by R. K. Hart
He was easily two feet taller than she, with broad shoulders and a warrior’s frame that wasn’t hidden - even a little bit - by the white shirt and tunic he wore over cream-coloured jodhpurs. His strong, even jaw was covered in short blonde stubble, which reached up to wide, sharp cheekbones; not even paintings of the sky-god Curan had eyes that shade of sapphire blue.
Alys had sighed when she’d spoken of him, and Lida had been doubtful he deserved it at the time. Looking at him in the flesh, she thought that perhaps, if anything, Alys had not quite done him justice. The resemblance between him and Katrin was evident, but he was by far the more beautiful; the loveliness of his face was crowned with an extraordinary shock of hair, so blonde it was almost silver, shining in a short warrior’s tail.
Aaron gave an arrogant smile, wide and white, and it was obvious to Lida that he knew exactly what was running through her mind, having seen it many times before. She struggled against a sudden impulse to draw, digging her fingernails deep into her palms.
‘I thought you were Eilin, not Myrae,’ he said.
It was the one thing that could have broken his spell, and Lida glared at him, defiant, and lifted her chin. Something flickered in his eyes as he studied her, and his hand shot out to seize her jaw, turning her face one way and another as though he was looking for something. She struggled against it, planting her hands on his chest and trying to push him away, though it made no difference; she might as well have been pushing at a stone wall.
Aaron dropped his hand abruptly, still staring. ‘Sivasdotter,’ he said flatly. It did not seem to be a question, so Lida simply scowled in response, pushing down the thrill of shock that ran through her. ‘I thought you would have green eyes. Why did you take so long to come?’
She rubbed her face resentfully. ‘I wasn’t aware that you were waiting,’ she snapped.
He laughed. ‘How old are you?’
‘Eighteen,’ she answered warily.
‘Only eighteen years, then.’
She blinked at him in confusion and he bared his teeth in another arrogant smile.
‘Merchant,’ he said to Lorcan with a sneer, not taking his eyes from Lida. ‘Back again, little cousin? Though in better company this time, no?’
‘Aaron,’ Lorcan said, his voice cold and bored. ‘What a joy it is to see you.’
Aaron’s smile grew wider. ‘I believe the joy will be mine, cosine,’ he answered, his eyes lingering on Lida’s unbound hair.
She bit the inside of her cheek.
He released her from his stare, turning away to greet Katrin. Katrin frowned at him and hissed something, even as she threw her arms around his neck. He laughed and spun her around, then set her carefully back down. He turned back and locked his eyes on Lida’s once more.
‘I will find you later, joli oisu,’ he called to her. ‘Or perhaps you will find me.’ He took Katrin’s arm and whistled faintly; the riderless horse obediently followed his master through the snow, Katrin’s delighted laugh floating up through the air a moment later.
‘Well then,’ Lorcan said, inspecting his hands.
Alys came up beside Lida and elbowed her sharply in the ribs. ‘Aaron!’ she said, mimicking Lida’s voice. ‘Is he not as handsome as I said?’ She peered closely at Lida. ‘Soer, are you well? Your face is very hot.’
Lida turned and stomped away from them, fleeing back inside her tent and tying the door tightly behind her.
***
The Brinnican capital, l’Cour du Kali, centred around a natural amphitheatre, a great, grassed dip in the earth with gently sloping sides. To one end was a formation of black rock with a flat top, smoothed by time and weather, which, Alys explained, served as a kind of dais. It was from here that the Kali heard petitions and disputes at the solstice and equinoxes, and where official declarations of war were read, and peace treaties signed and witnessed. The amphitheatre was also where important bouts were fought, where children began their first stage of formal training, where the spring and autumn markets were held, and where marriages took place. From a distance, Lida could see the lush greenness of it begin to be dusted with a cover of snow.
The city itself - city was the wrong word, Lida realised, though she struggled to find an alternative - nestled in a valley, encased by mountains on all sides. The amphitheatre was the only enduring structure: the buildings were not as they were in Eilan, permanent and unmoving, but were rather large, white tents, circular in shape, ringing communal campfires in groups of ten or so. It made a beautiful pattern on the valley floor, with countless white rings surrounding the orange flash of each central fire; Alys named the fire cuer fe.
‘L’cuer fe - the heartfire - never goes out,’ Alys said. ‘Each tenant has its own foye fe for warmth and lesser meals, but the evening meal is taken at the cuer fe with family and their guests. Everyone tends to the heartfire and everyone helps to cook. It is at the heartfire that our stories are told.’
‘What stories?’ Lida asked, perking up.
‘Stories of the gods, and of Andastra especially, for she was really the first Kali. Stories of wars and of great warriors and heroes and hunters. Stories of the snow. Stories of Brinnica.’
Lida stared openly as they walked into the city. The tents - tenats - were made of skin and furs and were not perfectly white, as they’d seemed from a distance, but were rather a patchwork of light-coloured pelts. Each one had a small round hole in the centre of its sloping roof to let smoke escape from its foye fe. As it was day, may of the tenats were open: as they walked by, Lida could see people cooking and eating, and small children curled up on mats close to the warmth of their hearth fire.
‘Is every city in Brinnica like this?’
‘This is the only city in Brinnica,’ Alys answered. ‘The others, even the Northern Sands, are more like small towns or even villages by Eilin standards, depending on how large the tribe is and the purpose of the settlement. And no, they’re not like this. For my tribe, our houses are made of wood and stand on stilts over the river, so we may fish from inside during the winter. Dylan’s tribes use tenats like these, but they are smaller, more easily carried, as the Hunting Cats range across the Great Plain, following the white bison. The Grey Wolves are different again. They live in a cave network on the northern side of the Glass Mountains, and their houses are hewn from the rock.’
‘But why use tenats here? Is the Kali not your Queen? Wouldn’t it make more sense to build?’
‘She is but she is not. The honour of the title comes not with your Eilin or Erbidan nonsense about blood heirs. Katrin has the best claim to be the next Kali, but one who believes they are equal or better - by skill or wisdom or experience - could challenge her. The Kali has not always been of the Snow Leopards.’ She drew herself up proudly. ‘Not that long ago, there was a Kali from Yoss Lake. My grandparents’ grandparents moved from our home to live here while she ruled. She had no daughter, though, and so when she died great bouts were fought, and the Kali has been of the Snow Leopards ever since. So you see there cannot be houses of stone here, for the tribe of the Kali could change between generations.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘But I do think that the wood houses my ancestors built here were more sensible than the Snow Leopard tenats.’
Lida shook her head. ‘It’s so different.’
‘But better, no? Our Kali is strong and wise, the best young woman of her age. Can you say the same about your green Kings and Queens?’
Lida thought of King August and decided she could not, but it seemed disloyal to voice it.
‘Even in Erbide, it is not so good,’ Alys went on. ‘It is better than Eilan, for they have their Council, and each First Family has a say in the way the islands are governed, but to be of a First Family is not necessarily to be wise or strong or smart. They are sensible, though, in that their Family veto belongs to their Priom-la and no one else.’ She lowered her voice. ‘You should be glad, because if it did not, Lorcan would have been married off at sixteen to some rich Princess across the sea.
It is well known that Kayla Merchant often uses her veto to stall her husband’s schemes.’
Lida shot her a look, silently willing her to go on.
‘Lida, Alys,’ called Katrin, emerging from between two tenats. ‘Come.’
They followed her through a maze of tents until Lida could see the amphitheatre that was the Kali’s Court. One ring of tenats stood much closer to it than the rest, overlooking the stage-like stones.
‘This is my family’s circle,’ Katrin said. ‘As you are my guests, you will stay here.’ She gestured to where they could water the horses, then led Lida and Alys inside one of the tenats.
There was an internal structure to the tent, set out to ring the foye fe. It divided the outside ring of the tenat into eight small rooms, separated by pelts hanging from the ceiling. Each room had a wooden bed frame complete with a feather mattress. After a month sleeping on the ground, Lida all but sighed aloud.
‘Choose a bed,’ advised Katrin. ‘Dylan and Lorcan were here before you, but Ella has gone to her family’s circle, so there is plenty of space. Then,’ she continued, turning to Alys, ‘I suggest you do what we have all been dreaming about for weeks, and go to the hot springs for a bath. Be back before nightfall.’ She gave them a smile and disappeared back outside.
Lida chose a bed piled high with blankets. It was surprisingly warm inside the tenat, but still far colder than she found comfortable. She took a few things from her pack, carefully separating the clothing that desperately needed washing from the clothing that wasn’t entirely caked in dust and stained with sweat. She fished in the side pocket of her pack for Siva’s necklace and Maya’s perfume, and she stuffed them both under her pillow. As an afterthought, she went to take Siva’s ring from her finger to put alongside them.
It wasn’t there.
She stretched out her fingers, and looked uneasily down at her hands. Her fingers were trembling. There was no flash of green and silver, no comforting weight.
Frantically, she searched her pockets and all through her coat. She turned her gloves inside out and undid her sleeping bag, shaking it over the bed. She pulled every item from her pack, and ran her hands over every piece of clothing she owned.
She found nothing.
She sat heavily on her bed. She had only had it a month, but she felt the loss of the ring in the very core of her. She wanted to cry, but nothing would come: it was almost as if it was too important for such a common thing as tears. She thought of Cathan, and of how she would tell him that she was so careless to have lost such a precious piece of her mother. She distractedly rubbed at her pointer finger, trying to recall how it had felt to have the emerald heavy upon it.
‘Lida?’ Alys hovered, looking worried.
‘My ring,’ Lida choked out. ‘My mother’s ring. I can’t find it.’
Alys immediately dumped her own washing to help Lida look, and together they raked through Lida’s belongings a second time. They searched the floor and even stripped the bed, but with no success.
‘It will turn up,’ Alys said determinedly. ‘We will ask the others. It will be somewhere.’ She gave Lida a swift, hard hug. ‘In the meantime, come. We will go to the springs. You might remember something in the water.’
Lida followed her reluctantly from the tenat circle and past the now-white amphitheatre, away from the city and through the white fields of its surrounds where horses and shaggy red cattle stood in tight groups, huddled against the new cold, to the foot of the mountains in the north.
She saw the steam before anything else, rising up from the rocky, snowy ground to curl and dissipate in the sharp air. There was a strong, unpleasant smell, and Lida wrinkled her nose.
‘You will get used to it,’ Alys said. ‘Trust me. It is worth it.’
The collection of springs was much bigger than the bath complex in Kingstown. Some of the pools were small and shallow, carved from the black rock: Lida watched a mother with her tiny baby sitting waist-deep in such a bath-like pool, cupping water in her hand to sprinkle over the baby’s silky hair. Other springs were huge, larger than the swimming pools Lida knew, and some were so deep that she could not see the bottom.
‘Alys!’ Dylan called, waving from the side of a rocky pool the size of Tiernan’s teaching room at the Illarum.
Alys placed their towels carefully at the water’s edge before stripping and climbing gracefully into the water. Lida awkwardly shrugged out of her shirt and peeled off her jodhpurs, leaving her breastband and underwear on, and kicking off her boots. She shivered as she clambered into the spring, her toes cautiously gripping the sharp black rocks. There was a moment where her stomach churned uneasily, remembering when she had last been in a body of water, but the steam warmed her face and her goosefleshed skin, so she did not hesitate for long.
The pool was hot as a bath and reached her ribs when her feet found the sandy bed. ‘Oh, gods,’ she exclaimed, sinking down to let the water flow over her shoulders.
Alys gave a smug smile. ‘I told you.’
The water was an odd colour, almost green. Alys showed Lida how to scrub her skin and scalp with sand; when she’d finished, Lida’s skin felt raw, but she wasn’t about to complain. She lay back, keeping her ears under the water and looking up into the grey sky, watching her breath steam into the air.
They stayed in the water far longer than they should have, until they were thirsty from the heat and their skin puckered from the water. Alys eventually coaxed Lida out by promising to bring her back every day. They wrapped themselves up in their towels and walked back to l’Cour du Kali, unwilling to put their dirty clothes back onto freshly-scrubbed skin, despite the cold. Lida shivered and shook as they walked, but Dylan had wrapped his towel about his waist and bared his chest to the cold with a laugh.
Lorcan and Katrin were sitting by the cuer fe when they returned, talking with a lovely Brinnican woman around Cathan’s age. Her thick blonde hair was unbound and fell to her waist, the fire throwing caramel tones through the gentle waves.
Someone - Lida guessed Katrin - had left clean clothes on their beds, and all of their travel-stained clothing was gone. The leggings left for Lida were much thicker and tighter than she was used to, but they stretched to fit perfectly, as did the white woollen shirt and fur-lined tunic. It was clothing made for the snow, and Lida immediately felt warmer; her Eilin clothes, made of linen and cotton and silk, simply weren’t suited to the northern climate, no matter how many layers she wore. She quickly braided her wet hair back from her face, the plait falling over her shoulder. She used Ava’s ribbon to tie it; it made her feel better to see the flash of green when she moved, even if it wasn’t coming from Siva’s ring.
She went to check Sacred. The horses were standing sleepily on the boundary of the tenat circle; Lida guessed that they were clever enough not to move far from the source of their oats in this weather. Sacred seemed happy enough, and Lida spent some time brushing her thick coat and combing out her mane and tail. She was sleekly muscled from the month of travel, and when Lida finished, the mare’s coat shone.
‘She looks happy, non?’
Lida’s pulse raced in her ears, and for a moment she stood very still. ‘Mikal told me I should take her north,’ she said lightly, swallowing. ‘He said that northern things don’t flourish in Eilan.’
‘Sometimes that is true.’ Lorcan gave Sacred a carrot and rubbed her neck while she crunched. ‘It is too hot in your country.’ Lida watched as he smoothed Sacred’s forelock. ‘Have you recovered from your swim?’
‘The one where I almost froze, or the one where I almost cooked?’
‘Either. Both.’
Lida felt as if she was standing on unstable ground, trying very hard not to fall as everything shifted beneath her. ‘Dylan took good care of me,’ she said, deciding that if she was going down, she would take his careful self-control with her.
His face didn’t change, but his fingers twitched. ‘Thank the gods for Dylan,’ he muttered.
‘Indeed. H
e makes a surprisingly comfortable pillow.’ She watched his hands bunch into fists and bit the inside of her cheek.
They stood in silence for a minute, as Lida idly wound small plaits into Sacred’s mane and the mare nudged Lorcan for more carrots. He crooned to her in Brinnican, too low for Lida to catch the words, then stepped to the side, closer. His fingers began twisting small plaits, mirroring the ones Lida was making; they were far neater than hers.
‘You’re good at that,’ she said, reaching to touch one.
‘In Erbide, archers braid their hair,’ he said softly. ‘My father wished for me to be a sword-shield, as he is, and my mother wanted me to be anything else in the world but a warrior, so both refused to do it for me, so that I might turn towards a different path. I ran to my uncle, of course, and he taught me to do it for myself.’
‘What do sword-shields do?’
‘With their hair? They shave it off.’
She eyed his curls and nodded, somewhat glad he had chosen the bow instead. She started a new plait, and either she had stepped closer to him, or he to her, for as her fingers worked they brushed the side of his hand, sending tiny shivers over her skin. She finished the plait as slowly as she could, but it was still too soon; when she was done, she let her hand rest in Sacred’s mane. He did the same, his long fingers twined through the red.
They stood like that for some time; Lida did not think that she could move away, nor drag her eyes from his hand.
‘Why did you go into the water after me?’ she said eventually.
‘I would have gone in after anyone.’
She turned to narrow her eyes at him, and he grinned at her expression, stepping smoothly away from Sacred to bend himself into a deep bow.
‘But for you, ais-la, I went in twice.’ He extended his sword hand as he straightened, open with his palm facing the sky. There was a glint of silver and a flash of deep green.
Lida blinked at her mother’s ring.
‘You went in twice?’ she whispered slowly. ‘Lorcan, you went back into the ice after that?’