Trail of Pyres Read online

  Eliles followed close with a smile. “There’s a whole section dedicated to southern plants… you might find something on growing grapes, even on the art of the vintner.”

  “Vintner? Why the hells would I care?”

  “Vintner. A wine maker.”

  He stopped with his hand on the door and turned to face her. “You shittin’ me? You ain’t shittin’ me.”

  “You wouldn’t want Jinbin finding it, now would you?”

  His stare was blank, but his lips struggled to hide their humor. “Yer mean. The perty girls always are.”

  22

  New Fost

  Dark sings beneath summer wings,

  a falling fallacy failing, facial falling, la-la-la-ing,

  the song, the gong, the voice, the drum,

  deep base, shrill scream,

  blank face, textured dream.

  Singing Dark.

  –Tomes of the Touched

  Memories of the journey to the continent were a blur of sorrows and sails, interrupted by scarce moments when those left behind slipped to the rear of Kinesee’s thoughts. She recalled her hero most, but even here most tearless memories were watching he and Alu striking at each other with sticks, or horsing around with Lelishen and Tengkur. She’d slept nestled against Solineus’ chest every night, and something deep within wanted to recall these times with fondness, but visions of nightmares thundered over every slice of pleasant, awaking her in tears with a throat raw from a scream.

  Sailing on the Silver Lady was slow and dull, too many candles to sit and travel back in time, but never so far to reach papa and a time of laughs and smiles.

  She spent the first day in a funk, slumped in a cabin, but the Lady Ravinrin took notice and made the journey more miserable. Every day since, she spent the morning learning her letters and in the afternoon she joined a dozen younger folk to study history. All five hundred years of important events; by important, people seemed to mean boring and filled with killing. Which made their journey worse, knowing someday children would fall asleep to the story which brought her tears and pain. She’d prefer to sulk and moan in the cabin.

  But her mood climbed from the doldrums when it came time for the afternoon break; perhaps this was Tedeu’s point from the beginning.

  Kinesee leaned on the ship’s foredeck rail, Leto by her side, and Maro no more than a dozen paces from her defense. Even here on the Silver Lady, there was a lack of trust. On land she’d found the warrior’s presence comforting; on the water she found it disconcerting that the Ravinrin believed they could have a murderer in their midst.

  Leto pointed to the fin of a dolphin arching from the waters. “If we could sail so fast as they swim, we’d have made shore by now.”

  “And if we could fly like them gulls… rather pointless to imagine, I’d say.”

  “As you say.”

  A week and a half sailing the strait, and she’d made sure the boy wasn’t right about anything. It was a gift passed down from her mother, according to Papa.

  “Besides, the shore ain’t hard to find, we stare at it all day.” The coast of Northern Vandunez was a constant to the south, only the details changed. They’d passed Cities, villages, and cliffs, even a forest that got her excited that they might make land at Eleris Edan, where Solineus and Lelishen traveled. The trees disappeared within a few candles, and returned to the steady roll of fishing villages and dark beaches.

  “Isn’t.”

  She glared at his dead fish smirk. The Ravinrin didn’t just want her to learn to read, they wanted her to speak like a lady. “When father gets around to teaching me how to use a sword, I’m gonna wail on you.”

  “I’ve no doubt, m’lady.” His expression didn’t change. Infuriating, if it wasn’t kind of funny. She couldn’t stand to look at him either way.

  Her eyes trailed back to land, such a boring view since dawn, when sitting outside studying her words. Her brows scrunched. “Ain’t that peculiar. Say ‘isn’t’ and I’ll poke you in the nose.”

  “What’s peculiar?”

  “We haven’t seen so much as a fishing village all day, no boats, nothing. I’m thinkin’ we’re looking at the Bloody Plain.” Leto took his time to consider, or maybe he wondered if it was safe to correct her again. Far as Kinesee was concerned, she was sticking to Bloody Plain until proven otherwise.

  “Yes, you may be correct. They say it’s a fifty horizon buffer between the woodkin and the Tek, in places at least. If you’re right, we should be close to New Fost.”

  Her eyes shifted forward, but nothing stood in view. “We should climb to the crow’s nest.”

  “Oh, hells no.”

  She turned on him, hand to hip. “Scaredy white won’t climb.”

  “I’m scared of Grandma. I die doing something stupid, she promised to hunt my soul down and throw it in the forges herself.”

  Kinesee snorted, but he had a point. And Maro would never allow it. She glanced at him; he shook his head. Guards were just no fun at all.

  So they stood, watching the terrain slip by, and when no one called for history lessons well after high sun, their suspicions grew. But they grew bored, and broke Tengkur from her prison for a couple candles, the little goat providing plenty entertainment as she hopped and danced, butting half a dozen legs. A young sailor slipped a helm onto his head and dropped to all fours, butting heads with the critter until Maro huffed and gave him a sour look.

  All in all, way better than studying some battle from the War of Seven Lies. Some bad priest burned on top of a rock, and on and on and on.

  The sun was a couple candles from the horizon when sailors from the Silver Lady first hailed Silone fishing boats, and they learned that New Fost was just over the horizon. Not long after, the ship went to half-mast, slowing as it entered crowded waters. She didn’t bother trying to count the ships sitting at anchor, let alone the smaller boats aligned closer to shore. What mattered was that none flew the Luxun standard.

  She sighed, but when she spotted Tedeu Ravinrin sauntering across the deck, she smiled and trotted to her side. The Lady grinned, but it turned to a frown on sight of Tengkur. “My girl, you and that goat… I don’t know what to do with the pair of you.”

  “She’s a good goat.” Lady Ravinrin hadn’t forgotten the prancing joy the goat took in crashing crystal; time to switch topics. “Can we go to shore?”

  “The men will make land first, we won’t set foot until the main tent is up and guards are in place.”

  Kinesee didn’t mean to groan, or at least not so loud. The scowl on the Lady’s face forced her to rethink her next words. “Not that I know a thing. Not like you do. Leto better not be goin’ before me.”

  Leto blanched. She’d caught him off guard. “I’m one of the men.”

  Set up, and the kill. “Tengkur can grow a better beard than you.”

  The dead fish lips returned, and Tedeu laid a hand on his shoulder. “You’ll be a good boy and help Maro keep an eye on our ward.”

  Kinesee gave him a pursed lip smile, perhaps cocky, but she felt she deserved it. “Be a good boy and see to m’ goat.” She reached up and patted him on the head. She knew she’d won when Maro cracked a grin.

  It was well after dark by the time Kinesee made it into a rowboat, and she couldn’t help but yawn, despite the excitement to be off that durned ship. A lantern hung from the prow and stern, and four oarsmen guided them with soft splashes. She sat beside Alu and the Lady Ravinrin; Tedeu had zero patience with goats and relegated Tengkur to waiting aboard the Silver Lady until morning when boats would haul more stock ashore.

  Kinesee leaned with a yawn, and Alu prodded her ribs. “We’re almost there.”

  “I know.” The sky was moonless and pitch dark except for stars; New Fost was a field of black punctuated by small fires. It was hard to imagine their future would begin in a place so dark. “The Bloody Plain.”

  “New Fost.”

  Oars drove them to shore, the boat’s bottom sliding on pebbles, and
men rushed into the surf, dragging the keel full onto the beach so the women’s dresses remained dry. Bonfires marked the beach, revealing crowds of milling folks even so late.

  Maro flipped his feet over the edge and lifted Kinesee onto land. She smiled, watching as Leto caught his toe, stumbling to a knee. Her mouth opened to laugh, but all she heard was a scream.

  Maro’s sword flashed orange in the bonfire’s light, and men roared. Rushing feet across sand. In flickers blades and shields met. Chaos and dark, she spun, but the world was an indistinct flurry of motion. Assassins. They missed the Ravinrins on the Eve. Where was the Lady Tedeu? She scanned the chaos but couldn’t see her.

  A shoulder struck her from behind, driving her to the ground. She flailed her elbow and struck her attacker, too late to realize it was Leto, and that an axe swept over her head. The boy clutched his nose with one hand, his arming sword in the other as he held her down, bleeding on her dress.

  Maro whirled above them and a body fell beside them. A strange comfort that the dead leaked blood instead of Shadow. Shouts and screams, grunts.

  Leto leaped to his feet and swiped his nose as he stood above her.

  Maro swept an arm beneath her and lifted her to her feet. He gave her a shove back to the boat a flicker before two men drove into him. He slid, feet burying in the sand, but he kept his feet, his mail rattling as a blade ricocheted. Leto swung in from behind, taking an attacker in the back of his knee, and it dangled funny as the man crumpled.

  Kinesee crouched by the side of the boat, doing her best to stay in shadows while folks fought and died. She glimpsed the Lady Ravinrin, hunched and surrounded by shields, but she couldn’t see Alu.

  All reason fled. She leaped to her feet. “Alu! Alu!”

  Maro snarled in a wordless rage and hugged her with his shield arm, the targe facing three warriors sprinting their way. She was blind behind the wooden wall, crushed against his mail, lifted from her feet as he stepped into the fray, sword arcing. She felt the concussion of weapons through the shield and heard the rattle of his mail, leaned with him as a man bulled into his side. But he didn’t go down.

  “Ravinrin!”

  The fighting grew more fierce, and Maro stumbled over a body, and Kinesee’s feet touched to help him stand.

  Tears came, and the combat seemed to last forever, pinned between a man’s armor and shield. But it was maybe a couple hundred beats of her heart before Maro settled her feet back to the sand and took a knee. She turned to see if he was well, but someone more important caught her eye: Alu stood with greatpa’s sword, a man dead in the sand at her feet.

  Kinesee’s stare caught Alu’s, and the sisters ran to each other.

  Kinesee went for the hug, Alu spun her by the shoulder, checking for wounds. “You’re unhurt?”

  “Who were those men?”

  Leto rushed to their sides, and Daksin wasn’t far behind.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  Maro stumbled to them. “You four, quit your gawkin’ and get your godsdamned asses to the Lady Ravinrin.” He gave the brothers a shove, and the sisters followed.

  Leto mumbled to his brother, “I think she broke my nose.”

  Kinesee flushed and hid her face by looking to her shadow. “Maro, thank you.”

  “Aye, lass.”

  A dozen men lay dead or dying, Silone, not Tek. Assassins spilled blood from every clan family on the Eve of Snows, but the Ravinrins survived with the fewest losses. She figured the Church was trying to correct its error.

  Within a couple wicks a hundred men escorted them to the Ravinrin tent with a wall of shields and spears. Inside, the light of the tent’s lanterns revealed a reality the dark hid. Maro bore a gash across his calf, just above the boot, and Tedeu’s dress was sanguine spattered. Half a dozen men covered wounds as they found places to lean or sit.

  Kinesee rushed to Tedeu, hugging at her side.

  “I was so worried for you, my lady. They came for you a second time.”

  Tedue hugged her first, then held her by both shoulders, kneeling to look her straight in the eye. “My dear, it wasn’t my blood they were after. It was yours.”

  Maro said, “Aye. No doubt about it.”

  Kinesee’s eyes flicked back and forth, all relief from a fight survived swept away. “No. No, I saw them rush her.”

  “A feint, girl. They knew the guards would focus on our Lady.”

  Tedeu said, “Thank the gods you stayed with her.”

  “Was Leto who saved her hide.”

  She blushed and turned to the boy; the bloody-nosed fish wore an unbearable grin. She pinched her lips. Stared. Horrible. She turned back to Tedeu. ”Why me? The killer outside Inster?”

  Maro said, “No, that theory don’t put wind in my sails.”

  Tedeu nodded. “The Emudar have enemies in the northern clans who hold grudges, but we can’t know for certain. I pray we’ll know more come morning, after having words with any survivors.”

  Kinesee stepped to Alu and sagged into her hugging arms. Who knew stepping outside for a walk one night could cause such trouble. A hand strayed to the pearl dangling from its chain around her neck and clutched the oblong warmth. She wished her hero was here, but he was too far away to be her hero again. “I need to rest.” Or cry. Alu’s hug tightened.

  23

  Red Peacock

  Love every warrior as your blessed child, and men grown will be as loyal as a babe at the mother’s teat. With loyalty the warrior becomes a soldier, a weapon walking into death’s maw without question; a progeny willing to die is more likely to live, so long as the progenitor’s battle holds a path to victory.

  –Codex of Sol

  Man and beast traveled slow as chilled molasses even when pressed by survival. Or perhaps it was the threat of arrow and lance that made every stride feel shorter and slower. Or perhaps it was that every stride led her further from Ivin, his chances of survival thinning with every horizon they crossed.

  Meliu straddled the horse given her by the clans, but so many around her rubbed holes through the blisters already on their feet she felt guilty for her sore ass.

  Wagons and carts took their turns. Ears and Ears bore children most of the day, losing shaggy hair from tugs, pulls, and rubs, but they clopped on. Ilpen did his best to smile when he gave up his seat candles at a time, but he wasn’t a young man any longer and his weight wore on his knees. Not that he wasn’t taking his belt a notch smaller every few days.

  Three weeks, and gods only know how much further to go. If they made it eight horizons in a day, she’d consider it a victory. Twenty-one days, five horizons per day… a miserable slow way to get anywhere. Halfway at best, depending on which map you believed. She sighed and glanced to the empty horizon behind her.

  There hadn’t been a single attack from the Hidreng on the main host, but if people fell too far behind, they never returned. Beaten by the pace and sun, Meliu felt sure most gave up in the hopes the Hidreng would accept their conversion to spare their lives. Whether they fed vultures or worshipped the Hokandite now, she couldn’t say.

  When she asked the Broldun why they hadn’t attacked, he’d laughed in her face. “Sedut,” she’d said, and he nodded. But he also tapped her between the eyes with a finger she feared still carried the filth of battle. No one ever feared her before; the notion that the Hidreng feared her was as foreign and uncomfortable as it was comforting. A little girl shipped to a monastery so her parents didn’t need to feed her shouldn’t frighten no one, no how. But now, she frightened even herself.

  Meliu stretched her legs best she could in a saddle, then stood in the stirrups to ease her aches. She glanced to Ilpen and his wife. Dederu was a plain woman with streaks of gray in her hair, but she was tough. Not one word of complaint had passed the gal’s lips, even when their daughter suffered fits of sobbing. Seonu was ten and slept curled in a wad of blankets at her parents’ feet on the wagon.

  Ilpen caught her staring, so Meliu smiled and said, “W
ishin’ you’d taken a boat, I wager.”

  The man managed a chuckle. “It ain’t the biggest regret in my life, not yet anyways, but it’s drawin’ close.”

  Dederu’s glance was stern. “We’ve weathered worse than a ride on a wagon.”

  “Aye, we have. We have.”

  Their eyes lifted and Meliu followed their gaze to riders coming fast from the head of the train. A dozen or so, and she spotted the Wolverine in the mix. Where the hells that bastard come from?

  A rider peeled from the group, raising dust as he drew close. It was Pikarn’s tracker, the Rat, although folks around here named him Squirrel. He reined his horse to stop in a billow of dust.

  He haled Ilpen. “We’ve three ships ahead taking on passengers. They would welcome you and your family aboard. Not sure they’d be able to ferry your team.”

  “I thankee for the word.”

  Meliu butted in. “What the hells is going on back there?”

  He eyed her with his scarred eye, his face giving a single twitch. “Who the hells are you?”

  From anonymity to fame, it felt odd that someone who should recognize her didn’t. “Meliu.”

  “Oh shit! You healed up nice, girl. Heard you, uh... The battle.”

  Rumors of her Dark prayers had him spooked. The uppity-better-than-you glare disappeared, and she smiled. “Good you remember me. Now, what’s the Wolverine on about?”

  He cleared his throat. “Scouts say we got company west.” He looked back to Ilpen. “Make it to them boats fast as you can, hear?”

  Ilpen nodded and snapped his reins, and Ears and Ears jolted the wagon into motion.

  “How much company?”

  The Squirrel squirmed in his saddle. “Ain’t no way to know except to see.” He put heels to flanks and his horse launched into a gallop west.

  Meliu groaned and reined her horse around, urging the gelding into a trot that turned into a full out run. This big old horse wasn’t the ponies she was used to, and it bucked and hopped before reaching full speed.