The Whitefire Crossing (8 page)

“You outriders aren’t so different than the horses. Give you a treat every now and then, and it keeps everybody happy.”

Footsteps crunched on rock, and Cara’s high, clear laughter pierced the night air, followed by a man’s indistinct murmur. I peered into the darkness beyond the lanternlight. That male voice sounded all too familiar.

“Hope you boys saved me something.” Cara stepped into the light, her companion trailing after. Gods all damn it, I knew I’d recognized Pello’s voice. Couldn’t he mind his own business for one night?

He nodded to us all, friendly as could be, but my annoyance grew when his eyes lingered a fraction longer on Kiran than the rest of us. “I thought I’d return your awl before morning,” Pello said to Harken, handing him the tool. “Many thanks for the loan.” He sketched an exaggerated bow to Cara, his face full of wry humor. “And Suliyya’s grace upon you, for the delight of your company on the way.”

Cara’s eyes sparkled with mocking amusement. “I love a man with a smooth tongue.”

I stifled a disgusted snort. It hadn’t taken Pello long to figure out the perfect excuse to come lurk around our camp. Cara was happy to flirt with anything short of a rock bear. Though she always held to her rule about not mixing bedplay and outriding, it didn’t stop admirers from hoping. I had no doubt Pello would eagerly play the part.

“Glad I could help,” Harken told Pello as he handed Cara her dinner ration. At least he didn’t offer Pello any of his seedcakes. “Nasty storm like that, I’m surprised more tarps weren’t damaged.”

Pello’s expression turned serious. “Perhaps you outriders could answer a question for a man new to the westbound route. Is it natural to get a storm so strong this early in the season?”

Beside me, Kiran went still. When Pello had first showed up, after one quick sidelong glance at me, Kiran had stared at the ground, picking idly at small rocks as if bored. Now I sensed him listening intently, though he didn’t raise his head.

Cara dropped to sit against a wagon wheel, her hands full of food. “It’s not the usual way of things, but weather can be strange up here. I’ve seen it snow in midsummer.”

To my surprise, Jerik spoke up. “The question’s a fair one. A storm that bad before summer takes hold...it reminds me of the weather some twenty years ago, during the mage war.” A frown marked his dark face.

“You worked that year?” Cara sounded impressed. “Must’ve been a hell of a trip.”

“It was,” Jerik said, shortly.

My respect for Jerik shot upward. I didn’t remember anything from the mage war, since I’d only been a toddler at the time. I’d heard the stories, though; we all had. There’d been a falling out among some powerful mages, and they’d got to fighting. Lord Sechaveh had ignored it for a while, keeping to his hands-off policy. But when the magic thrown around got to the point of damaging the city and killing crowds of unfortunate bystanders, he’d gotten mad enough to draw the line.

The stories differed on what he’d done—some said he’d had the mages involved killed, others that he’d banished them. Nobody agreed on how he’d managed to do either, but the end result was that life in the city went back to normal. Still, it had been a crazy few months, and all that messing around with magical forces had screwed up the weather in a big way. I’d heard stories of storms with colored lighting bright enough to blind anyone foolish enough to look at it, and hail the size of a man’s head.

I glanced at Kiran, wondering if his reaction to the storm had something to do with the mage war stories. He was several years short of my own age, so chances were good he hadn’t even been born when it happened. Maybe somebody had told him the more gruesome stories as a kid and scared him good, but it was hard to imagine that making him go rabbiting off into the catsclaw. I had a sudden flash of the horror on his face when he’d realized a message might reach Ninavel. Had he thought the storm meant a mage was after him? Surely not. Even a highsider would know how dumb that idea was. Whatever mages want, they get, and they don’t fuck around about it, either. If a mage wanted to stop him, Kiran would be dead already. No, it had to be something else.

Kiran didn’t look scared now; far from it. His fascination was plain as day, and I could practically see all the questions jamming themselves up in his throat.

“Mage war.” Pello spoke as if he were savoring the words. “Now there’s a thought to disturb a man’s sleep.” An odd undertone colored his voice, and I shifted forward, wishing his eyes weren’t in shadow.

“Surely so,” Harken agreed. “I worked a convoy traveling all the way to eastern Arkennland that year, so I missed all the excitement, but from the tales my sister shared, I’m not sorry. She lost her husband and two nephews—stonemasons, all of them. They were on a job repairing the southgate wall when one of the fights flared up. The whole wall came down, killed their entire crew in an instant.”

Jerik stood, his back rigid. “I’ll check the horses before I turn in,” he announced, and headed off into the night without a backward glance.

Pello’s mobile face creased in theatrical disappointment. Cara cuffed his shoulder. “Don’t expect any campfire tales out of Jerik, not without a lot of sarkosa wine to soften him up first. The man’s got a mouth tighter than a snare trap.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Pello said. His gaze swept across us, and his smile held more than a hint of irony when he nodded to me. I suppressed a scowl as he made his farewells and finally disappeared down the line. Cara watched him go with a small, contemplative smile on her face that made me want to hit her.

“For Khalmet’s sake, Cara, can’t you manage one trip without any lovesick drovers mooning after you?”

She smirked. “I’d wondered where your tongue had got to. Who says I’m the main attraction?” She aimed a soulful look at Kiran. “Hard to compete with the likes of you, kid. You must have had herds of city girls throwing themselves at your feet...and plenty of boys, too, I’d wager.”

Kiran looked like he wished the earth would split open and swallow him, but he managed a stiff little shrug. Cara ignored my pointed glare and flicked a dried fig at him.

“No need to be so shy. What, you have a lover back in the city? Someone you miss?”

Kiran hurriedly ducked his head, but not before I saw the way he’d squeezed his eyes shut, as if in pain. “No,” he muttered.

Well, that little reaction added new weight to my theory that someone back in Ninavel wanted him gone. I didn’t know the rules for highsiders’ love games, but maybe he’d chosen the wrong lover to chase after, and now he was paying the price. I felt a twinge of sympathy, but pushed it aside. Time to distract Cara. Teasing Kiran about his love life was one thing, but from the growing curiosity in her eyes, her next questions might be more dangerous. Anything she learned about his supposed past was sure to end up in Pello’s ears.

“Have a heart and leave the poor guy alone, Cara. Can’t you see he’s tired after an entire day in the mountains?”

“Oooh, an entire day, and all he did was ride? Dev, you
are
going soft. As I recall, Sethan had you climbing laps your first day out.” Cara stuffed another fig into her mouth. A reminiscent grin spread over her face as she chewed.

“Yeah, up and down that overhanging crack near the second bend of the canyon. I thought my fingers would fall off by the time he finally let me quit.” I’d been mad as a stinkwasp. Later, I’d realized Sethan had been teaching me in his quiet way that endurance was as important as technique for a mountain climber.

“Gods, you were such a cocky little bastard, bragging that you could climb anything. Sethan had to shut you up somehow, or the rest of us would have strangled you by midmeal.” The look on Cara’s face said she was still savoring the memory.

Harken gave one of his low chuckles. “If we’re telling tales, I remember one about a blonde-haired little loud-mouthed chit who insisted she could climb the Darran Spire.” He leaned down to poke Cara’s shoulder with one wide finger.

To my delight, Cara’s cheeks reddened, an event nearly as rare as rain in the Painted Valley. “Oh yeah, let’s hear that one,” I said eagerly.

“Think I’ll save it for a special occasion.” Harken levered himself off the wagon’s outboard. “Would one of you be good enough to help me put the food away? It’s late, and this old man needs his rest.”

“Sure.” I jumped up. “Just show me where you want it, and Kellan and I’ll take care of it for you.”

Kiran scrambled after me with obvious relief. He darted glances my way as we stowed the food back in its warded container, but he held his tongue until we reached our tarp. “Pello’s trying to find out about me, isn’t he?”

“Oh, you noticed?”

He winced. “What are we going to do?”

And by “we,” he meant me. “Take care of that damn message charm of his, for one thing.”

“If you steal his charm, won’t he know it was you?”

“Who said anything about stealing? I’ll fix it so the charm seems to work, but any messages he sends go nowhere.” Deadblocking a charm was one of Red Dal’s best tricks, and one he held close to the chest. He’d always claimed no other handler knew the secret. I hoped a Varkevian-born man who’d never even been Tainted wouldn’t know it was possible.

Kiran was looking at me like he’d never seen me before. “You can affect a charm’s magic? How?”

“A little trade secret I picked up from a specialist. Nothing a highsider like you needs to know.”

Frustrated curiosity was all over Kiran’s face. His mouth worked, as if he wanted to ask a question but couldn’t think of how to phrase it.

“Disabling the charm’s the easy part,” I told him. “Finding Pello’s stash, that’s hard. But I’ve got a few ideas. Give me the night to think them over.”

“Anything I can help with?” Now he had the hopeful air of an eager young Tainter. It set my teeth on edge.

“Not unless you know how to peek an active hide-me ward.”

I’d meant to shut him up, but a thoughtful frown creased his brow. “Do you mean, reveal the ward’s location?” He fumbled in his hair. When he lowered his hands, the look-away charm lay glinting in one palm. “My...father once showed me that if a charm and ward are similar in purpose, yet have a different maker, the interference of their magic may cause visible effects if the charm passes too near the ward.”

He’d choked on the word “father” like he had a mouthful of cactus spines. Bad blood there, perhaps? I pushed speculation aside. I knew what Kiran meant. Every kid in Ninavel knows that party trick, though it’s not very useful in practice. Crawling all over a house waving a charm takes hours; somebody’s sure to discover you before you’re done. Pello’s wagon was a more reasonable area to search, but a bigger problem remained. “Yeah, a look-away’s enough like a hide-me, but that charm’s way too small to flash the ward.”

“Didn’t you say the cliffs here have carcabon stones?”

My mouth dropped open. Boosting the look-away charm with carcabon could actually work. I wouldn’t get anything so obvious as sparks, but all I needed was the tiniest shimmer of air over the ward’s location. No, wait, I didn’t have any silver to properly bind a stone to the charm...my eye fell on my warding bracelets. If I tied both stone and charm against a bracelet, that might be enough.

“Huh. That’s smart,” I said. Maybe a brain lurked in that highside head after all.

Kiran’s whole face lit up. Khalmet’s hand, if Cara ever saw him smile like that, she’d keel over from sheer lust.

“Don’t get too excited,” I warned him. “We still have to find a decent stone.” The nearby cliffs had been picked clean long ago. Except one. My blood tingled with a familiar thrill. Nasty, overhanging, with holds no bigger than sandmites and cracks too thin for pitons...no outrider had ever climbed Kinslayer crag. Word was the name came from an outrider whose brother had died attempting a climb. I’d scouted Kinslayer once and thought I could piece together a workable route, but Sethan had talked me out of trying it. Well. Sethan wasn’t here now, and Kinslayer was the best chance within miles for a stone large enough to help us. I’d scout it again, see if the route I remembered was real or only the product of a cocky kid’s ego. And if it was real...my heart pounded. What a climb that would be! But I couldn’t deny the risk. If I fell, I’d sentence Melly to a living death.

CHAPTER FOUR

(Kiran)

S
unlight warmed Kiran’s face and burned red through his closed eyelids. He opened his eyes, expecting the familiar sight of his bedroom’s pale stone ceiling etched with the swirling lines of ward patterns. Instead, only the sun-bright blank canvas of Dev’s tarp greeted him. He threw an arm over his eyes, a lump in his throat. He’d never see his bedroom in Ninavel again, with the stargazing charm he’d created for Mikail perched gleaming on his writing desk, and his favorite books of adventure tales hidden amongst the stacks of treatises on magical theory.

The adventure books had been gifts from Alisa. Kiran’s eyes stung. How Alisa would have loved this trip! She’d pored over explorer journals and dreamed of traveling as an envoy for her merchanter family when she reached her majority. Grief and guilt turned the lump in Kiran’s throat hot as molten silver.

The sound of voices outside the tarp recalled him to caution. Kiran hurriedly swiped at his eyes and sat up in the pile of blankets. He blinked in confusion at the sight of Dev’s gear already packed up in neat little bundles. Why hadn’t Dev awakened him? He yanked his boots on and stepped outside.

The sun was already high, and the white rock of the canyon walls shone bright enough to make Kiran’s eyes water. The convoy wagons still stood in their unbroken line along the trail. A small group of drovers sat in a loose circle nearby, talking idly.

“Hey, lazybones!” Dev waved from his perch on top of the massive boulder that anchored the high side of the tarp. “Thought you’d sleep forever.”

“Why didn’t you wake me? I thought you said last night we’d have to fetch water while the rockfall gets cleared?” Had Dev spent the morning hunting for a suitable carcabon stone?

“Since I’m such a nice guy, I took care of the water duty myself. You looked like you needed the sleep. Besides, I figured you’d had enough of bashing through catsclaw.” Despite Dev’s casual sprawl and easy grin, his eyes raked over Kiran from head to toe with a calculating curiosity that made Kiran wince internally.