Above the Snowline (17 page)

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Authors: Steph Swainston

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BOOK: Above the Snowline

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‘This is Laochan’s,’ she said. ‘He was wearing his other clothes when he died. I left him there . . . I didn’t return.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

‘What do you mean? You can have them.’

‘No,’ I said more tenderly. ‘Raven won’t think I’m a neutral negotiator if I arrive looking like a Rhydanne.’ I had recovered enough from the cold to begin taking off my bangles and bracelets.

Dellin simply pointed at my soaked jacket. ‘It’s freezing outside. If you wear that you will die. I will trade you Laochan’s clothes for those bangles.’

How like a Rhydanne. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Take them.’

She nodded and gave me her dead husband’s clothes. Selling them had no effect on her; in fact she began cooking again. She scooped more snow into her pot on the cracked and reddened hearthstones. It quickly turned translucent, its crest fell in and the water boiled much sooner than it would on the plains. Tiny bubbles coated the sides and bottom of the pan, and rushed to the surface till they turned it grey.

Her camp craft impressed me as much as her hunting prowess. She turned some strips of fat spitting in the fire. It looked like bacon.

‘Is that from the bear?’

‘Yes. Brown fat. It’s the most nutritious sort of meat there is. And it tastes the best too. Hibernating bears have it - that’s the only source apart from cubs - so you’re lucky.’

Outside, the night blizzard howled and drove snow horizontally past the cave mouth. A drift was building up there, already half-filling the entrance with a soft wall, coloured orange by our firelight. ‘We’ll have to dig ourselves out.’

‘Perhaps. Doesn’t matter.’

Sure enough, it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered here. It was strange to think of other Eszai sitting down to feast in the Castle’s hall, when five hundred kilometres away I was sequestered in a cave with a huntress, the only inhabitants of our secret world. Snow sealed the cave mouth completely and shadows flickered in the eye sockets of each skull lantern, bringing life to the long-dead beasts.

When we had eaten Dellin stirred some of her whisky into the melted bear’s grease. ‘What’s that for?’ I asked.

‘It’s an ointment. I’m going to massage your feet.’

‘Really? Um . . .’ I wondered where this was leading. ‘I’m not so sure about that.’

‘Jant, you have blisters. The slush has softened your skin. It’s dangerous. You might fall prey to frostbite or blood poisoning. Here . . .’ She held out her hand and I wriggled round to present her with my right foot, while keeping the rest of my body wrapped in the soft furs. I was naked, after all.

She washed my feet with warm water and then began to give me the most soothing and reinvigorating massage I have ever had. Her head bowed thoughtfully as she worked in silence. Her profile was sharp, with a shadow under the angle of her jaw. Her hair was tied back, her pale body fantastically athletic, with bone pointing from the muscle at elbows and shoulders. The notch at her throat was as deeply hollowed as an ice sculpture. Her breasts were just two nipples pushing out the vest, which, lower down, hung loose over her hard, concave stomach. The black vest and pants revealed more of her long limbs, making them lengthier still. I watched the play of indentations in her muscles as she moved. There was so much power locked up in her small frame.

In our snug sanctuary I moved closer to her, although Dellin never looked up to meet my eye. She worked practically, kneading my sole and separating my toes, which so many other women had massaged before. She forced her strong fingers between every muscle, loosened every joint, and it felt magnificent. I had to ruck the furs around my waist to disguise a secret erection. If she had noticed, I think it would have shocked her.

‘Now your feet are safe,’ she said at last. ‘It’s your turn to do mine.’

‘This ankle is still stiff. There . . .’

‘Feels all right to me.’

‘Can you do it again? Ahh . . .’

Then I took her tiny feet, washed and massaged them. They were surprisingly charming; every nail perfect and no calluses at all. Cleanliness was a matter of life and death to her, not a quest for beauty, but the result was the same. I felt her skin warm and soften under my hands and I couldn’t prevent my massage strokes becoming erotic touches. I was long-practised at massage and proud of my prowess. She relaxed and lay down close to me, and the deep furs folded between us. Was she attracted to me, or was this just another way of ‘making tomorrow safe’? I felt a new interest in her lifestyle. After all, I was returning to normal tomorrow, one night’s holiday as a Rhydanne wouldn’t do me any harm.

‘Laochan’s clothes remind me of those I wore as a child,’ I said serenely. ‘They’re much the same, magnified to adult size. That smell of worn suede takes me back to Mhor Darkling. Eilean made my clothes; I didn’t know how. I still don’t, even though I’m ninety-five. Laochan’s stitching is so fine, he must have had a lot of spare time.’

‘Oh yes. He was a wonderful hunter. He had time to beat lots of bangles, carve lots of beads. You can see some on the laces.’ She sighed and I squeezed her instep to let her know she wasn’t alone.

‘I may not have learnt how to make clothes, but I taught myself to fly.’

‘You are fast,’ she murmured - a compliment! I felt a mounting desire to caress the rest of her body, lean forward and run my hands over her legs, very slowly under the furs. I wanted to tell her more.

Instead, she sat up. ‘You’ve drunk all your kutch.’

I blinked. ‘Um . . . yes. Yes, I have.’

She laughed. ‘It was good, wasn’t it?’

‘It was all right.’

‘Do you want some more?’

‘Er . . . yes. Yes, I do. It’s very warming. Show me how to make it.’

‘Very well,’ she said. ‘But first fetch your flowery foam - your soap. You should wash and smell like an Awian again, because Raven will expect it. Come on.’ She used her mittens to ease four hot cobbles from the hearth and carried them to the tripod in the rear of the cave. She plunged them into the cone of pink flesh: there was a sudden hiss and a cloud of steam hid her.

I peered into the wobbly sink. ‘What’s this made out of?’

‘It’s a section of the bear’s gut.’

Surprisingly, the water was clean and wonderfully hot. Dellin lay on the furs and watched with regret as I shaved and brushed my teeth. Then I returned to the hearth and pulled the silky pelts around my legs, comfortable with exhaustion, hot water, massage and kutch. Now I was rid of a fortnight’s filth I felt extremely fresh, as if preened for a special occasion, and I basked in a tranquillity I’d hardly imagined could exist in Darkling at all. ‘Thank you, Dellin.’

She snorted. ‘You don’t smell like a man; you smell like a bunch of violets. Tomorrow you must speak for the Carnich Rhydanne.’

‘Yes . . .’ I murmured.

‘Look at me! Look me in the eye. Don’t take the Awians’ side because you grow feathers and so do they.’

‘Dellin, I—’

‘Don’t take Raven’s side because you are accustomed to speaking with princes and he puts you at your ease. Don’t feel as if you’re a boy again, because Darkling brings back memories. I think Raven is the sort of man who has no time for boys.’

‘Hah! I grew up in the city backstreets, Dellin. I had a gang behind me then, and now I have the Castle.’

She nodded slowly. ‘And most of all, don’t take his side because you think it’s what the silver man secretly wants. He wants to benefit his people, not the Castle.’

‘I know! I
swear
I’ll represent you fairly!’

She stirred the embers, and when a single, elongated flame licked up around the pan, she glared at it. ‘The lies of Awians are as powerful as their bright colours. They carry you away.’

‘Dellin, I can handle Raven Rachiswater; I’ve known him since he was a boy. In fact, I remember him playing on a rocking horse with his brother . . . and they squabbled over it. I remember his father. Damn it, I remember his
grandfather
, who died on the battlefield. Yes, Carnich is your home, and you’re wonderfully in your element here, but wait until you see me in the milieu to which
I’ve
become accustomed.’

Next morning, Dellin’s fur sleeping bag was already empty and the skillet of water was simmering noisily on the hearth. A clear blue light shone from the tunnel she had dug through the drift in the cave mouth, and rhythmic tapping told me she was out on the terrace.

I slit Laochan’s jacket up the back twice for my wings, put it on and popped the toggles through their holes. I dressed myself in his other clothes, though they were a bit tight, and crawled out into the bright sunlight with my mittens slipping over the crystalline snow.

What a sight it was! The mountainside dropped away nearly sheer into a steep, wide ravine filled by Carnich Glacier. We were on the bank high above it. I looked down onto its surface, which wasn’t flat but corrugated into regular waves taller than a man and banded equally white and dust-grey with ground rock. At its mouth the titan pressure of the weight of ice had thrust out clusters of blue-white shards, which stood sharp and monolithic, or splayed like quartz crystals. They cast long shadows each the length of a ship over the river of ice.

On the far side, the immense bulk of Klannich rose more than halfway up the sky. Its M-shaped double summit was unmistakable. The nearer pinnacle was higher, but the further one was visible beyond it, since Klannich curved slightly to the east as if shrugging. Further on still, a wall of snow-clad ridges continued the immense cordillera with a breathless impression of space. Peaks behind peaks, and yet more crested into the distance, each ridge a paler shade of blue until only the points were visible in a blue-white haze.

Clouds piled around Klannich mountain, not the thin wisps we had seen as we climbed, but great, cumbrous stacks of coppery nimbus, dark at the base where they hid the pointed summits here and there. A peach-pink, heavy dawn light shone from them, which, together with the lupin-blue sky, stippled the snowfield and the glacier’s ridged surface blue and orange. As the light shifted from a thundery brown to violet, the snowfields changed too, reflecting every nameable colour. Only Klannich’s two pinnacles remained pure white, like canines.

Ice had sealed the snow in a glassy crust over the whole slope and there was no sign of the bear’s blood. Half a metre of snow must have fallen last night - the heaviest fall I’d seen in eighty years. Dellin was busy with breakfast. She was sitting on one of the boulders, tenderising a chunk of bear thigh by holding it on the flat top and bashing it with a stone. ‘What do you think?’ she said.

‘I’m missing my coffee and biscuits.’

‘What? No. I mean, weren’t you looking at Raven’s house?’

‘Can I see Carniss from here?’ I said excitedly. ‘Where? Show me.’

She stood up and pointed across the ravine. The far bank was a vertical cliff, but Klannich projected beyond the end of the glacier into a promontory. In silhouette, topping this headland, was a wall and a big square tower.

‘Oh god,’ I breathed. ‘Oh god - oh
no
!’

‘Raven’s pueblo,’ said Dellin.

‘You didn’t tell me he was building a
fucking castle
! It’s . . . it’s
huge
!’

‘I told you it was big.’

‘Oh, shit, Raven, what the fuck are you trying to
do
?’

Dellin couldn’t understand a rhetorical address to Raven. She looked at me as if I was mad.

I said, ‘It’s a keep. He’s built a bloody fortress up there! Easily as big as the ones at the Front! Why didn’t you
tell
us?’

‘I told the silver man it was as big as the Skein Gate,’ she said, taken aback.

‘A
house
, you said. Not a fucking
tower
!’

Dellin seemed so frightened that I tried to calm down. ‘How long did it take him to build?’

‘Last year and this year, from the melt to the melt.’