Chapter 21
The rain had cleared by sunrise, the sky a pleasant shade of silvery grey as it stretched across the desolate slopes surrounding Nettle Hill.
To say I was feeling optimistic as I led the horses outside would be too strong a claim.
There was still a little sister to be saved from the Garnot dungeons; there was still a vicious Estien heir looking for us.
But the horses were happy and well-fed. Our clothes were warm and mostly dry.
Breakfast had been nourishing and plentiful, and there was no sign that any guards or birds had defied the rain to follow us to this lifeless place.
And I had a plan.
Bring back Lark. Leave the cage. If it was even there at all.
Which was much, much better than the knotty tangle of confusion and uncertainty in which I’d spent the last few days spinning around – of doubting and barely knowing what I was doubting, of hearing Durlain’s words and not understanding where they were coming from.
This was clear and straightforward. No villains, just mistakes.
It was the sort of plan that could end well, and I hadn’t had many of those in the last few weeks, or months, or years.
Durlain was untalkative even by his own standards as he packed his belonging – aftereffects of whatever had happened the previous day, or maybe he simply hadn’t slept well, getting up again and again to keep the fire burning.
Watching him button his coat was like watching a soldier put on his armour.
Back in the city, in the expensive inns and manors, that court polish had come to him naturally, almost inevitably; here, surrounded by mossy wood and dusty earth, the act felt heavy, forced, a mask he was putting on for no one but himself.
Which was none of my business, of course.
I still couldn’t help glancing at him every now and again as we rode down the muddy, unkempt paths, towards the white ribbon of the Svala winding through the valley below.
‘So we cross here,’ he finally said as we left Nettle Hill behind and took the road along the river, towards the old bridge waiting behind the bend.
His voice was perfectly collected. He just wasn’t meeting my eye – but then, that was hardly unusual either.
‘And then what would you propose for the last two days to the Garnot border?’
Three days, technically, but I didn’t correct him.
The border zones were lawless wilderness; as much as the royal houses might hate each other, every impression of military aggression was carefully avoided.
Once we came near the edges of the kingdom, there would be no more law enforcement to speak of.
We just had to get there alive.
‘Belloc will probably have sent word to all major cities by now,’ I said. ‘It’ll probably be safest to buy food along the way, sleep in shepherd’s cabins for a night, and then—'
My voice caught.
We’d passed the last rocky outcrop of Nettle Hill.
Before us, the valley stretched into the distance, brown and grey and green as far as the eye could see; at its heart, the Svala rushed southward, seaward, a silver serpent shimmering in the watery sunlight.
And there, a few hundred feet away, was the old stone bridge that had led across the river as long as memory served …
Crumbling.
Next to me, Durlain hissed in an audible breath.
A gaping hole separated the two sides of the sturdy stone arch, as if some giant monster had taken a bite from the bridge and plodded off again.
There was no telling how stable the rest of the construction would be.
A simple rope bridge had been rigged to span the gap, swinging precariously in the spring wind as we approached – sufficient for pedestrians, perhaps, but useless for a horse to cross.
Which meant it was useless for us, too.
Mists fucking take me. Had we faced a garrison of guards and a gaggle of birds to be defeated by a hell-cursed bridge?
‘There are no other crossing points nearby, are there?’ Durlain said tightly beside me, his tone suggesting he already knew the answer.
‘Not really.’ I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the wreckage before us. ‘The nearest bridges to the north and south are both surrounded by towns, and I suspect—’
‘—they’ll be guarding those. Yes.’ A cluck of his tongue. ‘Magic?’
‘Could try,’ I said doubtfully. ‘But bigger constructions like this one are complex, and I’d hate for us to lose a horse because I strengthened an arch but forgot to strengthen the pier.’
He cursed.
That was a better summary of the situation than anything I could come up with, so I opted to stay silent as we crossed the last yards to the ruined structure.
The water almost escaped the riverbed this morning, thanks to yesterday’s rains.
The segment we’d just passed was wild and white, roaring as if to mirror my frustration.
Beyond the bridge, though, it widened slightly as the land flattened – the current slowing, the rocks on the riverbed visible again.
I turned that thought over for a moment, then decided it was the best I could do. ‘We could cross on horseback?’
Durlain went rigid. ‘No.’
‘Why not? If the alternative is—’
‘We’re not going to ride through the bloody river,’ he snapped, scarred hands tensing like claws around his reins. ‘Let’s ride for Maresse and hope Brainne has decided we’re riding south. I don’t see the sense in risking our lives here instead.’
I frowned. ‘Yesterday you agreed with me that Maresse was too dangerous.’
‘Yes, and plans and circumstances change.’ He had stiffened, or perhaps rather sharpened in the saddle, like a blade honed for battle – spine unnaturally straight, marble-edged chin jutting up at its haughtiest, princeliest angle.
‘Which might be challenging to grasp if one hasn’t even gotten used to a change in monarchy of two centuries ago yet, but that is hardly my problem, is it? ’
I blinked at him.
He glared back with savage fierceness, as if daring me to challenge him – lips pressed into a vicious line, tight posture about as inviting as the poisoned air of Brainne. The ragged edges of the scars on his knuckles glittered alarmingly in the sunlight, brighter and whiter than the river ahead.
That last sneer echoed between us – growing louder with every baffled moment of silence.
This was ridiculous.
He couldn’t confide in me about his mother’s tragic death one moment, then return to his old, scornful ways the next – to worse than his old ways, because early Durlain had been insufferable, but at least he hadn’t been a fool.
This was like him insisting we travel through inhabited villages with Aranc’s spies on our heels. Like—
Oh.
Understanding dawned.
‘You,’ I choked out, struggling to keep control of my voice, ‘can go crawl up your own arsehole, first of all.’
He opened his mouth, as if to fling that suggestion straight back at me.
‘Second of all,’ I went on before he could, voice rising, ‘have you considered just telling me that you have a problem with cold, rather than lashing out like a fucking idiot whenever we come too close to the topic?’
He froze.
Then – slowly, deliberately, with the air of a man turning his back on an armed opponent – shut his mouth again.
And that was all I needed. The memories were crystal clear now that I understood what I was looking for: the blazing fire in his Horn’s End room, his testiness after we’d passed the Moon Lake waterfall.
Those hell-cursed hot baths, night and morning, and the carefully curated air of arrogant insolence whenever I asked questions about them …
Little luxuries.
Convenience.
He could fuck all the way off with that. ‘Does it have to do with Niflheim being cold?’
‘I don’t see—’ he stiffly started.
‘I do,’ I snapped back. ‘Is it because of Niflheim?’
Something twitched at his jaw, but he swallowed his visible objections. ‘Yes.’
It came out like a confession to murder – except that I had heard him confessing to murder, and those conversations had been light, cheerful chats compared to this interrogation. ‘And I suppose it’s not a coincidence that your scars are cold as ice, too?’
‘No,’ he said between clenched teeth. ‘Which is not—’
‘And that’s why you insist on taking hot baths all the time and having the fire burn all night,’ I went on, talking over him with bewildering ease, ‘all of which you elected not to tell me, because apparently you’d rather be an insufferable bastard than run the risk of looking weak. Anything else I should know?’
The silence was long and damning.
He looked … hollow, all of a sudden. Not furious or caustic or even resigned – just hollow, the polished, menacing shell of him still there but the look in his one eye strangely, eerily vacant.
His black coat billowed around his shoulders.
His deep purple hair snapped in the breeze around his face.
All the cruel, crow-like parts of him, and yet beneath the surface, they looked as fragile as obsidian glass – brittle, and harrowingly human.
It was a look that made it hard to ignore he’d once been tortured to death by his own damn family.
Perhaps I didn’t need to know exactly what that journey into hell had been like.
‘Alright,’ I said instead, as firmly as I could, because that had worked quite well last night.
‘Let’s not make this harder than it needs to be, then.
You take the bridge to the other side. I cross the river with one horse, then take the bridge back and cross with the other horse.
If I need to get soaked to the bone anyway, I might as well do it twice. ’
He blinked back to life at that. ‘Beg your pardon?’
‘Just pivoting to a new plan,’ I said and gave him the most unpleasant smile I could muster.
It wasn’t as good as his own creations. Not bad for a beginner, though.
‘Which may be surprising, coming from someone who still hasn’t wrapped her head around a change in monarchy of two centuries ago, but a woman tries her best.’
There was a pulse of silence as he digested that.