Lo’s eyes lingered on my gloves. I quickly brushed the frost away.
Clearing my throat, I unwrapped the two volumes from their blanket at the foot of my bed and opened the cloth-wrapped book of ancient Hraric. I had woven a thick bookmark for it, a simple striped pattern of black and sienna. I set the book carefully on the table and turned it toward Lo, who still lingered near the door. Worried my frost had frightened him, I said, “Would you mind . . . helping me? I marked a few places I couldn’t understand.”
Lo unbuttoned the top of his high-collared coat and joined me at the table and took a seat. He picked up my bookmark and, turning it over in his hands, said, “A new hobby of yours?”
“A very new one,” I said, oddly embarrassed to see him handling such a mediocre show of my work. I reached for it, but he pulled it from my grasp, inspecting the woven yarn with his dark brown eyes—dark like wet mountain soil, though I noticed a lighter brown around his pupils, a color like the predawn desert, before the sun could turn it gold.
“You’re making a blanket?” he asked.
“Blanket?”
He gestured with a tilt of his head to the unfinished drapery folded behind my bed. When had he noticed that?
“Oh.” I pushed back my chair and collected the work in progress, unfurling it on my bed. “It’s going to replace the dog drape. Aamina brings me the yarn.”
“Why not ask Prince Imad for a new one?”
“Because,” I said, refolding my amateur mosaic, “I like it when my hobbies have a purpose. And why bother Imad—Prince Imad—when I can take care of it myself?”
Lo set the bookmark on the table. “Show me where you struggle.”
Smiling—I couldn’t help it—I took a chair at the table and turned back to the first word that had given me trouble. I hadn’t marked it, for I had spent so much time trying to decode each hiccup in my reading I could relocate them with little effort.
“Here,” I said. “Baadhi Suto. ‘Suto’ is a chair, but . . .”
“It is a compound word,” Lo explained, underlining the term with his fingertip, the nails cut short. “Baadhi is ‘infant.’ This is an old term for basuto, or ‘rocking chair.’”
“Ah,” I said, rereading the sentence. I turned a few more pages. “And this one?”
When Aamina arrived the next day, along with the newest party of snow harvesters, she brought with her a large basket filled with dried spices, rice, milk, and a small kokud chicken wrapped tightly in linen.
“I have decided,” she said, winding her long braid back into a bun, “that you must learn to cook for yourself. I will teach you how to make the best curry in the Southlands.”
I thanked her profusely. In all honesty, I knew how to cook only a few dishes, as I had taken very little interest in “slaving” over ovens and cook pots during my life in Euwan. I hesitated to participate, not wanting to botch Aamina’s recipe, but after stretching a second pair of gloves over my fingers, I could slice meat and herbs with little damage. The recipe called for a number of bizarre-sounding vegetables, but due to the drought, those were in short supply. I hoped next year’s harvest would prove more bountiful.
I still struggled with the spicy flavors Zareedians—Aamina especially—seemed to love. But beyond my occasional choking and running nose, the food tasted magnificent, and I couldn’t help but think Marrine would love it.
Aamina left me enough supplies to make the dish on my own after she left, and I tried to the next day but to little avail. I burned the bottom of the pot—something horribly tricky to clean, when a decent scrub meant freezing the guck to the metal—and ice crystals swam through the finished product, but I ate it until my stomach ached. My meal seemed to solidify into one chunk of ice right at my center. For the first time since receiving my curse, I panicked over throwing up, worried that the bile would freeze in my throat and suffocate me. Fortunately, I kept it down, and Sadriel did not show up to tell me how close to his world I may have come.
After only a week, Lo visited once more, this time with the dawn. His pounding on the door woke me from a fitful sleep and lodged my heart right into the base of my skull, it frightened me so.
He looked tired, but smirked at me, the kind of look a man gets when he’s up to no good. Whether in Iyoden, Zareed, or the world beyond, it was an expression common to all men.
He held several planks of a strange wood in his arms. He dropped them right there in the doorway, along with a small linen sack of nails, a handsaw, and an iron hammer.
“What on earth is this for?” I asked, panting. I still had not caught my breath from my frightful awakening.
“A bookshelf,” he said. “Where you’ll fit it is up to you.”
I stared at him.
“You like your hobbies to have a purpose, hmm?” he asked, apparently thinking himself rather clever. “Build it, and I’ll bring you more books.”
I opened my mouth to say something but ended up just gaping as he turned from the cavern without another word, a gust of snowless wind tousling his black curls, unprotected without a mashadah. He rode swiftly back into the city. After all, the captain of the prince’s guard had little time to spend on cursed white women.
I looked at the wooden pile before me and smiled. Though my father’s trade was building wagons, I had never built a thing in my life. Still, I figured it would take a great deal of time, and time was something of which I had in abundance.
Shivering, I brought the supplies inside and tried to determine how I could piece them together. A bookshelf seemed simple enough, but I wanted to do it right, for I knew wood was a valuable commodity in Zareed, and I did not want to waste it.
When Aamina came again, I asked if she could bring me some writing utensils. In my wait for her return, I grew impatient and began nailing the shelves together on my own, which resulted in me splintering one of the boards.
Once I had a pencil and paper—the pencil hard to grip—I sketched out what I considered the best design for the shelf and went to work.
It was not easy.
My trembling hands and stiff fingers struggled with the tools. There was no one around to hold the boards for me while I nailed them together, so I ended up in many a strange position as I tried to work them out. I desperately wanted to finish the project before Lo’s return, whenever that might be. I knew he would visit again, and I looked forward to it, though not entirely for the promise of reading material. Lo was a stern and quiet man, but I had already learned that he could say in a moment of silence what a normal man would take an hour to relate. None of my other friends among the guard had come to see me, though I could hardly blame them. I cherished Aamina’s visits, but, deep down, I knew she came on Imad’s orders. Lo came of his own volition, and that meant worlds to me.
Sadriel visited once while I was struggling with the bookshelf. Not to help, of course—he wouldn’t lift a finger, not even when I entreated him with every kind and begging word I knew. He stretched out on my bed and watched me work, treating the cavern like a honeymooner’s escape, making comments in whatever provocative manner he could contrive.
“It’s crooked,” he said. “If you really want a shelf, I’ll give you one taller than the Itarian itself, and bring you the souls of your favorite authors.”
“What is the Itarian?” I asked, wrenching a bent nail free of its wood.
“The largest tower in the world, across the seas in Gardinia. They’re especially good at war there. Wouldn’t you like to see it?”
I told him no, and he left.
Frowning at what must have seemed a foolish endeavor, Aamina, on her next visit, said, “Wouldn’t it be easier with the gloves off?”
My first reaction was to shake my head. I had assumed the gloves were necessary to prevent the wood from freezing. But after thinking on it a moment, I wondered if Aamina was right. Did it really matter if frost laced my hammer or riddled my boards?
I slipped off the gloves, which improved my poor grip on the tools. I sawed
the splintered board to make a small cubbyhole on top of my creation, which, in the end, stood three shelves high. I had nearly finished it when Lo returned, this time midday. Bright sun made the drifting snow flurries outside my door look like fairies behind him, twirling and glowing and gold.
He carried his side bag with him, laden with books. I wanted to grab each volume from his satchel and dance with them, but even the Svara Idyah could remember her manners.
“Impressive,” he said, setting his mashadah by the dwindling fire. He poured some oil on the coals. “But will it hold?”
“It can hold me,” I said, hammering a nail into the back of the cubbyhole.
He smiled and unloaded the books onto the table. He read the titles to me, each sounding like music—The Word of Kings, a philosopher’s book and fairly recent; River of Tears, a short novel missing its back cover; and Sun, Moon, Stars, Sand, a book of—
Distracted, I let the last nail slip from my fragile grip as I hammered. Instead of pounding it into the wood, I smashed its point into and across my palm. I hissed and dropped the hammer, which hit the rug-strewn stone floor with a loud thud. Cold blood oozed from the gash and trickled down my wrist and the sides of my hand, congealing and then freezing to the skin. A drop stained the pale green rug underfoot.
Cradling my hand, I hurried to the half-filled pitcher of water and bowl on the table.
“What happened?” Lo asked, stepping toward me.
“I slipped, it’s fine,” I lied. It throbbed terribly, my coldness making the slash ache all the more. I reached for the pitcher.
“Let me see—”
He reached for my hand before I could stop him, before I could shout. His fingers grasped my wrist. Frost zigzagged over his hand in an instant. Wincing, he pulled his hand back as though struck by—what had Eyan called me?—a cobra.
I spilled the pitcher.
“I-I . . . I’m sorry,” I choked out as Lo cradled his hand to his coat, rubbing warmth back into it. I repeated myself, quieter, and fumbled with the pitcher. I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t bear to see that expression of hate and contempt I’d seen on so many faces play across Lo’s familiar features. I averted my eyes from his injured hand and fled, not bothering to clean up the mess of blood and water.
I stumbled outside with the pitcher still clutched in my hand, biting my lower lip to force my emotions flat, but they swirled and looped inside of me until I barely knew up from down or east from west. My insides became stone. Kneeling, I bit the inside of my cheek as I scrubbed the cut with snow, shivering and shaking.
Careless, I thought to myself, wiping my eyes on my sleeve before tears could form. I clumped snow together and scoured frozen blood from the sides of my hand and wrist until the skin turned raw. I had gotten too comfortable here, too careless around people. I had thought I could no longer hurt anyone, tucked away in my cave. I had been so very wrong.
I took several deep breaths, trying to calm myself. I couldn’t stay out there forever, just as Lo would not merely wait in the cave until I bridled my emotions. Clenching my injured left hand in a fist, I scooped snow with my pitcher and stepped inside, setting it by the fire to melt.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured, again without looking at Lo. Instead, I stared into the coals, prodding them with my right hand to build a better flame.
“It is not your fault,” Lo said from behind me, though I still didn’t glance back to see him. “You warned me before, with the others. I was not thinking.”
I forced more deep, chilly breaths into my lungs as I poured the melted water from the pitcher over my hand, keeping it over the flame so the liquid wouldn’t freeze to my skin. I washed the new blood away, but it slowly bubbled up again.
Lo kneeled beside me, and I flinched away, not wanting to hurt him again.
He set bandages from my small store on the ground and retrieved his leather riding gloves from his coat pocket. After pulling them on—his hand didn’t look damaged—he unrolled a length of bandage and held it taut, waiting for me. He said nothing.
Another deep breath, and I placed my hand on the middle of the bandage. He pressed gauze to my palm and carefully wrapped it, proficient even with the gloves. I imagined he’d had experience bandaging wounds, being a soldier. I wondered how many he had wrapped for others and how many for himself.
He smelled like sandalwood and cardamom.
I stifled a wince as he turned my hand over and tied a firm knot just below my knuckles.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“I chose today to come because it is especially hot in the city,” he said, removing his gloves. “I appreciate the cold.”
I laughed. It wasn’t funny, not really, but I laughed anyway. It relieved some of the pressure in my chest.
Holding his gloves in his hands, he met my eyes. “How do you live, so cold?”
I rolled my lips together. Moved the pitcher from the fireplace before it got too hot. “One day at a time.”
“You’ve grown accustomed to it?”
I shook my head, stray bits of hair falling from my braid. “In almost four years, I never have. I feel as cold now as the day winter fell upon me.” Swallowing, I lifted up my bandaged hand. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Then, moving his fingers, he signed, I am not angry.
Lo returned to the table—I noticed he had cleaned up my mess—and finished reading off the titles of the books he’d brought as though nothing had happened, then showed me the new signals his men had created over the past few weeks, including inappropriate ones I could not help but laugh at.
How wonderful it felt to have friends after so long. How much I wished I could see Ashlen again and embrace her, for I had not realized how good a friend she had been to me. Hers made one more debt on the list of those I could never repay.
Lo stayed for about an hour before placing my books on the shelf. It was no craftsman’s piece. It stood plain, a little crooked, and scratched in the back from where I had missed my nail, but he smiled at it, and in that moment, I desperately wished I could touch him, this man who had ridden me down atop a horse of deepest ebony, who wore a helmet of ibex horns, and who spoke to me not as a person with an unfortunate curse but as a woman who loved literature and old tongues, who feared domesticated dogs and wove uneven rows of yarn and spilled pitchers of water over fine rugs. A man willing to forgo superstition to bring me a book, merely because he wanted to hear my thoughts on it.
I held my bandaged hand to my heart as he left.
CHAPTER 18
Nights later, I dreamed of dogs.
In my dream, I lived in my mountains again. The beasts were tracking me over muddy fields and rocky inclines, and I ran from them without looking back, my tattered dress blowing around me. I grabbed tree branches to pull myself up steep slopes, each touch sending frost skittering across the wood. The dogs howled in the distance.
I scrambled up a shelf, loose rocks cutting my hands and feet. A bank of snow suddenly appeared before me, slick and wet, and I tumbled into it. I didn’t remember falling, only pushing myself back up and running across endless blankets of snow, desperately looking for a tree with branches low enough to climb.
When I finally turned to look, two bassets and a saluki sight hound—the tall dog portrayed on my drapery—were chasing me, teeth bared. A tree root snagged my foot, and I tumbled to the earth. I willed myself to rise, but the cold had frozen me in place.
I saw footprints in the snow and followed them with my eyes. Suddenly Lo was there, standing between me and the dogs. He drew his sword, and the dogs stopped, eyeing him and then me, as if trying to decide if I were worth the fight.
The dogs vanished. Turning to me, Lo offered his hand, but when I clasped it, his entire body turned to ice—
I gasped and sat up in my bed, my cavern illuminated only by a dying fire and the softest glow of my oil lamp. My shoulders and thighs ached with a strange tautness, as though someone had taken a wrench to me and tightene
d my muscles until they could stretch no more. My skin tingled with the cold and my toes burned with it, as though I had stubbed each one before crawling into bed. Teeth chattering, I rubbed icy fingers into my icy shoulders and spied two shining amber eyes near the table.
Flinging back my blankets, I hurried to my lamp and cranked it to full light.
“Such an animated sleeper,” Sadriel said, though his voice was mirthless, his smile nowhere to be seen. “I thought it was the forest that made it so, but even here, in your new ‘home,’ you fret more than a babe in the night.”
Trembling, I grabbed my pitcher and set it by the coals to melt the water inside. “How long have you been here?”
“Does it matter?” he asked, running his fingers along the chain of his ruby amulet. “You were much more receptive to me before you came to this wasteland. Don’t tell me it doesn’t still hurt, Smitha. I see the curse inside you; I know how it devours you. How much more pain will you bear before you give in? Is it so much better to waste away in this realm than to be my companion?”
I peered at the door, the faint glows of early dawn. I busied myself with the fire, coaxing it to life.
Within moments, he appeared to my left. He seized my injured hand and pulled it back from the hearth, squeezing it until I grit my teeth against the pain. He glowered at me, a dark and twisted expression only Death could wear. “Doesn’t it hurt you, Smitha? Stop playing games with me! I know mortals, and I know you. Will you wait until it crushes you? Come with me.”
I stared into the embers. “I thought you could wait more than a few years for men to fall to you,” I whispered.
They were the wrong words. What Sadriel did next, I had not seen coming.
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