by J. V. Jones
No one trusted anyone. Ash had learned quickly to keep her hands and eyes to herself. It didn’t do to look too long at anyone or stand too close to a man selling hot food or cold beer.
Still, Ash thought, rising from the bench and stepping into the street, Almstown was a good place to get lost in. No one cared about finding the Surlord’s ward. There was money in it—Iss had offered a crow’s weight in gold for information leading to her capture—but the inhabitants of Almstown didn’t think for one moment that any fine lady from Mask Fortress would ever find her way here.
Ash had heard people talking about it. Women joked that they’d dye their hair with lye, bandage their breasts, and go and claim the reward for themselves. Men spoke in hushed voices, murmuring about the Rive Watch, forced searches, torchings, and how Marafice Eye had blinded a carcass gutter for claiming, wrongly, that he had seen Asarhia March enter the Bone Temple and ask the tall and silent priests for asylum.
Ash shivered. Sometimes she wondered if Marafice Eye hadn’t done such a thing just so news of it would reach her and make her afraid.
Determined not to be afraid, she headed south through the butcher’s market and onto the paved streets beyond. When the pale, straight-as-arrow forms of the Horn and the Splinter drew her eyes, she did not look away. At this distance they were the only structures within Mask Fortress that were visible. Ash knew that all she had to do was head north for a few streets to lose sight of the Horn, but she had yet to find one street corner, alleyway, or ditch within the entire city of Spire Vanis from which the Splinter couldn’t be seen. In a way it was a good thing. All she had to do was look up into the southern sky to see the reason why she had fled.
Before she pulled her gaze downward, she couldn’t help but linger on the sloping roofs, flickering watch towers, and hammered iron domes of the southern skyline. At the farthest point south lay Vaingate.
Vaingate. The last built and least used of the four city gates. Ash didn’t know how many hours she had spent imagining what it would feel like to walk through the limestone arch and onto the mountainside beyond. Vaingate was her one connection with her mother, the only thing they shared. Both of them had passed through that gate.
Ash took a breath and held it. All her childhood dreams had begun with her standing outside Vaingate. She imagined finding the place where she’d been abandoned, running her hands through the loose scree and dry brush, and finding something that no one else had found before. Some bit of parchment, a rusted locket, a scrap of fabric, anything that she could hold and say, This once belonged to my mother. In her more elaborate dreams, she’d find something that told her who her mother really was, and she’d search the city and find her, and her mother would turn out to be warm and glowing and utterly good . . . yet she never had a face. Ash smiled bitterly. She saw the dreams for what they were today.
There was no hidden marker waiting for her on Mount Slain. Her mother had set her down to die; she would have left nothing that could give her away. It was a sin against the Maker to abandon a healthy child. And even if she had dropped something—a hairpin or a ribbon or a bit of lace from her dress—sixteen years of snow and floods would have washed it clean away.
Ash continued to look south. Even if she went there and found something, there was no telling whom it had once belonged to. Besides, it wasn’t safe. Vaingate was too close to Mask Fortress. No one but sheep drovers, hunt parties, holy men traveling to the Cloud Shrine, and healers in search of mountain plants passed through. She would be spotted the moment she drew near the gate.
Somehow, despite everything, Ash found herself moving south. Five days had passed since she’d escaped—enough time for the Rive Watch to grow bored and ease off the hunt. They had a whole city to search. How could they possibly watch over every street corner and marketplace? I’ll just get close enough to look. It was midnight. She could cross the city and reach the gate before dawn. As long as she stayed clear of Mask Fortress and the watch towers, she’d be safe.
Gradually she increased her pace. Walking with her head down and her hand on her hood, she avoided all contact with strangers. When she drew close to the massive shantytown of animal hides, elk bones, and ice-rotted timbers that had grown up along the city’s west wall, she altered her course to avoid it. The smell of deer fat, dung smoke, and thousands of unwashed bodies was enough to keep her away. Even from a safe distance, she could still see the massive circle of snowmelt caused by the heat and the filth.
The farther south she traveled, the cleaner the city became. Narrow streets gave way to wide causeways and smoothly paved squares. Brightly lit taverns and coarsehouses were replaced by limestone halls and tightly shuttered manses with bronze doors. Fewer prostitutes stood warming themselves by charcoal braziers, and fewer drunks urinated against walls. Even the snow underfoot grew lighter—not white exactly, but certainly gray.
It took Ash a full five minutes to walk past the unlit facade of the Quarter Court, where the grangelords stood in judgment of all crimes except treason. It had been built by the tenth Surlord Lewick Crieff, Lord of the High Granges, whom everyone called the Halfking, and his badge of a half-moon shining above the knife-edge peak of Mount Slain was cut into every limestone cap, ledge, and corbel. After checking to see if anyone was watching, Ash stopped and rested her back against the black, soot-encrusted stone. She was growing tired, and tiny hobnails in her whore’s boots were cutting into her feet. Ash cursed the bidwife who had sold them to her, thought for a moment, then cursed all whores as well. She was beginning to wonder if heading for Vaingate had been a good idea.
Ahead lay a vast cleared space surrounded by a circle of standing stones known as the Dreading Ring. Six gibbets stood in the center of the circle, massive T-shaped timbers forming a dark scaffold against the sky. Justice was swift in Spire Vanis, and once a man or woman had been convicted of a crime, he or she was marched straight from the Quarter Court and punished in the stone circle for all the city to see. No one was ever hanged—the grangelord’s executioners were chosen for their skills with knives, not rope—but the bodies were hauled up later to feed the crows.
All but one gibbet was empty. The small body that was roped there hung like an empty sack. A sharp burst of wind made the rope creak and set the body swinging.
Ash edged back along the wall, suddenly unsure of herself. Running away had been a mistake. She had nowhere to go, no one to help her, no plans beyond the need to survive. Soon she’d run out of money . . . then what? She had no skills. Her description was posted around the city. Many of the brothers-in-the-watch knew her by sight. Pushing back her hood, she took a long hard look at the gibbets. Her scalp was hot, and sharp edges of newly cut hair prickled her skin. She longed for the safe enclosed space of her chamber, for Katia’s endless chatter, warm baths, sweet food, and clothes without rough edges. She wanted her old life back.
Abruptly she pushed herself off from the wall. She had made her choice five days ago, and giving in because she was tired and her feet were aching and she didn’t like the look of the way ahead was stupid. Stupid. She would carry on walking. She would go to Vaingate and see the place where she was abandoned and then found.
Kaaw! Kaaw!
Ash jumped as the shadow of a raven glided over her face. Looking up, she saw the great bird swoop down from the roof of the Quarter Court and soar toward the gibbets. As it entered the circle of ancient stones, it rolled its wings, catching an updraft that lifted it almost vertically alongside the occupied gibbet. Hovering for a long moment, it jabbed its bill into the face of the corpse and pecked out some bit of sinew that snapped like a snake as it came free. With the morsel held firmly in its bill, the raven beat its wings and rose to the top of the gibbet. Settled, it threw the strip of sinew into the air, caught it, and gobbled it up.
With its throat muscles still working to push down its meal, the raven swiveled its neck and looked at Ash. Bobbing its head up and down, it clucked and cooed like a mother hen.
Come. Joi
n me. Good flesh.
Ash shivered. Although she didn’t much want to, she took a step forward, then another. The snow was sticky under her feet, streaked with tar and spilled blood. Moonlight poured into the stone circle, running like liquid silver along the crossbeams of the gibbets. The wind dropped as she neared the center, and for the first time all night she felt the cold. The bird, black as the bricks at the back of a hearth, fussed and cooed until it came to rest by the occupied gibbet.
The body was strung up by cordage as thick as a man’s wrist. Tarred ropes wound between its legs, around its neck, and under its arms. It took Ash a moment to realize the body was naked, as the flesh was stained dark by what might have been excrement or mud. Crows had been pecking for days, and the soft flesh of the belly had been opened and the guts spilled. The eyes were dark holes, picked clean. Teeth roots showed where lip and gum tissue had been torn away. The head was shorn.
Ash swallowed softly. It was a woman. It hardly looked it, as the breasts were gone and the genitals were obscured by a knot of rope and clotted blood, but what was left of the waist and hips formed a slack pouch of curves. Frightened, Ash gazed upon the face once more.
That was when she saw it. A lock of hair caught in the rope. Dark, curly hair.
Promise to take me with you when you go.
Ash took a step back. No . . .
Moonlight shifted, and shadows on the corpse’s face fell into place. Ash saw the high curve of a cheek, the dimpled hollow of a chin.
Why, you’re wicked, miss. Plain wicked!
Ash began shaking her head. Her stomach churned and churned until she thought she might be sick. The corpse, the thing that was and wasn’t Katia, watched her with dead eyes as it swung upon its rope.
Katia! Katia! Katia! The raven took to the air, beating its knife wings, screaming and triumphant as it vanished into the night sky.
Ash did not know how long she stood in the stone circle, facing Katia’s corpse. Not long enough, a small voice told her. If you stayed here forever, it wouldn’t be long enough. When a gray sun began to rise in the east and the city started to creak to life, she turned and fled north . . . deserting the little maid one last time.
TWENTY
Duff’s
They rose before dawn and headed southeast. High winds blew, creating a snowstorm from old frozen snow. Raif pulled his fox hood over his eyes and mouth so only his nose showed. The small specks of taiga he saw through the fur were all he needed to guide his horse. The wind came from the north and blew at his back, and it seemed to push him away from the clanhold.
Angus took the lead, taking Raif along gullies and over frozen ponds, finding trails long lost to the snow. Neither he nor Raif spoke. They sat, hunched low on their horses, and suffered the battery of the wind.
Raif’s bowhand was swollen, and the skin on his fingertips had begun to shed. An ugly blister, dark and bloody as a kidney, had formed on the heel of his hand. Every time he grasped the reins to make an adjustment, pain made him close his eyes. Beneath the fox fur, his mouth set in a grimace. Well, that would teach him to go axing wood on a night as cold as hell.
After six hours spent in darkness, dreaming violent unspeakable dreams, the biting whiteness of the snowstorm and the mindless monotony of riding through the taiga were a relief. Raif had risen before Angus. He had heated fat and stock from the ptarmigan in a small tin pot, and while he was waiting for the steam to thin, he had made the only decision he could. Clan was behind him now; remembering it, longing for it, believing that somehow in the future he would find a way back, were things he could not allow himself.
He had fixed his own fate, and now he must live with it. He was no longer part of the clan.
He had thought long and hard about discarding his lore, of throwing it in the iron stove along with the remainders of the last meal or taking it outside and burying it in the snow. But each time he grasped it in his hand and pulled on the twine, he heard the old guide speak.
It’s yours, Raif Sevrance. And one day you may be glad of it.
So Raif kept it. He rode, his thoughts sealed as deeply as cached meat, his raven lore a cold bit of horn against his skin.
Half a day passed with no relief from the storm. The snow, rolled to hard pellets by the wind, rattled like hailstones against the trunks of stone pines. Great clumps of snow dropped from overhead branches, dislodged by the violent push and pull of the air. Raif did not hunt. His right hand wept pus and blood into his mitt, and the storm created a whiteout. Yet almost against his will he found himself searching for game.
Even on a day like this living things were out in the forest. A weasel, white and sleek as a dish of milk, watched Raif’s passing from the cover of a paper birch. An ice hare popped its head out of its burrow, its cheeks puffing as it drew breath. In the overhang above a frozen stream, a snagcat broke shrew bones with a single snap of its jaw. Raif was aware of all these things, swore he saw them, yet when he peered through his fox hood, little more than the white haze of snow on the move met his eyes.
Darkness came early. The wind died with the light, leaving the forest feeling hollow and used up. All the trees had been stripped of snow, and many of the first-year saplings were snapped and broken. Overhead, the sky shifted from gray, to charcoal, to black.
Angus led them to the strip of taiga that bordered along the Southroad, and they followed the road’s path from a discreet distance through several hours of darkness. Wagon tracks, horse dung, bones, and cast-off scraps littered the road, reminding Raif that soon he would come into contact with clansmen. In fine weather, taking a direct route, a man could ride from the Blackhail roundhouse to Duff’s in a single day. Even the Dhoonehouse was only four days’ hard ride from Duff’s, and Gnash and Dregg were nearer.
When the glow of Duff’s Stovehouse finally appeared over the rise, Raif was stiff with cold. His neck ached with a hard, nagging pain, and his hand burned. Angus made a signal, and they cut onto the road. Quarter of an hour later they reached the stovehouse.
Duff’s was a stocky building with rounded walls and a rounded roof. Built from great, tree-size elmwood timbers and banded with iron staves, it looked like a giant beer barrel knocked on its side and sunk deep into the snow. Two doors led inside. The largest led to the stables, and Angus and Raif headed there first. Raif brushed down Moose and the bay while Angus exchanged quiet words with the groom. The groom was young, blind in one eye, and he spoke with a soft, hesitant stutter. Raif had seen him many times over the years, but until he watched Angus speak with him, he had never seen the young man laugh or smile. When the exchange was over, Angus grasped the groom’s hand and bade him, “Stable the horses near the door.”
Raif glanced around the dark, well-ordered stables. Over half of the two dozen boxes were occupied, and a handful of sturdy cobs and mountain-bred ponies stood in the lean-to outside.
It was a long walk to the stovehouse’s second door. Piles of newly dumped snow mounded along the stovehouse walls. Hoarfrost sparkled on the timbers, and high upon the roof, where the brick chimney cut through the wood, snow could be heard hissing and sputtering as it melted.
Heat, smoke, smells, and sounds blasted against Raif’s face as he pushed open the door and entered Duff’s. Even as his eyes worked to grow accustomed to the light, his mouth watered at the smell of charred fat, elk meat, and onions. Normally at this hour someone would be singing and some crusty old clansman would be blowing the pipes. People would be laughing and arguing and gaming recklessly, yet although over thirty men and women sat or stood in the bright, wood-walled stoveroom, they kept themselves in small groups. Raif recognized a small party of spearmen from Clan Scarpe, their hair either black by birth or dyed that way, their weapons sheathed in intricately plaited cords that were designed to show the sharpness of their blades. A man and woman from Clan Gnash sat warming themselves by the great brick and metal stove. The woman wore her waist-length red hair unbound in the manner of all Gnash women. She was dressed in soft pig
skin pants, and the belt around her waist was weighed with the Three Daggers: one horn, one steel, and one flint. A great circle of Dhoonesmen dominated the room. Massive men, they were, with blond hair, full beards, and blue ink tattooed into their faces. Strapped to their backs, waists, thighs, forearms, and calves were their weapons. Steel as perfect and brilliant as running water sent knifelight flashing through the room.
“Step away from the door, lad,” murmured Angus close to Raif’s ear. “Let’s not give the patrons too long to think on who we are, or why we’re here.”
Raif, as if woken from a trance, obeyed his uncle’s order and made his way to the back of the room. Talk, which had come to a dead halt the moment he and Angus had entered, resumed with the hushed frenzy of cockroaches escaping from light. As Raif picked a bench to sit at, as far away from the stove as it was possible to be, Angus exchanged nods with the stovemaster.
Duff had a bit of every clan in him, at least that was what he claimed. He was the hairiest man Raif had ever seen, and in his youth he had been famous for his teeth. Logs, barges, carts, carrion, and sleds: With a rope between his teeth, Duff had hauled them all. His teeth were still splendid to this day, and as he brought over a tray steaming with hot shammies, hot beer, and hot meat, he grinned broadly, revealing surprisingly small but perfectly even teeth. Raif remembered Tem asking Duff once how he had got his teeth so strong. “I used to crush pond ice with them,” he had said.
“Angus! You old dog! How long’s it been?” Duff’s brow reflected a moment of strenuous thought as he loaded his goods on the table. “Aye, I canna be bothered thinking. Too long, that’s for sure.”