“Exchange.” Fentris’s voice was flat.
“You’re still Tamrani.”
“Of course. I must have forgotten. We trade in information.”
Hunter picked up a discarded bag of dried fruits and tucked them back in the bin. He said mildly, “Sarcasm doesn’t suit you.”
“Actually, it seems to be wearing well this season.”
Hunter snorted. He hesitated, then asked abruptly, “What happened, Shae, when Joao died?”
Fentris stilled. Then he went on packing his gear. “I’m sure you’ve heard every version that made the rounds. Likely, one of them is true.”
Hunter murmured, “He always said, if he died by violence, it would be your hand on the blade.”
Now Fentris did turn and stare at him. “And you believe that? That I’d stab my own, my only brother in the back, just to get the title?”
“Did you?”
“Go spin a chak, Brithanas.” Fentris turned his back, and didn’t see Hunter frown thoughtfully at him. He made his voice carefully bored. “What kind of information do you have to offer?”
Hunter glanced at Nori again, then said quietly, “Land is changing hands, and not in traveled districts. Businesses are being bought where they can’t possibly make a profit. There have been too many convenient deaths in town this year. I know of six myself, and have heard rumors of others. I’ve had word of others now, among property owners, people who would never have sold their land, but whose land went up for auction after they died. The lots are all along the same two lines leading in and out of the city.” Fentris looked up at that, and this time Hunter caught a flicker of surprise. “But you knew that,” he added softly.
Fentris nodded slowly. “You keep a closer eye on the family stores than I thought.”
Hunter shrugged. “It’s a shortsighted man who doesn’t watch for power shifts near home.”
“And land is power,” Fentris murmured.
“Someone is readying the land for changes that will reach across the county boundaries.”
“And you’re going to the Ariyens?” Fentris’s voice was dry. He lifted the edge of a towel from a rack to see if there was something useful behind it. “Since when do Tamrani alert others that there’s money to be made?” He dropped the towel and looked around in exasperation. “Aren’t there any fresh meatrolls?”
Hunter’s voice was equally dry. “Trail rations are exactly that, Shae: rations. Try the jerky.”
“Damn stuff is addictive,” the slender man muttered. But he had noticed that the wolfwalker was ready to ride, and he quickly filled his pouch with the smoked meat and another packet of trail mix. He glanced at Hunter. “You’re worried now,” he murmured. “Worried enough that you’re not just going to council to pick the elders’ brains. You’re actually thinking to ask the Ariyens for help.”
Hunter reached over to secure the grub box Fentris had left unlatched. “Yes,” he admitted. “Whatever is going to happen will center in Ariye. There’s no other reason to buy up the land around the county outskirts.”
“You want a partner,” Fentris guessed. “Someone who knows the middle counties, who has contacts across the trade routes. An Ariyen with ties to the council.” He followed Hunter’s gaze toward Nori. “And you’ve got your eye on the Wolfwalker’s Daughter. On Jangharat. On Black Wolf.”
Hunter didn’t deny it. She’d be perfect for what he wanted. Raised among the cozar, she had an unquestionable reason to travel wherever and whenever she wanted. She had contacts across the nine counties to rival a forty-year trader. Hells, her parents could not have created a better county spy if they had planned her life from the womb. The young woman was practically an undercover elder. She ought to be, he thought. For generations, her family had held positions in the councils, the guilds, and included some of the most competent weapons masters in decades. She was as close as one could get to being born to a council seat even if she avoided those duties like plague. All of which meant that she had knowledge of which she wasn’t even aware—knowledge that he could use.
Fentris had been watching his cool green eyes, and recognized the look. “She won’t agree to go with you,” he said softly. “They don’t call her Nori No-Elder for nothing. Rumor has it she’s been denying her own council for years, and you’re as close to being a councilman as Sidisport ever spawns.”
“She might change her mind if she thought the information worth it.”
“She’s more likely to walk away. She’s apolitical, Brithanas. She ignores alliances like a rock does the sand. If she’s seen any unusual shifts through her scouting, she’s not likely to share them with you.”
He straightened and studied the slim Tamrani. “What was it that caught your attention, Shae? That made you notice the shifts?”
Fentris hesitated. “A man’s death.”
“Someone important?”
Something flickered in Fentris’s dark eyes. “No,” he answered in a bored tone. “No one at all. Just a clerk who supported his mate, his three children, his crippled brother, and that man’s son.”
Hunter had the grace to look uncomfortable. “I see.”
“No.” Fentris suddenly sounded tired. “I don’t think you do, Brithanas. But that’s really not the issue. I’ll be gone in a day, on Willow Road, and you can go back to your games with Black Wolf.” He stalked away to finish his business packing up his gear.
Hunter’s green eyes narrowed as he watched the man walk away. Then he thought of the wolfwalker’s father, of that cold, chiseled face and watchful grey eyes. Of her mother’s stubborn defiance in keeping her last two children away from her own council tasks. Hunter could read between the lines: the council could have the parents, if they left the children alone. Fentris wasn’t wrong. This young woman would do almost anything before taking on an elder’s duty. Yet she’d dealt with four raiders as casually as if they were roasted rasts on a stick, and she’d spoken to Hunter and Fentris as if they were bickering children. Right now, as she waited impatiently, she had pulled out her borrowed map and was studying it intently, and for what? Trail notes? He had nine days, he figured, before they hit Shockton. Nine days to get into her head.
He watched her for a long moment. “Jangharat,” he murmured. If his family had any influence at all among the Ariyen elders, she’d be working with him before the Test ninan was over.
At the corral, as Sley adjusted the stirrups on Nori’s dnu, the boy glanced at the two Tamrani and took the chance to prompt Nori, “You haven’t told us your name or title.”
“I have not,” she agreed shortly. Her headache was dulled, but not so much so that tension, like that between Fentris and Hunter, couldn’t spike it. Her neck also prickled with the wolfsense. Rishte had circled the camp with her until he now lurked in the shadows by the road, making her want to growl at the city youth who lurked by the rails, trying to be inconspicuous as he listened in.
Sley asked, “You said you were a scout, but you’re a wolfwalker, aren’t you?”
Nori ran her hands down along the legs of the dnu, checking for burrs. She kept her voice low. “One doesn’t have to be a wolfwalker to run with the wolves.”
“But the pack brought you here,” Sley persisted. Lispeth poked her brother, and he shushed her as he said to Nori, “The Grey Ones out there now, on the road, waiting. I can just see them from here in the light.” He waited a heartbeat. “Are you? A wolfwalker?”
“Sley,” Lispeth hissed.
He shook his head at the girl, but he kept his voice low. “You heard her before. She holds to the courtesies. She’s cozar enough.” He turned back to Nori. “Three questions.”
Nori straightened and regarded him in an uncomfortable silence.
By the fire, Hunter glanced over and swore under his breath. Nori was looking at Sley as if she was about to strike the youth. Fentris noted their posture at the same time and started to hurry his steps, but then both men stopped themselves. They glanced at each other, then waited to see what the
wolfwalker would do.
“Three questions,” Sley persisted. “Are you Dione?”
With long practice, she kept her face expressionless. “No. That’s my mother.”
The boy nodded slowly. “Then you’re Black Wolf.”
Nori adjusted a long knife at her waist and shrugged.
Sley watched her carefully. “They say you won’t Test to your rank. That you haven’t for six years. Why not?”
Lispeth winced. The cozar girl entertained notions of Two Silence, which the wolfwalker could invoke at any time for asking inappropriate questions. Two days of absolute silence, in which they could not even confess their discourtesy. But this was Dione’s daughter. Everyone would know what they’d asked.
Nori regarded Sley for a long moment. Then she smiled, slowly, but the expression was somehow chill. “Because I have only eight ninans to live.”
“Then what happens?”
“Sley,” Lispeth wailed quietly. Four Silence would be a shame they would not live down for a year.
Nori continued to smile. “Then my world ends, and my mother’s world begins.” Her voice was quiet as she caught the girl’s wince. “It’s alright, Lispeth Shepherd Night.”
“Are you—” Sley started.
Nori cut him off with a small gesture. “Three questions, three answers.”
The young man caught sight of the Tamrani watching them and felt his neck darken. His questions may have been within cozar law, but they had not truly been courteous. On top of that, the taller Tamrani had been obvious enough about the wolfwalker, and one didn’t cross the Tamrani. The boy handed Nori the reins, and his younger sister grabbed his hand and towed him angrily back to the fire.
Nori leaned her head against the warm dnu. Eight ninans, she thought. Two months till she turned twenty-three and was formally out of the Test ranks. Till she began to walk in her mother’s footsteps, trying to cure the plague. Sley wanted to know why she wouldn’t Test for rank within the county like the other youths her age. She shook her head to herself. In two months, when she turned twenty-three, she would face much more than a simple Test. She would face her mother-mother’s people, the Aiueven of the north. She took a breath and straightened. Payne and youths like Nefsky and Sley worried about Test and their Journey assignments. Nori worried about survival.
She looked to the shadow where Rishte waited. He growled in her head, and her lips curled back. It was all about strength, she told herself. She had better find some soon.
She mounted and waited impatiently for Fentris and Hunter to join her.
“Ride safe,” the cozar driver told them as they wheeled their dnu.
“With the moons,” she returned. Then they urged their dnu to a smooth, six-legged trot onto Deepening Road.
*
At fireside, one of the Test youths could barely contain himself with what he’d overheard. “That was Black Wolf. Dione’s daughter,” the young man repeated to the others.
Sley dropped down beside his father as the older man murmured to neLivek, “The Heart of Ariye runs true.”
Neither man asked the boy to leave, and Sley tried to sit straighter beside them, but his eager words spoiled the effect. “They say she doesn’t run alone. She’s always with her brother. How much would you bet that she doesn’t tell Dione what she’s been up to tonight?”
Rocknight Styne raised his eyebrows. “Dione would find out if she doesn’t know already. A mother always does. It’s Aranur the girl wouldn’t tell.” He tossed the dregs of his drink onto the coals and listened to them hiss.
“True enough,” neLivek agreed. “Aranur, now, I’ve met that one a few times.”
The city youths listened avidly. NeLivek had been up and down the counties for six decades, while Rocknight had been driving a wagon for more than a hundred years. Both men could tell tales that offered more than one spike of fear.
Rocknight refilled his mug with hot rou. “Aye, he’s a dark one, Aranur is. Dark and dangerous.”
“Remember one time in Ramaj Eilif, he rode into a raider camp by himself and came out with their hostage. Not a shot fired, and twelve people dead on the road behind that band. He never said what he told them, but those rasts rode for the Bilocctar border like they had a Tumuwen winter on their heels.” He shook his head. Each time neLivek had met Aranur, he’d come away thinking he was more than relieved the man was not his enemy. “Always was dangerous, that one.”
“As you say,” the driver agreed. “Even before the Wolven Guard. Bred true, he did, like Dione. You could see it in her eyes.” He indicated the night where Nori had disappeared.
The other cozar nodded in turn.
“Worlags,” one of the Test youths breathed. “And right through the raiders, and all to rescue two wolf cubs.” He grinned at the others. “Now that’s worth some gold to a songster.”
“No.” Rocknight Styne’s voice was sharp, and the town youths looked at him in surprise.
“She is cozar,” Sley said firmly.
“If she wants it told,” his father explained less curtly, “she will tell it herself. We have no right to spread her stories, except amongst ourselves.” He let his gaze travel around the circle. “Remember that,” he said flatly. The city youths met his eyes uncomfortably, but finally nodded.
“Cozar custom?” one of the youths asked hesitantly.
“Cozar right.” The other man’s voice was unyielding. He gestured for the youths to prepare for bed, and they left the fire for their bedrolls.
NeLivek murmured, “She’s not really cozar. She’s always been Randonnen.”
“She was raised with us till she was sixteen.”
“Except for that year in Ariye.”
“Aye, but that wasn’t a good year or she wouldn’t have come back to the wagons.” Styne kicked a log and sent a spiral of sparks up into the night.
NeLivek grunted. “Warm still for the hour.”
“Aye, that it is.” Rocknight settled back on the bench.
The other man chewed on his toothpick. “Heard that a small pack of raiders hit Winn’s train over near Black Bottom Creek. Killed four people, including two elders who were heading north for the Ariyen meetings. The whole train will be delayed for a ninan. Might be the same bunch Black Wolf saw at Bell Rocks.”
The driver murmured his answer, and the fire crackled down in the night.
XIV
If you must work against your reputation,
Perhaps you should try working on it.
—Randonnen proverb
It was two hours past dawn, and Payne’s group had just reached the base of Stone Ridge. There wasn’t much left of the wolf den that had once been safe for the pack. The earth was dug out; the smaller boulders had been turned and tumbled as the worlags clawed after the scent of newborn wolf. The remains of some of those worlags testified to Nori’s presence. She might not have hurried on the way to the den, but she sure as all nine hells had been sprinting to leave.
Payne wrenched her longknife from the midjoint on a worlag carcass. A few minutes later, he found one of her boot knives in the rocks. It was dark and sticky with dried ichor. She had been close when she’d shoved that in. Too close. There was blood—human blood—on the handle. A moment later, there was a shout as Ki’s oldest boy found half of her bow beneath another dead worlag. Wakje found the other half jammed between two boulders, with the torn remnants of her belt pouches.
His uncle pulled the splintered wood free as Payne picked up the pouches. Most of the pouches had been clawed in half; the contents were scattered among the rocks. Herbs, matches, a shattered signal mirror . . . Payne shoved a small boulder over and jerked a small book from beneath the loose rock. It was Nori’s scout book. It was whole, for all that the cover had been clawed. He turned it over in his hands. The claw mark matched the one in the pouch where she’d kept the book. Both had been on her person when that tear had been made.
Of all things to leave behind, that small book spoke of panic. There were names
in that book, descriptions of messengers who had slipped past the main roads, notes from other scouts she’d met on the ridges, even fragments of code from the towers. Along with that were his own notes: names, places, council gossip, rumors of private deals. Payne had risked his neck for some of that information. Nori had done the same. Nothing was truly secret, but the book was still valuable, not just to the Ariyen elders, but also to those who might have wished that their activities had gone less remarked. It was always on Nori’s person. To leave it behind? He almost glared around the clearing, daring someone to find her bones as he stuffed the book into his jerkin.
Wakje’s hand on his shoulder startled him, and he blindly accepted the broken bow the ex-raider handed to him. The break was ragged, as if it had twisted before snapping in half, and there was darkness in the core. More blood? He tortured himself by imagining her terror.
“You’d know,” Wakje said flatly.
Payne’s jaw firmed. “Aye, I would.” He threw down the shards. Nori had never liked the bow anyway. He couldn’t help wondering as he stalked away whether he would be able to sense it if she died. Even if he had a bond with the wolves, he might not be able to sense her. His mother said that the wolves passed on only the sense of the living. The dead were silent ghosts. He stared at the shattered remains of the area. If he felt nothing from Nori now, did that mean she was dead or just that the danger had truly passed? Moonworms, but he could go crazy second-guessing himself like that.
Behind him, Wakje stooped and picked up the wooden shards and studied the break with a frown. The darkness in the core was the wrong color for ichor. Wakje peered closely at the break, turned it in the light. It wasn’t a dirt stain, nor was it blood. “Payne,” the man called.
There was a note in Wakje’s voice that made Payne move quickly.
Wakje turned the wood for him to see. “Rot,” the older man murmured.
Payne glanced at his uncle’s face. The ex-raider wasn’t joking. “That doesn’t make sense. No rot would survive the initial tests of the wood, and Nori’s had this bow for three months.”
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