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It was almost a relief to see the Kantening trap go off, igniting the abandoned wooden perimeter of the city and burning the captive villagers in droves. Jewelwolf would have to pull the captives back.

Yet the signal flags waved, and the villagers continued to be fed to the fire. Steelfox frowned and rode to the hilltop position of Jewelwolf and General Ironhorn.

The general knelt, and Jewelwolf nodded to Steelfox, a faint smile playing on her lips. “Yes, sister?”

“You will not recall the captives? It seems wasteful to let them burn.”

“You have a decent mind for tactics, sister, I will give you that. But you miss certain dimensions. The city-dwellers dared set a trap for us. Now they must watch as their countrymen are consumed by it. Now they must listen as men, women, and children scream in searing agony. The whole city will hear the sound. The whole city will smell the burning flesh. Terror will grow.”

“Father would not—”

Jewelwolf frowned now. “Father is not here. And you have idolized him into something he was not. He invented the tactics of the living shield and the corpse-rampart. He would approve.”

Steelfox was not so sure. Father would at least have offered Svanstad a chance to surrender, something Jewelwolf had declined to do. General Ironhorn, a careful subordinate, said nothing. “At least,” Steelfox said, “consider sending trolls to breach the walls. They’ve so far been good for little.”

At the mention of trolls, Jewelwolf’s bond-horse Aughatai snorted. Did Steelfox note a dim green gleam in the horse’s eyes? No, she must have imagined it. Jewelwolf stroked Aughatai’s mane and looked to the gray skies. “I think the light is still too great for the trolls’ comfort. Though I see a storm rolling in from the east, against the prevailing wind.”

“Kantening magic, perhaps,” Steelfox said. “My balloonists report high winds.”

“Mine as well. It’s clear they mean to give us a fight. General, we may be here some time. Send to our Spydbanen subjects that today is a good day to send their longships against the harbor. As long as Svanstad can feed its belly by sea, our task remains difficult.”

“Of course,” the general said. “I must remind you, however, there is a craft of Kpalamaa in the fjord, a ship big as a hill.”

“I know little of this Kpalamaa. But what I do know says they are timid as steppe mice. Tell the foamreavers to ignore that ship, as long as it ignores them. Meanwhile, the army’s engineers are free to cut down any tree, dismantle any building, to construct the siege engines. We desire the ability to rain death upon city and harbor.”

“As you command—” the general said, tugging on his horse’s reins.

A booming commenced from the city walls, and the three leaders turned their heads.

Fiery streaks flashed out from the walls, passing over the captives, terminating in explosions among the Karvak lines. Men and horses screamed.

“Fire-powder rockets,” Steelfox said.

“That bastard from Qiangguo,” Jewelwolf said. “Somehow this is his doing. I will kill him myself. General, pull us back. The captives too. There is no sense wasting human life.”

“You mean Karvak life,” Steelfox murmured, as the general rode to his task.

“Indeed. Sister, there is a thing I request of you, since the general is busy. Take charge of the Splintermen.”

Steelfox gazed into the Karvak back ranks, where shambled green-eyed men who should have been fed to the birds days ago. She shivered.

“I can pass the task to another,” Jewelwolf said, “if you are squeamish.”

“Nonsense. What shall these fine young men do?”

Jewelwolf smiled. “I am giving them catapult duty.”

The falcon Qurca searched the windows of the Fortress, seeking Haytham ibn Zakwan but finding him not. Steelfox, seeing through Qurca’s eyes, wanted him to know she thought of him; seeing Qurca, he would guess the rest, how his betrayal stung, how it was unbelievable to her, how there might still be room for speech.

But not if the man was not here. Had he left the city?

She then sent Qurca to find familiar faces. The bird encountered the young woman Inga, she of the one arm. Qurca landed discreetly near where Inga stood on a balcony facing the north and the Karvak fires, and heard Inga say, “Soon, we will make an end, I think. It is not what I might have wanted. Still, it is on the Swan’s wing, what will come. Good luck to you, Malin, my friend, wherever you fare!”

Elsewhere Qurca listened by an open window to the talk of voices Steelfox recognized as belonging to Snow Pine and Liron Flint.

“So you’re set on doing this thing?” the bandit-woman of Qiangguo asked.

“I am,” said the explorer. “I’ve ransacked Corinna’s library, and I’ve a good idea where the swords fell when Wiglaf Sword-Slave and Eilifur Ice-Gaze slew each other, centuries ago. They met aboard ships, in a fjord whose description matches Svanstad’s. The argument was nominally over a woman, but I think the weapons always hungered to destroy each other.”

“Don’t magical weapons always?”

“Not like this. Crypttongue was the work of the legendary King Younus, who was just possibly an ancestor of mine. It was a blade made to bind demons, jinn, efrits, that sort of thing. Wayland was envious of the long-ago king’s prowess and sought to make a matching sword, something potent against uldra and trolls. But Wayland’s envy corrupted the blade. While evil can be done with Crypttongue, Schismglass quite actively seeks to devour souls . . . and it’s every bit as happy to consume a human as anything else.”

“You’re trying to convince me to help you? I’m not completely sure it’s working.”

“Listen now! The battle, as such things so often do, consumed the men but left the weapons intact. The swords fell into the fjord. Crypttongue washed up on the continent, but sailors have seen a bright object down in the fjord for years.
Anansi
has a contraption by which a diver can suck air through a flexible tube connected to the ship. I will seek the cursed thing, and you too, and together we may find the Schismglass of Baelscaer, hungry for souls other than those of fish.”

“Good! I approve.”

“You surprise me, Snow Pine. May I ask why? These are not your people. We may have sympathy for them, but why are you risking your life . . . and more . . . for them? I
think
I know why I’m doing it. But I need to know your mind, before we brave the waters.”

“It’s for her. You know, Liron, when I was her age I seemed to have no options but to claw and kick until the world bled me a path to follow. In those days I hated my homeland, and the whole world. Yet in time, as I found my way, I came to respect my homeland and be amazed by the world. And what might I have become, Liron, if I’d had someone, anyone, to reach out to me at Joy’s age? To tell me,
You are important, you matter
. What might I have become? I, a woman with nothing but a bloodthirsty streak and a good sword arm?”

“Far from nothing,” Liron Flint murmured.

“Who am I to take this from Joy—that a whole country reached out to her and said,
Help?
Do you see what it’s doing to her? I fear it. Oh, gods, I fear it. But I also see how tall she stands. I’m just the vagabond Snow Pine, who used to be the bandit Next-One-A-Boy. But she’s the Runethane. Somebody I respect.”

He chuckled. “Well. I know how it is to respect someone. But know that this weapon is not a trivial thing. It hungers, as even Crypttongue does not.”

“Oh, it worries me, Liron. But you’ve seen what the Karvaks are capable of.”

“Yes. I have seen. . . . One way or another, this may be our last day together.”

She gave a snort. “You’re appealing to my sense of danger? We’ve had a barrel full of may-be-our-last-day-togethers.”

“And they didn’t sufficiently move you. So I arranged a nomad army at our doorstep and a mad quest for the morning. If that doesn’t work, there are always earthquakes and meteors.”

“Ha! Come here, you. Show me your earthquakes and meteors.”

Steelfox sent Qurca on his way, not wishing to eavesdrop further. The notion of sex had stirred her a trifle. She’d enjoyed her late husband’s embraces and had a time or two since taken lovers to bed and risked the burden of pregnancy. But desire didn’t seem to weigh upon her as it did others. She wondered if that made her strange. So be it. It made her free, too.

She eavesdropped in many places in the city, learning fascinating things, though none so much as the plans of Snow Pine and Flint. At last she bade Qurca return, passing over the ditch and the engineers’ ongoing work upon the catapults. She noted the hundreds of Splintermen, silently watching, patiently waiting for the nervous workers to finish. Patient as the dead.

“Ah, there you are,” Northwing said as Steelfox entered the ger. The one-handed shaman sat cross-legged, with eyes shut. “I am struggling with the wind, but this is a trickier business than steering one balloon. These Runewalkers aren’t as good as Karvak shamans . . . or me. But they are more familiar with the local spirits.”

“Leave that for now. I want your council.”

“Really! Someone check to see the moon hasn’t plunged into Mount Mastodon.”

“I am serious.”

“So am I. Bah. Very well, give me a moment. All right. The spirits are dismissed. Talk.”

“Northwing . . . I have misgivings about what my sister is doing. Not conquest. That is our way. But mad conquest, far from our heartland. Employing diseased allies and evil magic . . .”

“You have misgivings because you are sane. Well, basically sane. There are times—”

“The time may come,” Steelfox whispered, “when I have to act against my sister, for the good of the Karvak Realm. Will you stand with me?”

Northwing looked down at a handless wrist, grunted. “I will. I have my reasons.”

“Good. Am I correct that you can journey underwater, and take others? Or was that just boasting?”

“I’ll take you to the bottom of the sea, if that’s what you need. Just don’t ask me to like it.”

“Thank you. No woman has done more for our cause.” Steelfox added quickly, “Or man.”

“I am glad you would say this. But you’re still unwilling to acknowledge that I am neither woman nor man.”

Steelfox sat down beside the shaman. “I confess . . . it is an idea I’ve had considerable trouble comprehending. I can show respect without perfect understanding, however. And I should. I have at times treated you merely as an eccentric woman, rather than the individual you profess to be, one who walks between and beyond dualities. That ends now, my friend. You are Northwing, none other.”

Northwing studied Steelfox in surprise. “You have changed.”

“So have you. You’ve always seemed to dislike me. Yet you stayed by me when Haytham betrayed me.”

“He had his reasons—” Northwing began.

“We all do, Northwing. We all do.”

CHAPTER 30

LARDERLAND

When Bone first boarded
Leaping Bison
, taking note of its spaces for sixty rowers, its bright red-and-white sail, and its bull-shaped prow, Captain Glint had shown him and Gaunt a chart generously supplied by Eshe of Kpalamaa, whose people’s cartography far outstripped the Kantenings’.

“As I feared,” he’d said, “Deadfall’s island, where we think the heart lies, is boxed in. The Draugmaw blocks the obvious path, and it has gained in strength; I’d not go through it with anything less than your Kpalamaa friends’ galleon. Their map points out another worry. One could go around Oxiland proper—but it’s the worst winter in years and the ice would grind us up. Likewise for passing around Spydbanen. That leaves only the Chained Straits, which the Karvaks hold.”