shame you're Amandic—you are, yes? If you were Riddish, you could've declared yourself a man. Or are the Amandic militias allowing women now?”
“Any hand is welcome in a crisis.”
“True enough. I wish you the best.”
For a moment, Fiora looked startled. Then she smiled ruefully and inclined her head. “Thank you. And...and I for you.”
“Most kind.”
The silence that followed was almost comfortable, the road beneath the wagon smooth enough to lull them toward sleep. Cob rested his head against the wall and stared into nothing, trying not to think. Trying just to relax for this peculiar stretch of peace.
He knew it would be brief.
*****
The caravan halted in the early evening. Snow still gusted down from the hills to the north, so instead of setting up bedding within the wagons, the caravan-owners had most of the passengers move into the shelter they had reached. Cob and his friends declined; it was not a large building, though it was built more like an inn than the open-plan shelter they had found in the wilds of Amandon. The caravan-master seemed happy enough to let them stay in their wagon with its little stove. Yendrah, her nephew and the elders all disembarked, though not without a knowing look from the big woman.
“I wonder if she thinks we're all together,” murmured Fiora as they waited for the last pilgrim to climb down.
“Well, we are.”
“No, I mean together-together.”
Cob glanced to Arik, who gave him a flirty look and an eyebrow-waggle that could not have been more exaggerated. Irritation rose—then abruptly deflated, and he found the nerve to say wryly, “We have been sleepin' together.”
The way Fiora beamed at him made him feel like a dog who had learned a trick.
The two of them wrapped up in blankets provided by the caravan-master, while Arik shucked his gear and begged off of dinner in order to go hunting. Cob watched his tail disappear into the white with only a thread of worry. By now, he knew the feeling of Arik's essence well enough to find him across any distance, and was sure that if he let the Guardian's aura flare, the skinchanger could find him too.
After he locked the door, he and Fiora made good use of their time alone.
*****
The wind slackened on the second day, though snow kept falling as if sifted through a sieve. The trio sat outside as much as possible, more comfortable with the muted blankness of the world than the presence of the others. They went long periods without talking, just watching the hills decline in the north and the inkwood forest scroll by, thickening and then thinning into slimmer, crooked-spined trees.
“The Daecian Swamp,” Fiora murmured once, as the wagon clattered across a bridge over a frozen stream. The land beyond just looked like forest to Cob, though a forest full of trees bent nearly double by their load of snow. When he squinted, however, he could see ice beneath the white, and telltale hummocks rising here and there.
To the southeast, the hills mounted toward the Trivestean Tableland. The carter on the next wagon pointed out that on a clear day they could see Valent, standing at the border between the Amandic plains and the hill-country, but this was not such a day.
Around mid-morning, a cry went up from the lead wagon: Keceirnden. Cob leaned out from the ledge to squint ahead, but saw only sun-glare on snow. It took a mark or so for the wagons to pull up to the walls, then another for the gate guards to make their way down the caravan checking travel papers.
Then they were pulling in, past low walls and into streets so packed with people it was a wonder they could move. Everything was awash in white: white robes, white festival bunting, white banners hanging from the high walls of the fortress that guarded the northward road. Even the non-pilgrims, bustling about their own business or trying to flog merch
andise to the crowd, were doused in white, from bonnets and feathered hats to snow-cloaks emblazoned with the rising phoenix. Among them, soldiers in Gold and Sapphire uniforms stood out like jewels.
In this crowd, it was pure luck that Cob spotted a white-armored, blank-helmed soldier—and even luckier that the soldier was striding along as if on patrol, and never glanced at the wagons. “Pikers blend right in,” he muttered to Fiora, who grimaced.
They ate their last free meal with the rest of the pilgrims in the caravan company's stableyard, all lined up on benches with the eldest set near the smoking braziers. Cob tried not to stare at their neighbors, but he couldn't ignore the obvious trends: maimed men, hard-eyed women, bent old folks and moon-faced children, and more than a few wearing grey mourning veils. A white-eyed priest came by to bless the food and the travelers, and though Cob thought for sure that they'd be found out, the man passed them without incident.
Afterward, they said their farewells to Yendrah. “From here, we all walk,” she told them. “I wish we'd started sooner, but it took my sister forever to decide. Alas, we probably won't make it for the First Dawn celebration, but I'll be glad to get there any time during Midwinter.”
“The wagons don't go any closer?” said Cob.
Yendrah scoffed. “Never. The point of the pilgrimage is to travel the White Road on your own two feet, be granted entry at the gates, and gaze upon the face of the Scion of the Light. It is not to be driven like a tourist.”
As they headed toward the street, Fiora took Cob's arm. “We'd planned to walk anyway,” she murmured. “This just means we'll be even more a part of the crowd.”
Cob nodded, trying to figure out where to go. He had never seen such throngs—not even in the Crimson camp. The balconies of the two- and three-story buildings were just as full as the streets, and signs hung over nearly every door to advertise vacancies or a lack thereof. Streams of people moved in all directions, often blocking wagon-traffic, and the buzz of chatter and commerce and prayer made his ears ache.
The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) Page 77