A Crown for Cold Silver Page 8

  “I’m ready,” said Sullen, tightening the bandage and tucking it in on itself. He’d packed some moss into it but already the blanket was darkening over the wound. “Hold on, I’m going to pick up the pace.”

  “Oh no you’re not,” said Grandfather, tugging on Sullen’s puffy saddlehorn of hair. “Enough of this acting the oryx, laddie, it’s time to be the Horned Wolf I know you are. They’ll follow your trail easy, fast as you’ve been moving, so slow it down till we find a prime place to pounce.”

  “Pounce?” Sullen looked around nervously, but nothing moved on the hillside. Grandfather was making him twitchy with this talk. “Nah, Fa, I can outrun them, and they’ll have to turn around at some—”

  Grandfather flicked Sullen’s ear, his old-man breath overpowering the smell of blood and sap and torn moss. “I told you, boy, it’s not right to let a mad dog loose, not when you have the means to stop it, keep it from spreading its poison.”

  “Mad dog,” repeated Sullen. How many times had they called him that? Still, the prospect of killing his clanfolk filled him with gloom. In all the songs he’d heard and hummed, not one had a hero doing for his own people like this. Maybe so long as he hated that he had to he could still be a decent Horned Wolf…

  “You’ll find me a good roost to wait in, then we’ll set a trap of our own. You think a king wolf like you can handle a few rabid jackals, laddie?”

  Sullen thought about all the times he had barely held in his tears when his people tormented him. Thought about all the songs he’d made up for himself, ballads where he taught them a bloody lesson. Thought about what it would mean, to lay a trap for the Horned Wolf hunting party instead of only fighting back when they cornered him. He set his jaw, and braced himself for the hardest act he had ever contemplated, something he never thought he would actually do. It would hurt, but he didn’t see any alternative.

  “I… I’m sorry, Fa, but there’s no way I can take ’em. I want to, right, but a branch hit my head back there a-ways, and I’m having a real hard time even running straight. Forget about fighting; if I tried to I’d just fall over and get us both killed.” Sullen couldn’t believe he had actually lied to his grandfather, couldn’t believe he was actually swaying in place a little to sell the song, acting all woozy. Couldn’t believe he actually thought Grandfather would believe his stupid ruse, that he actually thought he had a choice in the matter. Grandfather was being dead silent, the way he got when he was real, real angry, but then the old man’s hand gave Sullen’s bushy dome of hair a gentle rap.

  “All right, Sullen,” said the old man softly. “If you say you can’t, I believe you.”

  That hurt the worst, so bad Sullen almost fessed to the fib then and there, but then he remembered how scared those pups had looked after he killed Oryxdoom. He didn’t want to ambush those kids. He’d always had a soft spot for the unnamed pups of the clan, maybe because while the adults had hated him as long as he could remember, he had actually had a few friends when they were all younger, before they’d come of age. He’d even been naïve enough to think Stoutest might be his wife one day, good as they got along as teenagers, but after she earned her name she stopped spending time with him, same as the rest. Small wonder that when he thought about hurting kids, about them even seeing the kind of hurt he had endured, his hands got clammy and shaky.

  “Better get moving if we’re really just going to run out of here instead of doing the right thing,” said Grandfather. “They catch us they’ll kill us, and then I’ll be able to tell you I told you so.”

  “They won’t catch us,” said Sullen, and smiled, because he had half a mind that Grandfather had known he was lying and still let him get away with it. The old man loved him that much, and next time Sullen had the chance to impress Grandfather, he’d do better. But for now he’d run like Count Raven when he was being chased out of the Seventh Void, back before the Frozen Savannahs got iced over and Sullen’s ancestors had to run fast as leopards to keep their feet from being scorched on the blazing earth. A plain old Horned Wolf could never catch Sullen, if he ran that fast.

  None even came close.

  The next day was considerably quieter, and a week later they emerged from the Raptor Wood and stood on a hillside overlooking the withered plains that marked the border of the Crimson Empire, where Sullen’s uncle had disappeared twice over. He hummed a verse of Rakehell to himself, swearing he would follow Uncle Craven’s tracks only so far as they led him out into the Star and then back home, and once he returned he would never go away again. If Uncle Craven hadn’t run off the second time, Sullen never would’ve had to leave the once.

  CHAPTER

  9

  Winter in the north is liable to make a grumpy panther of anyone, even those fortunate enough to have a roof and a hearth to stave off the snow and wind. For those seeking shelter in the lees of rocks and the boles of ancient pines as the sleet blew straight across into their face, spoiling any hope of a campfire, it was a fair bit worse. A cave Zosia had provisioned two decades prior for just such an unhappy need had evidently been discovered and cleaned out by some lucky traveler through that desolate high country in the interim, and so while she passed the worst of the season sheltered from the constant gale, it was a lean and icy refuge. She wiled away the snowed-in weeks mourning her husband and village, plotting her vengeance, talking to herself and Choplicker, and sharpening a body gone dull with age and comfort. When the worst of winter passed, allowing her to resume her trek, her muscles popped beneath her taut skin from more than the mild starvation she’d endured.

  In light of all this, Zosia’s foul mood was well earned when she at last reached the border of the Immaculate Isles.

  The sea was still miles away, but the persistence of the Immaculates had won them a rather tidy amount of coastline in ages past. As the recent years of internal Imperial squabbling had drawn the most able forces to the heart of the Crimson Empire, the holdings of the Immaculates had casually expanded inland. It was easy to see how far they had gotten; halfway down the foothills Zosia spied a giant fucking wall. The dark serpent of stone snaked across the whole of her vision, and it didn’t take a tactician or scholar to hazard that it stretched from one end of the Norwest peninsula to the other. Nicely done.

  Zosia’s assumption that the wall came just short of Linkensterne proved to be off by less than a mile, as the (presumably former) Imperial city turned out to be on the far side of the fortification. Very nicely done. This part of the wall must have been built first, as there was none of the construction she had glimpsed farther to the east. A series of thick iron portcullises barred the tunnel through the wall, the gate absurdly narrow in contrast to the wide, ancient road. A solid defense, sure, but also a nice bite of the thumb to the Imperial traders who had once given the Immaculates such a hard time of it. As Zosia left the gorse and put her boots on the first real road she would stick to since leaving Kypck, she surmised that the encampment of caravans on this side of the gate must be a fixture of modern Imperial trade with the Immaculate.

  “Mind your manners, or I’ll sell your ass to the first merchant to make me an offer,” Zosia told Choplicker. “Imperials have a taste for dog meat, and I doubt the Immaculate gourmands would turn their noses up at trying a new delicacy, either.”

  Reasoning she would have time aplenty to explore the caravan camp if they didn’t let her through the gate on her first try, she made straight for the guardhouse. There wasn’t one, she found, but the rampart dipped low over the gate, and as soon as she passed the last scowling merchant ensconced on his riding board at the side of the road, a guard poked her head over the edge. She couldn’t have been twenty-five years old but had the simultaneously weary and haughty expression of a put-upon empress.

  “Interviews are at dawn,” the guard called down in Crimson. “Come back then.”

  “Hello, honored friend,” said Zosia in the Norwest vernacular. She’d been brushing up on her Immaculate over the long months in the mountains. Since
she hadn’t had anyone to practice with, only Choplicker knew how much she’d actually retained, and he wasn’t saying. A pleasant greeting was easy enough to remember, though, and it might be all she needed to get her toe in the gate.

  “Hello, honored friend,” the guard replied reflexively, then scowled and reverted to Crimson. “There’s the queue behind you, and some of these rats have been waiting for weeks. You’ll have to bribe one of them, and heavily, if you even expect an audience tomorrow.”

  “What if I just bribe you now?” Zosia smiled up at the gatekeeper. “And heavily.”

  “Would that it were that easy,” said the guard ruefully. “We’d both be happier, eh? Take your bribes to your own people.”

  “These cheats and scoundrels aren’t my people,” said Zosia, well aware that in order to be easily heard on the wall she had to shout loudly enough for the merchants at the front of the line to hear her as well. “I come on the personal request of one of your court, and he will be displeased if I am late.”

  “Ooooh, a noble? Well, that changes everything!” The guard leaned farther over the wall, her scale-armored forearms crossed on the rampart before her. “Sister, I’m a noble, and so’s my captain, and so’s his commander, and so’s a thousand handmaids and houseboys on a hundred different isles. I don’t suppose this noble of yours was important enough to give you a stamped invitation we could see?”

  “Alas, he placed his order with me before this wall of yours went up,” said Zosia. “I’m an artisan who has spent two decades aging her briar for Lord Kang-ho of Hwabun, not some button-seller seeking entry to Linkensterne.”

  “Kang-ho, the Lord of Hwabun?” said the guard, but her tone seemed to have shifted from sassy to mildly interested. “Briar, eh? His husband gives him enough allowance for that sort of luxury?”

  “Lord Kang-ho paid in advance,” said Zosia, pleased for a change by the gossipmongering that was endemic to the Immaculate Isles. Get two royals together and the rumor mill will turn for hours; fill a nation with nobles and it’ll run till the Sunken Isle rises from the deep. “So you understand why he will be eager to see me admitted at once.”

  “I suppose I might,” said the guard, nodding thoughtfully. “The Flower Pot’s in need of some pleasant news. Tell you what, toss up that ten-mun piece I dropped and I’ll run it past my captain.”

  Zosia rooted through her purse and fished out the smallest coin she had. “Your eyes aren’t great for a wall-minder—it’s a Crimson krone.”

  “So it is,” said the guard, catching it in a gloved hand. “My captain will want to have the name of a carver so illustrious as to wait on the King of Hwabun’s husband.”

  “Moor Clell,” said Zosia, an alias she hadn’t used since the Brackett entanglement some thirty years past. What a fucking fiasco that had been. There had been many times she had missed her shock of blue hair, but now that she had cause to travel incognito she gave thanks that the alchemy of age had turned what was once as cobalt as her eyes to an innocuous silver.

  “Get comfortable, Mistress Clell,” said the guard, disappearing from sight.

  So Kang-ho was alive. He’d always been the lucky one, and she’d hoped that of all the Five Villains he, at least, was still around and kicking, which was why she’d come to the Immaculate Isles first. Nice to know it wasn’t going to be a totally wasted visit, though as the sun inched low over the wall she supposed the journey wasn’t over yet. Bureaucracy, be it Imperial or Raniputri, Usban or Immaculate, put her in a foul mood. This was why she had left in the first place. Even the tribes of Flintland were supposedly succumbing to the allure of pomp and pretense, though they had the decency to spice up their hoop-jumping with the odd dash of ultraviolent ritual combat. She imagined Leib sitting beside her, wearing away at her ill temper with his effortless wit, but the ghost of his memory only darkened her mood.

  “She’s not coming back.” The merchant at the front of the encampment had descended from his gaudily painted covered wagon and approached Zosia, who sat in the wiregrass on the side of the road with Choplicker curled at her side. The trader’s embroidered sarong marked him as Usban, or a dark-skinned convert to the Ten True Gods of Trve. He had none of the paunch that merchants were notorious for, and his middle-aged face would almost have been good-looking, if not for the perpetual sneer. “I tossed that rogue, or one of them anyway, a copper dinar, and she said the same thing: wait here. It has been a week, and I am still waiting, having reached the front of the line a coin shorter and wiser, but, I fear, no quicker.”

  “What a song.” Zosia yawned. “You have a gift for storytelling, friend.”

  “And yet you seem to have missed the moral,” said the merchant. “While you have been lolling in the dust, waiting for the crow you fed to return with a jade ring, another train has arrived at the rear of the queue. By trying to hasten your entry, you have only delayed it further.”

  “The ballads just keep on coming,” said Zosia. “I thank you for your concern, but if it’s all the same to you I’ll wait a little longer.”

  “In point of fact, it is not the same to me,” said the merchant, crossing his beefy arms. “Nor will it be all the same to the dozen travelers behind, none of whom will be amused if you are still sitting here, at the front of the queue, come dawn. I have five stout swords in my company who will be more than happy to assist you to the rear, should you persist in this flagrant disregard for good manners.”

  “Or?” asked Zosia, unimpressed. “You would have brought your muscle if that was your first option, so what’s the pitch?”

  “My first option, as always, is those same good manners I mentioned, which seem so alien to your ear. But my second is a simple proposition, for you see, when I arrived here I had but three swords in my company. The other two I discovered some wheels behind me in the queue.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Zosia, glancing at the dark wall. The sun had slipped behind it, but no torches were lit on the rampart. “How much does a sellsword make on your wagon, and what’s to stop me from cutting loose as soon as we get through the gate?”

  “Why, nothing is to stop you from going your own way once we enter the Immaculate Isles,” said the merchant, his sneer teetering on the pleasant now that they were opening up negotiations. “Though I hear it is difficult to get far without an escort these days. As for payment, I regret that I will have to ask slightly more than the two men I already hired, seeing as your period of service will be so much shorter than theirs.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Zosia, getting to her feet. Try as she had to get herself back into shape during her trek through the mountains, she still felt as haggard and run-down as a fat monk’s pony after pilgrimaging to the Secret City of the Snow Leopard. “How much?”

  “Hey-o!” The guard’s voice came down through the gloaming. “Looks like you’re coming in, Moor Clell. Step up to the front so the guards can get a good look at you.”

  “What’s this!” cried the merchant as two guards with red paper lanterns began making their way through the small barred doors built into each portcullis. “I paid you a week ago!”

  “Oh, it’s you,” said the guard. “Don’t worry, it took some time but I’ve got it all worked out so you can come through first thing in the morning.”

  “May your kindness be rewarded in the next life, and hopefully this one as well,” called up the merchant, then turned his forced smile on Zosia as the last door was opened before them. “I don’t suppose you and your hound require a sword for your perilous journey through Immaculate customs? I could offer you a very competitive rate.”

  Once, Zosia would have laughed in his face, maybe even given him a light slap on the cheek. Once, she had been a really unpleasant, self-important kid. Now, heeding her beloved Leib’s wisdom that it was much better to run into a friendly face in an unexpected location than it was to find yourself with enemies you didn’t remember making, she extended her hand.

  “I would if I could, friend, but we both know that won’t work
this time around.” She nodded at the entryway cut out of the last portcullis, which wasn’t wide enough for both guards to pass through abreast. “Unless you can fit your wagon through that door? I’m Moor Clell, by the by, pipemaker.”

  “My carriage has many marvelous properties, but that is not one of them,” said the merchant as he took her by the forearm and shook. “Ardeth Karnov thanks you for the sentiment, though. Perhaps we shall meet again, Moor Clell, pipemaker, in Linkensterne, Little Heaven, or stranger markets still. I have amongst my treasures the finest latakisses, so perhaps we could sample one another’s wares.”

  “I should like that,” said Zosia, her mouth watering at the thought of the rich, smoky tubāq of the Usba. She had burned through the last of her latakiss blend on the trail and was down to flue-cured vergins and dusty deertongue; she would have lingered to discuss a purchase on the spot had the guards not barked at her to get a move on. “Safe travels, Ardeth Karnov.”

  “And you as well,” said the merchant, turning back to his wagon.

  Not much hope of that, thought Zosia as she allowed the guards to escort her into the Immaculate Isles, Choplicker wagging his tail as they went.

  CHAPTER

  10

  Maroto went along with Purna’s scheme, because of course he did.

  They opted to wait a few days before enacting the plot, so as not to make it obvious. During those long nights of caravanning through the Wastes, vainly trying to scare up some sort of game for the nobles to hunt that wouldn’t actually kill them, Maroto let his imagination drift through scenarios in which Purna actually wanted to screw him. Which would, as a matter of principle, actually make him a whore, but he had known many, many whores over the years, and found them to be a generally good sort. Better to be a whore than a rich girl’s plaything, anyway, and she’d hardly have been the first or the worst trick he’d turned in his time.