Chapter 7 #2
‘Only need to be unlucky once,’ I muttered.
‘Not untrue.’ He sounded as though he hated to agree with me. ‘I’m pretty sure today is not your unlucky day, though.’
He was sure.
Hardly a comfort, and yet I could turn it into one, with a feeling of twisted, unwanted gratitude.
If he was sure, then at least I wouldn’t be the one to blame if I lost one of them.
I could probably make him turn back to look for the blade in question, in that case, and that would be his own damn fault, too.
Not mine. He wouldn’t have a right to be annoyed with me.
‘Alright,’ I muttered, wrapping my hands into Smudge’s dark mane, squeezing tight until my knuckles turned white. Fine, then. I might lose them and turn back to find them. Not my fault. ‘Let’s go.’
Durlain didn’t speak as he nudged his horse into motion.
Didn’t speak as she obediently trotted down the path and deeper into the valley I remembered – copses of pine trees, the occasional hardy patch of wildflowers, the lone remains of shepherds’ huts deserted generations ago.
It was in one of those huts that we’d found our target and—
‘They aren’t normal blades, then, I take it?’ Durlain murmured behind me, barely audible over the clip-clop of Smudge’s hooves.
My heart skipped a beat. ‘What?’
‘Your weapons.’ His fingers loosened around the reins, as if to point them out to me – but if that had been his thought, he changed his mind before I could so much as stiffen, hand curling around the leather again. ‘You know, the ones you’re so careful not to lose.’
The bite was back in his tone. My willingness to offer any information not strictly necessary for the liberating of little sisters or the reviving of dead lovers evaporated in the same instant – there, finally, was the mockery I’d prepared for.
‘Perhaps I just care about my possessions,’ I said sharply. ‘Not all of us have grown up with a royal treasury to pilfer whenever we’re in need of coin.’
A small moment of silence. I could feel his eyes boring into the back of my head … but his arms didn’t tense around me, those infuriatingly firm thighs still pressing loosely against mine with Smudge’s every step.
Then, intonation unchanged – ‘Who taught you to fight?’
My fists tightened in the horse’s coarse mane. ‘You may have noticed I refused to answer your previous question.’
‘Yes, that’s why I’m asking another one.’ For a man capable of such convincing affability, he seemed bewilderingly indifferent about his unapologetic rudeness. ‘Who did? Not Aranc, surely.’
For one moment, I wondered how he could be so sure of that last point. Then I remembered how Estien’s king fought – all brawn and raw strength, leaning confidently, almost joyously, on his natural superiority in battle – and felt like an idiot for having ever let the question pop up in my mind.
I was a witch. I was a woman. I had no natural superiority to speak of, and Aranc could never have taught me the weapons I wielded – runes and spite, in roughly equal measure.
‘Why are you asking?’ I shot back, a moment too late to pretend he’d guessed wrong.
‘We have time to kill.’ His shrug moved his arms around me, lean muscle rubbing against my woollen tunic. ‘And knowledge is my dearest weapon.’
The prince of many faces again, taking his court games into the wider world.
I could see it now, the dance that must have kept him alive for twenty-eight years at the Averre court – forging counterfeit friendships, prying out secrets, then playing those off against each other whenever it suited him.
And when his pawns had lost their use to him …
She was in my way.
My heart went cold in my chest.
‘And I’m supposed to arm some fireborn rat?’ It came out with unintended force. ‘Would you bare your throat for my knives and tell me to go ahead?’
He stiffened against my back – nearly imperceptible, but unmistakable all the same. ‘I see. I understand we’re not going to be civil about this?’
Shit. Should have chosen another analogy, having seen the glittering wound at his throat – but civil? Civil?
‘You’re the one asking intrusive questions,’ I snapped.
‘A simple no would have sufficed.’ He spoke more sharply than I had expected – something about that scar, about the unintended reference, having hit in entirely the wrong way.
‘But if you want me to get intrusive, by all means. You must have started training early in life. Perhaps your mother trained you, perhaps it was someone else – the interesting part being that you are clearly frightened of a witch’s death, yet your mother was apparently killed by my father’s soldiers, not executed for her witchcraft at a provost’s orders. ’
The interesting part.
My fists squeezed so tight it hurt, so tight the tendons on the back became sharp, jutting lines – all I could do to keep my hands from shaking, or from reaching for Eihwaz and shutting the bastard up for eternity.
Thorns biting my flesh. Frost gnawing at my bare feet and fingers.
Take her, Kjell, I’m begging you, take her—
Interesting.
The silence lasted a tick too long. As if Durlain hoped I’d speak all by myself, refute his theories unprompted.
When I didn’t, he gave another of those small, thoughtful hmms and added, ‘So I’m guessing there was someone else after your mother died.
A mentor of some sort. Someone who was considered a danger to Seidrinn and—’
The tension erupted, unstoppable like the burst of a geyser. ‘A danger?’
His voice was too placid. ‘Not?’
‘He wasn’t a fucking danger, you shit-brained bastard!
None of us are!’ Vaguely, I realised I was doing exactly what he’d hoped for me to do.
That he’d picked me like one of his mist-cursed locks, and I’d willingly sprung open in his hands …
but eight years of boiling fury surged to the surface, all restraints shattered by the memory of those same venomous words the executioner had spoken on a packed town square, and how dare he?
How dare he? ‘He was just a smith who happened to have been born with a mark. We lived all on our own by Hjarn Bay, and we barely ever saw anyone – how could we possibly have been a danger to a single living creature when—’
He let out a slow, long-suffering sigh, ruffling the small hairs on my nape. ‘You must understand all runewitches are a threat to Seidrinn.’
‘Are they?’ My voice cracked. ‘Am I?’
‘Of course you are.’ He sounded amused, in that mirthless, mordant way of his – indifferent, unmoved, as he rhythmically moved against me with Smudge’s unfaltering trot.
‘Look at you, all spitting rage. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t gladly blow up Mount Estien the way your ancestors blew up Mount Thuel all those years ago. ’
Fuck.
Of course he’d go there – our greatest mistake.
House Thuel was the fourth fireborn house to have arrived at Seidrinn’s shores when the cold came and the ice began creeping across our lands – their king claiming the west of the island, waking the imposing volcano that presided over the fjords and the forest and the rainbow lakes.
The war was still an equal one in those days, Kjell had said, the subtle working of the runes an even match for the sweeping violence of firestorms. We might have won, even …
and then a handful of witches had hatched the mad, reckless plan to strike back at the heart of the enemy’s power.
They’d infiltrated the seat of the Thuel king. Destabilised the delicate web of fireborn magic that kept the fire in check.
Detonated the volcano.
The blast had wiped out not just an entire fireborn house, but dozens of villages across the Thuel lands, too. Thousands of innocent civilians, buried beneath lava and rubble and ash … and that was when the witch hunts had started.
‘Brave, to assume we haven’t learned from that mistake,’ I choked out.
It was all I could say, shame clouding through the haze of my fury – because this cursed valley, with its cursed huts and its cursed graves, would hardly allow me to forget just what my runes were capable of.
‘Kjell was never like that. He was calm and … and level-headed. He was the last person who deserved to have his fingers taken, to … to …’
I couldn’t even speak the words.
I hadn’t been able to sleep for weeks after it happened, staggering through the world in a state of half-mad delirium – because every single time I’d closed my eyes, I saw Kjell collapsing to the muddy street again, finger-less hands grasping to break his fall, dark curls shorn off so roughly his scalp was littered with cuts.
‘Ah, yes,’ Durlain murmured behind me, a hint of bitterness lacing the words. ‘Fingers.’
I blinked.
And only then did I see the way his own hands had tensed around Smudge’s reins – the ragged lines across his knuckles, glittering dangerously in the afternoon sun.
I shouldn’t be feeling that little wince of my heart. It was what the bastard deserved, telling me that I’d deserve the same fate … but it was still a savage piece of work, and I was glad, so very glad, for a reason not to think of Kjell and the blood frothing on his lifeless lips.
‘You’re not a witch,’ I said numbly.
‘Your keen observations never cease to amaze me,’ he informed me, positively glacial now. ‘I’m not, no.’
‘So why did they—’
‘Do you expect me to arm you with information, Thraga?’ He paused a moment as Smudge slowed, steering her off-path to circumvent the rubble of a landslide. ‘I hate to remind you, but you declared war. Don’t expect a fireborn rat to be that forgiving.’
As if he’d happily have volunteered the information if I had done the same, or even if I’d been any kinder about my refusal. One didn’t become a trader in secrets by giving them away for free. Already he knew far too much about me – Lark, Kjell, Mother – and all he’d told me about himself so far …
He had a sister. He was a power-hungry swine.
Everything else I knew was court gossip and observations.