by Gwynn White
Ignoring him, she looked at the frame with a puzzled expression.
“You ever used one of these before?” Lukan asked, not really expecting an answer. “Because I have seen it done. I can help you.”
She gave him an arch look. “I have an even better idea. You do it.” She tossed the bloody, greasy skin at him. It struck him square on the chest and oozed down his waistcoat and trousers before landing in the dust.
Lukan locked down his anger. “That’s one way of doing it, I suppose, but this is better.” Gritting his teeth against the blood and gore, he knelt in the dust and dirt and spread the skin out on the ground. “Drying frames are used after you’ve cleaned the skin.”
Lynx blushed. Her rare moments of coyness always made him want her even more.
He smiled up at her, hoping to create some connection with her. “Didn’t you work with hides in Norin?”
Voice icy, she snapped, “I’m a raider, not a server.”
Pity he didn’t think of that distinction. “Pass me your knife, and I’ll show you how it’s done.”
She snorted a wet “pff” and, knife in hand, fell down on her knees and started scraping away the flesh.
More uncomfortable silence followed, filled only by the drone of flies feasting on the skin.
Lynx didn’t look up. “Lukan, what planet do you come from that you think you can show up here, throw around some advice, and think it will all go away? The beatings, the imprisonment, Katcha, the ice crystals, the dead men buried around the corner there, Tao, me and my son in this forest for the rest of our lives?”
Lukan licked his lips, partly at the mention of their son. “I did what I had to do. In the same situation, you would have done the same.”
Another wet “pff.”
Even more silence.
Lukan used the time to surreptitiously wipe some of the blood off his clothes. It didn’t help. In fact, it made things worse. Never before had he looked or felt so disgusting. But it was worth it if he could break through Lynx’s ice.
With her now pregnant, there was no longer any need to avoid her. Even if it took a lifetime of visits, he would not stop trying until she softened enough to let him take her as a lover. But first, he had to know about her relationship with his brother. “So, you and Tao—are you sleeping together?”
Lynx rocked back on her heels. “What?”
“I just—You seem to get on well, so I was wondering.” Even he knew how lame that sounded.
Lynx turned on him, fire in her eyes. “What concern is that of yours?”
Lukan shrugged, feeling embarrassed, but he still had to know. “Come on, Lynx. You know how I feel about you.”
Knife in hand, she leaped to her feet. “Lukan, I would love nothing more than to tell you that Tao and I spend every night rolling around together in the sheets. But I can’t. Firstly, we don’t have any sheets. Secondly, Axel is the only man who will ever again touch me. But as I will probably never see him, I am now celibate. And, thirdly, for reasons I will never understand, Tao still has feelings for my sister. Does that answer your question?”
Bitter relief surged through Lukan. At least he wouldn’t have to split them up.
Tao loped over to Lynx. “You okay?”
“Tell your brother to leave and to never come back.”
Face as dark as a storm cloud, Tao faced Lukan. “You heard what Lynx said. Go. Now.”
Lukan ran a blood-stained hand through his hair. To cover up his sorrow, he said, as if it were his idea, “It’s getting late, and night closes in early, so I should get going.” But that didn’t work for him. He looked beseechingly at each of them. “I will be back, though. Every month until . . . well, forever, I guess.”
Before he could witness their rejection, he turned away. All senses alert, he hoped they’d watch him go, but instead came the sounds of Tao’s departing steps and Lynx’s scraping. Back to their chores.
Steps heavy, Lukan walked to his horse. Quickly, he unpacked his saddlebags and made for the front door of their cottage.
Neither of them stopped to look.
He opened the door and stepped inside. It was clean, but very bare and comfortless. Over time, he could change that. For now, he dropped his saddlebags on the table and started to unpack them.
A bottle of chenna for Tao. He had considered some mead for Lynx, but she wouldn’t touch it while pregnant. Stunting his son with alcohol wouldn’t worry him, but he didn’t want his gifts to be ill-received. He had always hoped to feel joy when his wife fell pregnant, but the Dmitri Curse had robbed him of that. All he could think was how much he despised that thing growing in her.
“Nicholas the Light-Bearer,” Lukan whispered. “The only constellation to have a comet announce its ascension in the northern sky.”
Since learning his son’s name, Lukan had researched the constellation he was named after. Part of the reason why the pre-invasion Norin had chosen it for their symbol was because of the Pathfinder comet that proceeded it. According to their ancient texts, the comet trailed a majestic tail of rock and ice that streaked across much of the night sky, bedazzling the lesser stars.
Lukan sniggered. “A bit like Lynx, in fact.”
Smiling sadly at his own joke, he pulled out Lynx’s fiddle and bow, and then her flute and tabor, with a new drumstick to replace the one he had broken the night of the ball. Yearning that one day she’d thaw enough to play for him, he laid those treasures out on the table with care.
He took out two ankle-length coats made from luxurious sable, not dissimilar to his coronation robes. He draped them over the chairs, then added matching fur hats. The gloves he’d brought them were more practical, but just as warm.
With one last look at his peace offerings, he left the cottage and started the long ride back to the palace.
Chapter 29
Iridescent blue light rippled across Axel’s hand, giving his skin a ghostly aspect. Similar green and red shadows danced across the troops he’d chosen to accompany him on this drive through Maegkin, the sparkling capital of Treven.
In Chenaya, ice crystals were used to power the technology the Avanovs used to govern two-thirds of the world. In Treven, they glazed the vaulted windows of their pristine white homes—more like pavilions than ordinary houses—with glass blown from the colorful stone. By heating and blowing the ice crystal, they rendered it useless for tracking devices, but it was a feast for the eyes.
Built above a series of hot springs, animistic Trevenites had channeled the warm water into canals lining their streets. In the town’s many squares, this water cascaded over colorful glass statues of animals, birds, and trees. It was through these that the sun glittered onto the street.
The city’s beauty made the scene before Axel even more macabre. His driver stopped their steam-powered truck next to a dead Chenayan infantryman, one of thousands littering the wide, glass-lined avenues of Maegkin. A raven landed on the corpse and pecked at the man’s skull, already almost stripped clean. Axel shooed it away, knowing it was a pointless gesture because a dozen more hopped nearby, waiting to take its place.
This dead soldier, like the thousands of others, would not have been aware of King Chad’s invisible vapor seeping toward him until his lungs blackened and burned. Axel and his soldiers were the first Chenayans to risk coming back to the capital.
Axel shook his head at the needless waste of life. Thanks to his gas mask, he could not smell the rotting flesh.
“My lord, I think it’s safe to say that there are no living people left in this city,” Colonel Fedor, Axel’s new second-in-command said. His voice sounded tinny through the gas mask that covered his rough features. “It is as I reported: Chad evacuated before letting his first canisters of noxious vapors fly.” Despite the jasper, intelligent eyes studied Axel. Fedor was one of the Stefan’s men, impervious to ice crystal.
Axel nodded. “Colonel, your first priority is to send in a burial detail. Please provide me with accurate records of our dead so the f
amilies can be informed.” Axel had another use for the names of the Chenayan dead, but wasn’t about to discuss it in a truck with two other guardsmen. To their driver sitting at the front of the vehicle, Axel said, “Head back to camp.”
The driver turned the truck around while a corporal shoveled coal into its gaping furnace. Axel was only too pleased to be out of this gleaming ghost city. He adjusted his gas mask to fit more comfortably and then pulled a map, protractor, and ruler from his satchel.
It would have been far more effective to study the global image of Treven on his informa, but apart from Fedor, these guardsmen had no knowledge that such technology existed, just as they had no idea their gemstones were really ice crystal—the same beautiful glass that glimmered on the streets they had been driving past for hours.
None of the men sent to die in Treven had any notion why the Avanovs wanted the ice crystal mines. Like soldiers everywhere, they merely obeyed. Even as Chad let fly his noxious vapors, he, too, would not have understood the real reason for the invasion.
Axel imagined Chad and his people’s confusion when the attack occurred: Those insane Chenayans are killing us for our pretty glass windows and religious icons!
Now, with luck, if Thorn and Jerawin had been in contact with Chad, the Trevenite king would know exactly what the Avanovs did with ice crystal. Axel longed for the day he could scream all that from the rooftops, but today wasn’t that day. Not while Malika, and possibly Stefan, were in danger.
With the map unfolded on his knees, he forced himself to focus on the business at hand: securing the ice crystal mines for Lukan, while remaining true to his promise to himself and to King Thorn to keep that same ice crystal from the emperor. No small challenge, Axel admitted ruefully, also for the millionth time since arriving in Treven.
Fedor leaned over and jabbed his finger at a jagged band of contour lines to the north of the capital—the Thousand Peaks. “That’s where the ice crystal mines are, my lord. Intelligence reports that Chad and his people fled there the night before the gas was fired. Luckily, our spies got out before the canisters flew. Since then, we have captured Trevenite soldiers, who confirmed that Chad and his survivors are hiding in one of the mines.”
Axel did a quick measurement on the map and calculated the distance to the mines from his base camp, south of the city. Half a day’s drive on rolling lowlands to the foothills. Then it was an almost vertical climb into the peaks.
“What efforts have been made to find Chad?” Axel asked.
“My lord, first I sent in grunts, but the few that returned alive reported that there as many subterranean tunnels as there are mountains in the range. Impossible to navigate without maps. Chad removed all those from the capital before leaving. Next, I deployed guardsmen. Sent them in with Trevenite prisoners, but they didn’t return. Never found their bodies, either.”
Axel whistled, making his gas mask burble. Part of him thrilled to hear that Chad’s fighters had overwhelmed jasper-wearing guardsmen, but another side of him grieved for his own men.
Fedor leaned in. “Hopefully, my lord, Chad will come to you,” he said, his voice low enough that the guardsmen wouldn’t hear him over the chug of the engine. As agreed in their meeting with Thorn, Stefan had been in contact with Fedor and had briefed him on Axel’s dual purpose here. “I’ve been seeing flashes from a spyglass. His spies know you’re driving around his capital.”
“Every flash has warmed my heart,” Axel said just as softly. “I can only hope they herald the start of something new. If Chad sends for me, I won’t be gone long. Two, maybe three days at the most.” He gnawed his lip. “Any longer and . . . well, you can announce that I’m probably dead.”
* * *
It was late, just past eleven, and the troops sent out to begin burying the Chenayan dead had just returned to camp. Axel paced in his tent, waiting for the men to quiet down for the night. Hoping for an emissary from Chad’s camp, he had dismissed his guards earlier in the evening. To further encourage a visit, he had pitched his tent, flying royal insignia, on the edge of the base.
When silence finally settled, he snuffed his lamp and sat on his bedroll. He felt in his pocket. An informa, claimed from Fedor and encrypted with a code used only by Stefan and his men, rubbed against a folded piece of parchment—the weapon Axel had designed to counter Lukan’s rifles. He was as ready as he would ever be. All he needed now was an invitation to visit.
His ears pricked at a welcome sound—a scuffle on the other side of his tent. He hefted his short sword and waited, every sense alert.
The rustle of clothing and the light padding of feet moved closer.
Axel considered relighting the lamp but decided against it. Instead, he swung open the flap, letting the gleam from both moons fill his tent. Then he slipped into the shadows of the tent fold, his dark surcoat blending into the canvas.
A man peered in, and Axel caught the glint of steel in his hand. A short sword, held ready for trouble. Cautiously, the intruder stepped inside. Clad in a black tunic, leggings, and a thick coat against the evening chill, he crowded the space. At six feet, Axel wasn’t small, but this man dwarfed him, leaving him cringing with vulnerability.
It couldn’t be helped.
Axel pushed his shoulders back and stepped into the moonlight in front of his visitor, his own sword at his side. “I assume you are here at King Chad’s behest,” he said in Chenayan.
Hate-filled eyes glared down at Axel, and when the man spoke, his heavily accented voice was sharp. “I am commanded to take you to him.”
Axel nodded. “I’ve been waiting for the call.”
“Drop your weapon,” the Trevenite giant commanded. “And I’m frisking you before we leave.”
Axel tossed his sword down onto his bedroll and held out his arms to facilitate the search. “You have a name?”
A grunt was the only reply as the man ran his hands, none too gently, up and down Axel’s body.
Axel shrugged. He hadn’t expected a warm welcome.
The man’s hand brushed the informa and folded piece of paper in Axel’s pocket. His fingers burrowed in after them. First, he looked at the schematic Axel had drawn. It obviously meant nothing to him, because he folded the page and gave it back. The informa was clearly more puzzling, because the giant held the gray, pebble-shaped device up to the moonlight. “A stone?”
So, nobody had told him about informas? Axel wasn’t about to start.
“Lucky pebble. Picked it up in a river when I was a kid. Never go into battle without it. Better than a rabbit’s foot.” Axel held his breath as his searcher deliberated over the “stone.” With only two informas distributed amongst the kings, his device was a crucial part of his negotiations with Chad, every bit as important as the illustration on the sheet of paper.
The soldier stared at Axel, his face unreadable. “I guess we all have them.”
He tossed the informa back to Axel, who caught it, kissed it —something he had seen more than one of his troops do with a lucky charm—and stuffed it back into his pocket. His racing heart calmed to a gallop.
“How can I trust that you won’t be followed?” his visitor rasped.
“Nothing I can say will convince you, but I’m sure you have your own ways of stopping any interference from my men.”
Another grunt, and Axel knew the soldier had not traveled alone. They would have company on the trip to the Thousand Peaks. Journeying, guarded and unarmed, into enemy territory made Axel’s heart quake. He tried to hide all sign of fear. Only brazen courage would work for what he planned.
Axel waved at the tent flap. “I suspect you want me to lead?”
“Until we leave your camp. Make a sound, and lucky pebble or not, I will decapitate you.”
“Glad we got that cleared up.” The skin on his back crawling, Axel stepped out into the moonlight and set a brisk pace toward an apple orchard bordering the site. It was the only cover in the churned field where his camp crouched. The Trevenite made no effort t
o redirect him; his companions had to be waiting there.
Fallen apples, unharvested because of the invasion, lay rotting underfoot. The heady brew they gave off puckered Axel’s nose as they walked deeper and deeper into the rows of trees. He listened intently, not wanting to be surprised. They were almost at the far side of the orchard when four shadows peeled away from the trees and fell in next to him.
Three men and a woman.
Like Axel’s companion, they were all tall and lithe, their long auburn hair pulled severely away from their fine-boned faces. Hair in various shades of red was as common in Treven as dark hair was in Chenaya.
Swords and crossbows hung from hands or jigged on waists, driving home just how unarmed Axel was. He pushed all worry aside when a horse nickered. Six rough ponies were tethered to an equally gnarled-looking tree. Each had a bulging waterskin slung around its neck.
The woman, dressed in the same dark tunic and leggings as the men, jabbed Axel in the kidney with the pommel of her sword. “The black one is yours. We’re all itching to kill you, Chenayan, so try anything and you’ll be as dead as those corpses you were crying over today.”
“Ever considered getting into tourism?” Axel asked, keeping his voice light. “You know, once the war is over? You’d make a charming guide.”
Another jab in the kidney, harder this time. “Get on the horse.” The woman’s porcelain face could have been beautiful if not for the hatred in her emerald-green eyes. Clearly, the Chenayan invasion of her country hadn’t done much to improve her humor.
She reminded Axel of Lynx.
He shot the woman a smile and then went to make friends with his pony. After patting it and whispering a few calming words in its fly-bitten ear, Axel mounted. Hopefully, his shoulder wound was up to the trip. It would have to be, because two of the Trevenites broke into a sharp trot, headed for a plowed field next to the orchard. He could have asked Thorn’s Winds for strength but doubted they’d answer him.