The Whitefire Crossing (9 page)

“Um. Thanks.” Kiran fought to keep his expression neutral. The aftermath of Ruslan’s storm was not a pleasant memory. The deceptively innocent-looking catsclaw had proved a nightmare to navigate, with thick, tightly woven branches that refused to bend and gave vicious scratches when he’d forced his way through. Worse, his barriers had been wavering on the edge of collapse. He’d been terrified Dev would chase after him before he could safely rebuild them. If Dev saw him draw power, he was certain to realize the extent of Kiran’s lies.

“Not to worry, we’ll keep busy, now you’re finally up.” Dev looked up at the cliffs above the trail, shading his eyes with a hand. “High time my apprentice learned some tricks of the climbing trade.”

Ah. If Dev had indeed searched for stones that morning, he’d been unsuccessful. A climbing lesson would provide the perfect excuse for Dev to scour another cliff. Kiran smiled at him. “I look forward to it.”

A sardonic gleam showed in Dev’s eyes. “I’ll remember you said that.” He jumped down from the rock and went over to rummage in the wagon. “Grab something to eat, then we’ll go.”

Kiran choked down a handful of hardtack and jerky. Dev assembled their packs with a simmering energy completely at odds with his relaxed posture of a moment before. Despite his apparent confidence, he surely shared Kiran’s relief about taking action to prevent messages from reaching Ninavel.

“Time for your first lesson—walking on talus.” Dev jerked a thumb at the jumble of boulders covering the steep slope leading up to the cliffs. “Take it slow, and watch out for loose rocks. Use your hands to steady yourself, if you need to.”

Dev strode up the talus as if it were no more difficult to navigate than a flagstone-paved courtyard, but Kiran found it a continuous struggle to keep his balance. By the time he and Dev reached the base of the cliffs, his leg muscles ached and he was gasping for breath.

“Sit down and rest a minute,” Dev told him.

Kiran tried not to resent the way Dev wasn’t out of breath at all. He sat down, gingerly. In the shadow of the cliff, the rocks underfoot were smaller, pebble to fist sized—what Dev had called scree. The scree slid and shifted under Kiran with a rattling hiss every time he moved, giving him the uneasy sensation that any minute he might tumble down the slope. He twisted to eye the cliff looming over his head.

“You think there’s carcabon here?” The cliff looked impossibly steep. Kiran had no idea how anyone would get up it without the use of magic.

“On something this easy? Hell, no. Anything useful is long gone. But it’s a good approach to the spot I have in mind, and it’ll make a perfect practice ground for you.”

“You mean I have to
climb
that?” Kiran’s mouth went dry. He’d imagined practicing more knots and ropework while Dev pretended to give him a climbing lesson by example.

Dev chuckled. “What, did you think you’d get to laze around? I told Cara and Jerik I’d be training you today, and they’ll be watching. We gotta put on a proper show before I do any prospecting.”

“Oh.” Kiran struggled to hide his dismay. He didn’t mind the physical effort, but he was more than a little worried about his instinctive reaction if he fell. Even the tiniest use of magic outside his barriers, and Ruslan would find him.

Dev was watching him with his head tilted. “I’ll show you the basics down here first, and when you climb, you’ll be safe on a rope.” His green eyes measured Kiran’s face. “But if you think you’re going to have some kind of breakdown halfway up, tell me now.”

Kiran flushed, hearing the unspoken
like you did last night
. “I’ll be fine.” He wiped his sweaty hands on his leathers. He’d survived Ruslan’s storm. He could handle a simple training climb.

***

Kiran clung to the cliff, his fingers wedged in a crack. His forearms burned, and tremors wracked his calves. His right foot threatened to slip off its precarious hold at any moment. He glanced down and immediately wished he hadn’t. The sharp-edged boulders far below reminded him of the teeth of some storybook dragon, ready to rend and maim. His instincts screamed for him to call power to save himself. Grimly, Kiran concentrated on holding his barriers firm. He refused to break under a mere physical threat. But if he fell—

“Hey!” The rope at his waist tugged upward. “You planning on moving any time this century?” Dev’s voice floated down from a ledge high overhead.

Kiran repressed the urge to blast Dev to ash. “If...I move, I’ll...fall!” he panted.

Dev’s brown head poked over the rim of the ledge. “So fall. You’re not going anywhere, I promise.” The pull on Kiran’s makeshift rope harness increased. “Trust me!”

Trust. Kiran wheezed out a bitter laugh. Hardly any existed between himself and Dev. Yet he’d never doubted Dev’s competence at his job. Kiran inhaled through clenched teeth and hauled himself upward.

Overtaxed muscles cramped. One hand popped free of the crack, then the other. Kiran yelped and pitched backward, only to stop short as the rope snapped taut. His chest smacked into the rock hard enough to bruise, but he moved not an inch downward. Kiran leaned his forehead against the rope and tried to calm his racing heart. He’d held his barriers. Barely.

“See? Falling’s not a problem,” Dev called. “Brace your feet against the rock and rest your arms.”

“H-how long can you hold me like this?” Kiran tentatively pushed his body away from the cliff with his feet.

“Long as I need to.” Dev leaned over the ledge’s rim again. “You’re tied in to the rope, remember? No need to clutch it like a southerner with a devil-ward charm. Shake your arms out, it’ll help them recover faster.”

Finger by finger, Kiran released his white-knuckled grip. The rope remained reassuringly taut. He swallowed and let his arms drop to hang at his sides. Dangling from the rope wasn’t at all comfortable—his knotted harness dug painfully into his upper thighs and groin, and already his legs tingled with impending numbness—but the relief to his forearms and hands was immediate.

Kiran peeked again at the dizzying void beneath him. He’d once been accustomed to placing his life in another’s hands.
The trust between focus and channeler must be absolute,
Ruslan had always said. Kiran had believed him; had trusted both Ruslan and Mikail without reservation.

What a fool he’d been. Worse, Alisa had been the one to pay the price. Guilt tore at him. If he hadn’t loved her, if she hadn’t trusted him...the terrible memories crowded in, full of blood and screaming. Kiran shook his head, violently. If he didn’t escape Ruslan, Alisa’s death would only be the first of many.

He scrabbled at the rock and managed to cram his fingers back into the crack. “I’ll try again,” he yelled.

“Ready when you are.” Dev sounded pleased. Kiran summoned his concentration. He’d watched Dev climb, and years of channel pattern exercises had honed his memory.
You place your feet right, the rest is easy,
Dev had told him. So where had Dev put his feet? Kiran examined his memory and compared it to the cliff face before him. Ah—there. He balanced one foot on a rounded protrusion, wedged the other in a crack, and pressed upward.

Without the fear of falling overshadowing every move, the rest of the ascent was only an exercise in endurance. His muscles trembled with fatigue again by the time he wormed his way onto the broad ledge where Dev waited. Kiran settled himself cautiously in the spot Dev indicated and slumped back against the cliff with a sigh of release.

“Not bad for your first time.” Dev’s fingers flew as he tied a second, shorter length of rope from Kiran’s harness to a nearby piton. At Kiran’s skeptical glance, he nodded. “Seriously, I mean it. You did better than most would.”

A tendril of warmth stole through Kiran. He rubbed his aching forearms. “If that was an easy climb, I don’t ever want to see a hard one.”

Dev’s mouth twitched. “Don’t worry, showtime’s over. Now you get to relax a while.” He glanced down at the head of the convoy, where the steady flow of men and tool-laden mules on the trail continued unabated. Their destination was out of sight around a bend, but the clink of tools on rock and the wavering tones of a Sulanian chant song echoed back down the canyon. “Let me stow some gear, and then we’ll talk carcabon.”

The sun-warmed rock felt good against Kiran’s sore back. He flexed his hands, the burn in his muscles finally relenting. The canyon was oddly peaceful. Somehow colors seemed stronger and more vivid than in the city. The craggy cliffs forming the opposite canyon wall were blindingly white, with only occasional streaks of rust-red or gray or brown marring their purity, and the sky overhead was a deeper blue than Kiran had ever seen.

To Kiran’s relief, the azure depths of the sky contained not even the smallest puff of cloud that might build into a storm. Ruslan couldn’t know for certain which route Kiran had taken out of Ninavel. Since his storm had been unsuccessful at forcing Kiran to reveal himself, Kiran might have a few days’ grace while Ruslan hunted in other directions. Or so he devoutly hoped.

A rattling noise called him from his thoughts. Dev was running his fingers over a set of pitons on a rope sling, as if counting them. But his eyes were fixed high above on the cliff, and his expression was oddly remote.

“What are you looking for?” Kiran asked.

Dev blinked and set down the sling of pitons. “The red bands of rock are where you find carcabon. I think that one’s our best bet.” He pointed to a red streak slashing across a sheer section of cliff, high and to the left of the ledge.

“Please tell me you’re joking!” The angle of the rock edged past vertical, and Kiran couldn’t see a single crack or ledge blemishing the sunlit stone. “We can’t possibly climb that!”

Dev’s one-sided grin appeared. “Well, you’re right about the ‘we’ part. You’ll stay right here, so you can quit twitching like a roundtail in a snare.” He stood and shucked off his shirt. Then untied the rope from his harness.

“What are you
doing
?” Dev had impressed on Kiran in no uncertain terms that the rope was his lifeline, never to be untied while on a climb.

“Kinslayer’s not the kind of climb that lends itself to pitons. Without ’em, a rope’s only dead weight.” Dev stretched his arms overhead and rotated his wrists. “Once I reach the carcabon, I can set a piton in the crack between the rock layers. I’ll tie off with a sling, chip out any decent stones, and then climb an ascending traverse off the overhang. When I’m done, I’ll downclimb back to you.” He spoke as casually as if he planned a stroll down a city street.

“You’re going to climb something called Kinslayer without a rope?” Had Dev gone insane?

Dev made a noise halfway between a snort and a laugh. “Don’t let the name bother you. Outriders always make up dramatic names for crags. Makes for a better tavern story.”

Kiran eyed the smooth expanse of rock leading up to Dev’s chosen streak. A vivid vision of Dev’s body plummeting through the air to splatter on the ground far below brought sweat to his palms. The ledge suddenly seemed a far more precarious perch than it had a moment ago. Kiran didn’t even know how to get back down the cliff safely without Dev, let alone cross the Alathian border. “What if you slip? Forget the carcabon! We can find another way to deal with Pello.”

Dev crouched down until his eyes were level with Kiran’s. “Look. I’ve been climbing since I was knee high to a mule. I know what I’m doing.” He slapped the pale stone of the ledge. “I wouldn’t try Kinslayer if I thought I might fail. Without a carcabon stone, I can’t find Pello’s wards to break them. Kinslayer’s the best chance for a stone. You want to stop Pello from sending any messages, this is the only way.”

Dev was wrong, of course. There was another way. If Kiran were the one to search Pello’s wagon, he could sense the location of any wards, even through his barriers. If he pointed the wards out to Dev, and then Dev used whatever trick he’d planned to break them...but no. How could Kiran possibly explain an ability to sense wards, without arousing Dev’s suspicion? If he claimed he carried a special charm...no, Dev would want to see the charm, perhaps insist on using it himself instead of Kiran...

Kiran pinched the bridge of his nose. “Can’t you at least get me back down first?” If only he had more time to think!

“What, and leave you alone where Pello can find you? Nope. You’re safer here.” Dev uncoiled from his crouch and locked his hands behind his back. He arched over in another stretch. “If Khalmet touches me, and I fall...you sit tight. Cara and Jerik will come for you. Stick with the convoy until just before the border. Then make up some excuse to stay behind, and send a message through with one of the workers, to Gerran’s import house at the river docks. Gerran’ll handle it from there.” Dev hesitated, his eyes traveling over Kiran’s face, as if he might say something else. Instead, he turned away.

“Was that supposed to reassure me?” Kiran cast about desperately for a tale that might convince Dev without revealing the truth. His mind remained stubbornly blank.

Dev paced to the end of the ledge without a backward glance. Kiran cursed himself for ever having suggested a carcabon stone as an option. “Wait, maybe we can—”

“Shut up,” Dev said mildly. “I need to concentrate.” He flattened his hands on the rock and bowed his head. Kiran recognized the intent stillness in his stance. He’d seen it hundreds of times in Mikail, preparing to cast a channeled spell. Kiran opened his mouth, then shut it again. Perhaps the climb was well within Dev’s abilities, and Kiran was agonizing over nothing.

Yet if Dev had misjudged the difficulty...Kiran could halt any fall with ease, if he chose. Was Dev’s life worth the cost? Kiran imagined Ruslan hot-eyed with predatory triumph. His stomach rolled over. If it were death Kiran risked, the choice to save Dev would be easy. He would have welcomed death at Ruslan’s hands. Kiran pressed a hand against the hidden lump of the amulet and grimaced. Lizaveta’s aid had not come without price. That escape was lost to him.

Dev raised his head. Kiran had one glimpse of the meditative calm on his face before Dev was gone, climbing away from the ledge with languid, flowing grace. He moved up the cliff as freely as if the ground waited mere inches away instead of a hundred feet below. The utter confidence in every line of his body eased the churning of Kiran’s stomach.