Winter of Ice and Iron

by Rachel Neumeier

  The Wolf Duke arrived with the dawn, as though the light had trailed at his heel like a dog all the way up the pass. The sky had clouded over again as the night had worn on, so the rising sun backlit a sky the color of lead. Snow whispered down, melting on Kehera’s hood and skirt, catching on the duke’s black hair and in the mane of his black mare. There were men at his back, the guards from the gate. They stopped well back, waiting as the duke rode ahead of them.

  Kehera stood as the duke rode up to them. Gereth stood as well, then went to one knee, bowing his head. Kehera did not look at him, hoping to keep the duke’s attention focused on her through the first blaze of his anger. She wanted to say something about Raëhemaiëth and choices and the way things were sometimes hard to figure out and not what they seemed, but she knew that in this, none of that mattered.

  The duke’s glance passed over her with complete, cold disinterest, caught for an instant on the still figure of his seneschal, and passed on to the wolves. His eyes were exactly the shade of the gray male’s eyes.

  He swung down from his mare, dropped the reins to drag on the snow, and stepped forward. His lameness had almost entirely passed, Kehera realized, though whether that was natural healing or pure pride was not entirely clear to her.

  “Thank you,” he said softly to the wolves. “Well done. You may go.”

  The gray male stood up. He yawned and stretched, cast a glance over his pack, and sprang lightly away through the snow. The other wolves followed, shadows of the winter, going back into the winter that had birthed them. They disappeared into the trees without a backward glance.

  The duke turned back to the waiting fugitives only when the wolves had entirely vanished into their world of leafless forest and ice and stone. His attention now was only for his seneschal. Kehera found she did not dare move. She stood very still, all but holding her breath.

  Gereth did not rise, but he put back his hood. Snowflakes caught in his gray hair and melted like tears on his face. He did not speak.

  The duke took a small step toward him. The seneschal waited quietly. Kehera thought he would kneel without moving even if the duke drew a sword to cut him down. . . . It was an appallingly easy scene to imagine. But the duke stopped several paces away from Gereth. And he was not wearing a sword.

  “Gereth,” said the duke, and through the discipline he had set on his voice, Kehera could hear an echo of the cost of that control: of a pain beyond words, very near despair. “How could you do to me what you have done?”

  Kehera closed her eyes in pain. She had known when she had demanded that Gereth help her escape that betrayal could be the worst of all possible sins . . . and she had still done it. It had been his choice at the end, but first it had been hers, to force him to that choice.

  The older man started to speak, stopped. He managed at last in an uneven voice, “I have already watched one woman die of despair in that house, Innisth. I could not bear to watch that happen again. Not even for you. I’m so sorry. Not even for you—” His voice cracked. He swallowed, and fell silent.

  For a long moment the duke did not move. Nothing moved in the world save for the snow, slipping endlessly down from the leaden sky, accent rather than exception to the terrible stillness. The duke’s face was tight-drawn, his eyes fixed on Gereth’s face. Kehera blinked back tears.

  The duke said raggedly, as if he and Gereth were alone in the world, “I am not my father.”

  “I know it. Oh, Innisth, I know it. But you are willing to do to this girl what your father did to Jeneil—”

  “Enough,” said the duke, voice taut.

  Gereth bowed his head.

  The duke drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. He said at last, quite evenly, “I no longer require your service.”

  Gereth did not seem surprised. He flinched, but he did not look up or speak.

  “There is your horse,” said the duke. “Take it and go. Take it and go, and never return to Eäneté. In memory—” His voice checked for an instant, resumed under tight control. “In memory of what you have been to me, Roh Pass will be open for you. One way only.”

  The older man stirred. He glanced around, at the snow, tracked with wolf prints. He got to his feet slowly and took a step backward, toward his horse, eyes on the duke’s set face. Then his head bowed again. He walked toward his horse, mounted, and turned it toward the west.

  Kehera moved quickly forward and laid her hand on the seneschal’s rein. She said, not looking at the duke, “Go to my father. He will welcome you for my sake.”

  Gereth met her eyes for a second. He nodded. Kehera stepped back.

  “Wait,” said the duke, and they both turned. Kehera had no idea what her face showed, and could not read Gereth’s expression. Nor the duke’s.

  The duke stooped and picked up a jagged fragment of stone from the side of the road: ordinary granite streaked with smoky quartz. He frowned at this for an instant, then closed his eyes briefly. At last he brought it to his lips and breathed on it, his breath clouding in the cold. Then he opened his eyes, walked forward, and held it out to Gereth.

  Kehera could see the warmth that clung to it, the glitter that trailed through the air after it, and blinked. An involution—a thin tie; he had bound a thread of Eänetaìsarè to that fragment of Eänetén stone. She knew it. She could see it. She drew a breath, but looked at the duke’s closed expression and said nothing.

  The duke said to Gereth, with no inflection in his voice, “Take it with you to the house of the King of Harivir. A memory of Eäneté; a tie to Eänetaìsarè. You may find it useful.”

  Gereth nodded slowly. He took the pebble and tucked it away, and then turned his horse toward the west once more and rode away. He did not look back, and the falling snow filled in the prints his horse left behind.

  Kehera watched him go, the tiny thread of the tie scrolling out behind him. Only when the older man was out of sight did she turn to face the duke. She could not read anything in his set face. It seemed cowardly to say that in the end she had chosen not to go on toward Coär. She only said at last, “He meant to come back, you know. To face you.”

  The duke flinched, a tightening of his shoulders more than an actual movement. He said curtly, “Get your horse and mount.”

  Kehera obeyed wordlessly. The soldiers fell back as the duke reined past them and closed in again behind Kehera, an escort no less grim than the wolves.

  The ride back to the guard post seemed to take forever. Kehera, dizzy with weariness, braced her hands on her horse’s neck and stared straight ahead.

  The guards at the mouth of the pass slid carefully blank glances past Kehera’s face. None of them asked after the seneschal. Once past the guard post, they went more quickly. It seemed no time at all before the walls of the duke’s house came into sight. Coming in from the west, the city was not very much in evidence: the great house seemed set alone into the stark winter world of forest and mountains, isolated from all other works of men.

  The guards at the gates kept their eyes prudently on the ground as the duke rode by them. He ignored them all, riding in silence across the courtyard to dismount by the great door of the house. Kehera unclamped her hands from their grip on her reins only with difficulty, her fingers stiff with cold and fatigue. It took a similar effort to swing her leg over the horse’s back and slide to the ground. She leaned for a second against the horse’s shoulder, gripping its mane.

  The duke did not move to assist her. He said curtly, “We shall not wait upon the appointed hour. At dawn tomorrow, we shall ride. I have commanded my officers to be sure all is in readiness. We shall wed in Coär, before the eyes of your people as well as mine.”

  Kehera couldn’t answer him. She couldn’t tell whether he meant this as punishment. It felt like punishment. He would force her to this marriage and none of them could prevent him. She wasn’t sure he meant to demonstrate that. But she felt as though he did.

  Unable to think of anything else to do, she went slowly up the stairs to
her suite. There were guards on the outer door. They looked at her warily. She stared back. She had been gone. Why should her suite be guarded? Heart in her mouth, she stepped past them and flung open the door.

  Eöté leaped to her feet with a gasp. That was all right, but Luad was also there, Luad, who should have been safely out of the duke’s house and out of his hand. But Luad was here, and Tageiny was not.

  “Where’s Tag?” Kehera asked sharply.

  Eöté stammered, “Downstairs—”

  Luad added urgently, “The duke took us—he—his tie did it, I guess, we didn’t even get out of the city, he took Tag hours ago, last night—”

  “Eöté, show me,” Kehera commanded. She followed the girl’s lead, not even noticing until she was halfway down the hall that they had picked up an escort in the form of one of the guards that had been put on her door. She ignored the man, and he did not try to stop her.

  The heavy door that Eöté pointed to was not, thank the Gods, locked. Kehera pulled it open with enough force to send it slamming back against the wall with a reverberating crash. There were no lamps lit along the stairs and no light rising from below. Cold air rolled up to meet her, like the darkness itself given body and weight.

  “Down there?” Kehera asked Eöté, appalled. And when the girl wrung her hands, nodding, ordered the soldier, “A torch, immediately!”

  The man hesitated.

  “I’ll go down in the dark if I must,” she said savagely, “and you can explain to His Grace if I fall and break my neck.”

  The soldier ducked back down the hall and grabbed a torch from the wall. He lit it with a candlelighter and gave it to Kehera, who took it, said, “Wait here,” to Eöté, and went down the steps. The soldier followed at her heels. The cold increased with every step down the stair, until she could see her breath smoke in the light of the torch. The light it cast slid along the dark wood of a heavy wooden table and glinted off some of the . . . implements ranked in neat order, but left the far part of the room shrouded in dimness.

  Kehera would have been happier if the shadows had hidden all the . . . things. She had not guessed a place like this existed in the duke’s house, and looked around in cold horror. She was afraid to make a sound, which was ridiculous. She was afraid the door above might slam shut. She said, “Tag? Tageiny?” Her voice, shaky, not sounding like hers at all, seemed to fall into the dimness and dissipate like the smoke from her torch.

  There was the sound of a small movement a little way in front of her, and a stifled gasp that made her jump. Then Tageiny’s voice said, not quite evenly, out of the darkness, “. . . Lady.” A shape moved in the dimness at the far end of the table. She did not know, at first, what she saw. Then she did: Tageiny was there, half lying awkwardly across the table, unable to straighten, arms spread wide, his wrists held in manacles set into the edges of the table. Kehera hurried forward. “You’re hurt—”

  “No,” the bodyguard said, his voice hoarse and strained. “C-cold.”

  He had been stripped to the waist. In this brutal cold. Anger leaped through her in a hot clean blaze. “Unlock those—those—” She gestured furiously to the cuffs that held him.

  The wolf soldier answered stiffly, “This man is the duke’s prisoner.”

  “If His Grace wants him back, I’m sure he’ll manage to take him,” Kehera snapped. “What do you think I’m going to do with him, hide him in my pocket? Right now, I’m telling you, let him loose!”

  The soldier dropped his eyes and bent reluctantly over Tageiny, hands fumbling over the mechanism. It did not require a key, and Kehera saw the trick of it as the soldier undid the first cuff. She dealt with the other herself.

  Tageiny, failing in his grip on the table, slid slowly back to kneel on the stone floor, shaking uncontrollably.

  “Help him walk,” Kehera ordered the soldier. “Carry him if you must.” She led the way out of the grim prison. They went slowly, because Tageiny was a big enough man to make an awkward burden. Kehera was profoundly relieved to emerge again into the light—it was like coming into the air from a lake, when one had no breath left. She turned to swing the heavy door shut behind them.

  The light in the hall showed what the torch had not: a film of blood that had dried on Tageiny’s face and shoulders and back, cut across with narrow lines of brighter red.

  “L-looks worse than it is—” Tageiny said, speaking with difficulty.

  “It had better,” said Kehera through her teeth. “Can you make it to my rooms?”

  “Yes,” Tageiny said grimly, and took a stumbling step that forced the Eänetén soldier to jump forward to catch him. Kehera walked anxiously beside them, ready to lend her strength if necessary, but Tageiny made it to her door still more or less upright, Eöté running ahead to open it, Luad coming white-faced to meet them.

  Once safe in her rooms, Kehera helped Tageiny lie down on a couch. He looked horribly white. “I’m all right,” he said, teeth chattering. “I’m all r-right.”

  “You’re a fool, is what,” Luad retorted. “Shut up and lie still and let me fix this.”

  Kehera asked shakily, “What kind of whip did this? Not a riding whip—”

  “Wire,” Luad said briefly. “It ain’t so bad, for wire. I’ll need clean water. And get one of them wolf soldiers to make himself useful and fetch some salve. They’ll know what kind.”

  It was clear the young man knew what he was doing. Kehera was very happy to let him take over the practical treatment. She had no trouble making the soldiers bring salve and—considering how cold Tag was—mulled wine and hot soup. She patiently handed rags and held basins of water for Luad as he cleaned off the dried blood. Kehera leaned her head against the couch and blinked hard to stay awake as the young man finished his work and smoothed the salve over the worst of the whip-cuts. Tageiny endured the treatment in silence, face hidden against the couch.

  “Done,” Luad said shortly. “Sit up now, and let’s see your face.”

  It took a moment for Tageiny to struggle upright. Kehera handed him a goblet of the hot spiced wine and steadied his hand while he drank. He wouldn’t look at her, which Kehera thought probably meant that he was ashamed to have her see him in such a condition. There was nothing she could do about that but get him back on his feet.

  Luad dipped a soft rag in the water and cleaned the blood off Tageiny’s face, grasping his chin to hold him still when the older man would have flinched away. “Cut it out,” he snapped. “Want this to get the fever? Want another scar to make you uglier yet? Hold still.”

  “Is it bad?” Kehera asked anxiously.

  “Nah, not too bad,” Luad told her. “Could be lots worse. The duke used a light hand, the fu—the bastard. This should heal clean.” The gentleness with which he applied the salve belied his curt tone.

  Kehera had to admit that Tageiny already looked much better. The hot wine and the warmth had brought color back into his face, easing the lines of pain and exhaustion that had marked him as much as the whip-cuts.

  “You need to rest,” Kehera said. She thought longingly of her own bed, and it took a moment to drag her mind back to the urgencies of the moment. “I need to talk to you first, if you can. Wolves stopped us. And Raëhemaiëth. What happened to you?”

  “Yeah,” Tageiny said. He rubbed his eyes, wincing, forcing himself to focus. “Yes. Well. Not wolves. Wolf soldiers. He’d sent ’em. They couldn’t of known where to find us, but they did anyway. Pretty quick about it, too. Just about dusk, it was. I’m thinking he can make the Eänetén Power stand up and dance. Which I figured. But I didn’t figure on him being so quick and sure. He stepped right over my decoy trail and got ahead of us.” He sounded disgusted.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Tageiny shook his head. “I didn’t figure it. How should you?”

  “I told you to tell him the truth, if it came to it. He did this anyway?”

  “Well, I figured maybe I could buy you a few hours. I said Gereth took you into the city, that you
needed a break from sitting and fretting. I asked if he didn’t trust his own seneschal.”

  Kehera winced. “That wasn’t very wise.”

  “Yeah, I found that out. That’s when he hit me and took me . . . downstairs. He must have already guessed at that point Gereth was helping you.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kehera said again. “Surely you told him the truth then?”

  “Well, not exactly. I said you’d snuck out and Gereth had gone after you, to try to bring you back before His Grace found out.”

  “I told you to tell him the truth, Tag!”

  The big man began to shrug, winced, and desisted. “Well, I thought it was plausible enough it might work. It hadn’t been too bad, till then. I was pretty sure I could handle it. When—if he really got started, I was going to remind him he told me himself not to betray you. But then the room got kind of tight, and he said in this real strange voice, ‘I know where they are gone. They are gone into the pass.’

  “Well, I didn’t say anything to that. Let me tell you, it fair made my skin crawl. Anyway, he left then, just dropped the whip on the floor and walked out. And that’s it, until you came and got me out.”

  He hesitated for a moment and then added, “For which I thank you. But it was stupid. The duke, he’s in a right taking, and that’s not likely to help.”

  “You’re mine, not his,” Kehera said, more confidently than she felt. “He said so himself. He had no right to do this to you. I’m sorry I let this happen. I won’t let him touch you again.”

  “He—”

  “I can handle him.” She hoped this was true. If she hadn’t cost him his seneschal and friend, she would have felt more confident. But she said with all the authority she could muster, “Now go to sleep.” She meant to follow that advice herself. She was so tired. Bath first; she still caught herself trembling a little from time to time. It must be cold and exhaustion because she refused to believe it could be fear. A very hot bath and something to eat, and then nothing would be able to keep her awake.