by K. Eason
“Well,” Aneki repeated. “Snowdenaelikk. Can’t say I expected to see you at my back gate.”
“Aneki. Let us in, yeah?” Snow wrapped her fingers through the bars. Put her face next to Briel and looked pointedly at Aneki’s blouse. “We can all see it’s cold out here.”
“Ha. Funny, aren’t you? Why don’t you open it yourself? Easy lock for your skills, I should think.” Aneki was already stepping out into the yard, dragging her orange hem into ruin. She hiked the lantern higher, so that Briel hissed and hopped back onto Snow’s shoulder. “We, is it?—Hush, Briel. Who—oh. You’ve brought me a present.”
“His name’s Veiko. I need a place to put him, yeah? So the whole Warren’s not talking.”
“See why.” Metal rattled. The gate started to swing open and stopped, with Aneki’s hand on the bars. “That’s a dog.”
“Yeah. That’s Logi.” Snow shoved the gate, once and again, when Aneki wouldn’t yield. “And he’s better mannered than most of the soldiers you let in the front door.”
“The dog, or the skraeling? All right, Snow. It’s a joke.” Aneki swung the gate open. “But if it destroys anything—”
Veiko stopped, with his hand on the lintel for balance, and looked at Aneki with that unnerving, un-Dvergiri directness. “I will pay for any damages.”
“Toadshit you will.”
“Now, Snow. Let him talk.” Aneki shifted her stare to Veiko. Sucked her lip thoughtfully. “I could ask how you’ll pay, couldn’t I? What you can offer?”
“Aneki.”
“But I think Snow will gut me.” A smile, which collapsed as Veiko took his first unassisted step. This time her stare was all for Snowdenaelikk, cool and measured and worried, yes, because Aneki wasn’t half as cold as she played. “Tsabrak do this to him?”
“No. No. Just a bad wound, yeah? Poison and fever.”
Aneki cocked her head. “That hardly disqualifies Tsabrak.” But she let them through the gate, swept around them, and beat them back to the door. Held it wide as Veiko struck out in a hobble that helped neither wound nor pain. That was pride, fuck and damn, and he’d bleed for it if he tore out his stitches.
Snow crossed stares with Aneki past Veiko’s shoulder. Then Aneki took his elbow as he came up the steps, as if she helped filthy outlanders into her back door every day. Didn’t blink as Briel oozed onto his shoulder, no, reached up and scratched Briel’s chin, and Snow watched Veiko’s spine loosen a little bit.
“I have just the room,” Aneki told him, and tucked in tight against his side. “It’s a short way up this hall. Very nice.” She drew him off with a professional’s grace while Snow coaxed Logi into the hallway. The dog’s nose worked madly, eyes wide, ears flat, all the fur on his shoulders ruffed and stiff. He startled as she reached around him. Yipped and spun toward the door as she kicked it shut.
“Logi.” Snow crouched. Took a handful of hair and skin and dragged him close and stroked him calm again, one arm hooked around his neck.
Laughing God knew where the new boy had gone. Up the side corridor, probably, fled with tales of skraelings and half-bloods in the garden.
“Domina?”
Or lurking in the shadows and surprising her and Logi, who lunged and snarled and reminded her that he’d only seemed small beside Helgi.
“Logi!” which made him stop, and “Idiot!” for the boy. Snow called up a witchfire. Raised it up so she could see his face. The blue flame snagged in the fine silver links of his collar. Laughing God, he was young. Alvir, because Aneki bought nothing else, and male. Well. Illhari troops were mixed sex, and tastes varied, and Aneki was too smart to specialize for one side or the other. One thing Aneki relied on was that Dvergiri didn’t mind fucking Alviri, even if they paid for it, so long as they washed it off after. Call that an old grudge. Call it justice, maybe, for the Ten Thousand. Aneki called it lucrative. She might even let the boy buy his freedom in another dozen years.
“Have a name, or should I call you dogmeat?”
The boy’s eyes rolled white. “Esa, Domina.”
“Esa. I’m Snow. This is Logi. Do you think you can find him something to eat, or shall I set him loose?”
“I—yes, Domina.”
“Smart boy. Bring it”—she jerked her chin down the hall, where Aneki’s chatter floated thick as the smoke from the braziers—“wherever she’s going. Can you manage?”
“Yes, Domina.” Esa fled, a patter of thin house shoes and the rattle of fine chains.
Domina. Fuck and damn. Only in Still Waters would a half-blood rate that title. Aneki had been born to the collar, the daughter of an Alvir slave sold and traded out of Illharek. Bought her freedom here in Cardik by serving the same troops who made her fortune now. Proud woman, Aneki, of her business and her freedom and the pale scars on her throat she flaunted like jewelry. Damn right she’d insist on domina from the staff.
And for a woman in orange silk and too much perfume, she’d vanished far too easily. The corridor was silent, except for Logi’s panting. Maybe Aneki’d discovered how heavy a tall man could be, leaning on her, and given up on her chatter. Maybe Veiko had fallen and dragged them both down. Snow imagined that for a moment—tangled silk and leather and Briel flapping free and indignant—and smiled. And then she stood and moved fast, because Veiko alone with Aneki was as safe as a flatcake with Briel.
But she found Aneki alone around a bend in the hallway, and Veiko nowhere in evidence. Behind the partly open door, presumably, that Aneki guarded with a ring of keys in her fist. She twitched her skirt aside as Logi darted past her. Frowned at the wet pawprints on her tiles.
“Sent your friend inside,” she said, no trace of chatter or chirp. This was business-Aneki, who knew trouble when it limped through her door. “I’m afraid for my linens.”
“Bath’s next.”
“And I’m sure you don’t want the public chamber.”
“His people are modest.”
“Mm. Right. I’ll clear a private room. Pick the one with the open curtain, yeah?”
“Thanks.” Snow brushed a kiss on her cheek. “Owe you.”
“I’m protecting my linens.”
“Speaking of. We’ll need something to wear, too, while our things are drying.”
“His size? You don’t want much. What else?”
“Privacy. Food. For the dog, more than anything. I asked Esa already.”
“Esa.” Aneki sniffed. “Boy’s a gossip. I’ll send someone else, after you’re done polluting my baths.”
“Discretion, Aneki.”
“Reckoned that. Who’s after him?”
“No one. Yet. But there might be a soldier who comes looking for me, or a pair. The woman is First Scout Dekklis. Smallish, highborn, accent straight out of Illharek’s Tiers. Pretty face. The man’s Istel. They’re all right. I’ll want to talk to them.”
Aneki’s eyebrows climbed. “Strange company. I’ll send a messenger, then. You’ll be at your flat?”
“I’ll stay with Veiko,” which she hadn’t intended, until the words slipped. “My responsibility, all right? Whatever he does.”
Aneki laughed, without sound or humor. “How long do I have you both, then?”
“I don’t know.”
“Better and better. And Tsabrak?”
“Doesn’t know I’m here. Or about Veiko. I’ll go see him when this storm’s over.” At least a day’s grace, there. Maybe more. Time enough to collect her wits and her temper and figure what the hell she’d say.
“Oh, he won’t like it, you staying here. He really won’t like Veiko.”
“Since when do you care for Tsabrak’s opinions?”
“I don’t. You do. Or you did.” Aneki tossed her hair. Tipped her chin back, so that the old collar scars gleamed like silver around the long column of her throat. “Is this going to bring trouble?”
“For me? Maybe. For you? No.”
“I’ll hold you to that.” The keys chimed as Aneki fingered through them. She unhooked one
half of a pair, heavy and brass and notched. “As if my locks could stop you. Still. This will be simpler. Here.”
“You’re sure?”
“No. Take it anyway.” She took Snow’s hand and pressed the key into her palm. Folded her fingers over them and squeezed. “Anything changes—if there is trouble—you tell me, yeah?”
“Yeah. Swear it.”
“Mm. You’re going to owe me for this.” A pause that wasn’t at all accidental. “Is he yours?”
Which took Snow a wit-scattered moment to figure, staring at Aneki’s merchanter eyes. She hadn’t thought she’d the energy left for that kind of anger, which she squeezed down to ice and civility:
“Veiko’s not anyone’s, yeah? And he won’t be.”
Aneki looked less certain now. “Just a question, that’s all. The man’s hurt, nothing says you didn’t pull him out of slavers’ hands—”
“I didn’t. Long story, yeah? Not the time for it.” The anger disappeared like smoke in a draft. “Thanks, Aneki,” she said, and brushed past, before she lost any more temper. She eeled through the door and kicked it shut and leaned against it.
Much warmer in here, with a fresh-kindled firedog and the hot springs’ heat throbbing up through the stone. Veiko hadn’t sat, whatever Aneki had told him. Standing in the middle of the room, as if bench and bed might attack him. Close enough to the door for listening, too, and his scowl had a new shape to it. Snow pretended not to notice. Looked at Briel instead, who’d abandoned Veiko’s shoulder for the firedog’s hearth. The svartjagr had her wings stretched to soak the heat, a living curtain. Veins spidered through the membranes, crosscut by quicksilver scars. Neat lines made with a fine-edged, sharp knife, knit by fine, small stitches, that wouldn’t show at all without the fire’s backlight. Snow remembered a much smaller Briel, victim of a highborn student who’d thought he could build wings like a svartjagr’s if only he could see how those wings worked from the inside. She’d spent a good chunk of her life stitching wounded things back together. Veiko was just the latest. At least he wouldn’t bite.
She sighed. “You can take your gear off. Aneki’s clearing us a bath. She’ll bring us something so we don’t have to walk around naked. Not that this place would notice.”
He didn’t move.
“Veiko, for the Laughing God’s sake. If there’s some kind of taboo about sharing, get past it. It’s not as if I haven’t seen you—”
“That is not it.”
“No? Then what?”
His mouth leveled, pulled tight by the knot in his jaw. “I do not want you bearing my debt.”
“There’s no debt. Aneki and I trade services, yeah? Soldiers get rough with the bondies. Women get pregnant. Sometimes there’s babies, sometimes there aren’t, and either way, I help. This place sits over the hot springs. Best baths in Cardik, unless you’re up in the governor’s villa.”
“I will pay whatever’s owed,” dogged, stubborn. “I heard her say you would owe her.”
“Shouldn’t listen at doors, yeah? Didn’t your mother teach you?”
Anger flickered in those witchfire eyes, which made her remember what he’d done to outlaw himself. Anger, and a wounded, tattered pride. “I am not a child.”
“Yeah? Couldn’t tell, the way you’re bleating. Sit down.”
He stiffened. Sank into a silence as cool as the wind and turned and limped to the bench, oh so carefully, and lowered himself onto it. Graceless thump when the bad leg gave out. He said a word in his own language, whose meaning she guessed. Then he got to work stripping harness and gear and axe, sharp efficiency that left no doubt of his anger.
Snow took herself on a circuit of the chamber. One large space, all open, with a narrow, shuttered window. That, for Briel’s sake, another of Aneki’s kindnesses. Except there was a draft coming through the cracks, and a ribbon of melted snow on the sill. That was why this room had been so conveniently vacant. At least there were blankets on the bed, on top of Aneki’s precious linens. Room for at least three people in that mattress, too. Snow perched on the edge of it. Leaned her elbows on her knees and watched Veiko peel the boot off his good leg. Dropped it, so that the slap of wet leather on tile made Logi jump.
Ask if she’d hurt his feelings, and expect no honest answer. She had Briel to confirm that she had, all muttered chrripps from the hearth and a cool disapproval that stung almost as badly as watching him reach for bootlaces on the end of a leg that would not bend far at the knee, that had swollen since midday and strained his leather pants shiny. Sweat gleamed on his cheekbones, above beard scruff and dirt and sunken eyes. Pain there, and pride, and hell, he made her chest hurt.
Snow levered off the bed and went and knelt in front of him. Did not look at him, did not cross the stare she knew he was drilling into the top of her skull. “Look. I’m sorry. Shouldn’t have said that.”
“No need,” very quietly.
“Listen, Veiko, there’s no—”
Shame, she almost said, and changed her mind. There was, and that was exactly the problem. Not the first time she’d undressed him, was it? Just like a child. Ask if the man had any pride left as he winced and looked somewhere else as she worked the boot off his foot. She touched his good knee as she stood, as if she needed the balance. Kept her hand on him until he looked at her, weary and wary and more naked than she’d ever seen him.
She turned away, for both their sakes. Peeled out of her own gear and draped herself in a blanket before he’d worked himself free of shirt and sweater and breeches. She watched him sidelong. Offered a blanket when he was done, and a hand to help him up. He took both without comment. Stood and wrapped himself decent and took the hand back on the second offering. Leaned on it, and her, the whole slow trip from bedchamber to bath.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Sixth’s remainder limped into Cardik the morning the snow stopped. Dekklis found out when a mila whose name she couldn’t remember burst through the barracks door and almost got Istel’s javelin through the gut for his efforts.
“The fuck,” Istel snarled as the mila gasped, “The Sixth,” and sagged against the door. “Thought you’d”—gasp—“want to know.”
“Thanks,” Dekklis said on the way past, at a jog her ribs wouldn’t forgive. They hadn’t reported any injury to the garrison’s chirurgeon, who would not have believed Istel’s neat stitches were Dekklis’s work. Claimed fatigue, that was all, and she’d treated Istel’s wound the way Snow had showed her, and masked her cracked ribs with slow movements.
She ran now, and rot the ribs, down corridors and steps slick with snowmelt. Dodged a line of wounded incoming, litters and limping and bandaged. Hell and damn, there were a lot of them. And worse, in the courtyard: stacks of canvas, body shaped, in the slush and mud. She did a fast count. Fully a third lost. Her throat ached. Her stomach did.
“Shit,” said Istel, and then, softly: “Alviri.”
She’d thought he meant among the bodies. And then she saw them, a huddled knot by the gate. Rurik and an optio stood with them. One of the Alviri had a fistful of Rurik’s sleeve.
“Who the hell are they? Davni’s survivors?”
Hell and damn. “Davni had no survivors. The Taliri must’ve hit other villages.”
“Think that’s why he stayed out? Collecting refugees?”
“And corpses,” Dek said grimly. “Praefecta’s going to eat him.”
Praefecta Stratka might. She’d already taken report from Dekklis and Istel, sat behind her desk and stared through laced fingers and asked about Davni and the estimated size of the Taliri raiding party. She hadn’t looked at all convinced, but she’d sent patrols out and lit the watchtowers anyway. Good bet she’d believe in raiders now, with all these bodies.
Or she’ll flog Rurik for incompetence.
Conservative family, Stratka. Even after the Purge, they had voted against the Reforms. It was a mark of the praefecta’s waning familial influence that she’d ended up posted at Cardik. And there were old blood feuds
between Stratka and K’Hess, from before and after the Purge. The legion was above that, the Republic’s good before Houses, oaths to that effect and still. Dekklis had no doubt at all that Stratka’s seventh daughter would strike at K’Hess’s third son if she had both opportunity and legality behind her.
And if she caught the youngest Szanys-daughter in that same strike, well, all the better. No love between Houses Stratka and Szanys, either.
Dekklis angled for Rurik, Istel behind her.
“First Spear!”
He wheeled. Saw her and Istel and aimed for them while the optio beside him waved and talked to empty air for another five paces. Grief and exhaustion and horror hollowed his eyes above his customary scowl. But he still managed that K’Hess Rurik wide-shouldered, squared-up challenge Dekklis associated with uncut highborn males who’d managed any rank and wanted everyone to notice.
“Where—” he began before he’d even stopped moving. Dekklis risked career and skin and interrupted.
“Listen, sir. Before you talk to Praefecta Stratka. Want you to know what we saw, and what we didn’t tell her,” low-voiced, while Istel intercepted Stratka’s optio and sent him on another errand, with an un-Istel “Move, idiot” and an even more un-Istel shove.
Rurik settled into that cold stare that he must’ve learned from his mother. “You say you lied to the praefecta, First Scout?”
“Omitted some details. Sir.”
“Omitted.”
“The praefecta.” Dekklis wasted a gesture, waved a hand at sky and walls and milling bodies. “She might misunderstand the significance of all this. You wouldn’t. You won’t. So I’m telling you first.” Treading close to insubordination, yes, and to the limits of an uncertain temper.