Chapter 15 Sage
Sage
By the time snow starts to fall in earnest, Sage has run out of reasons to avoid their tent.
She’s already checked on the horses, unnecessarily; if there’s one thing the garrison at Briarwall knows how to do besides treat strangers with disdain and suspicion whether they’re north or south of the gate, it’s how to build cold-hardy structures.
After that, she met with the party as they settled in to the barracks.
Bramble looked as much at their ease as they did anywhere, chatting serenely with a soldier who seemed eager for company besides his brethren.
Nura eyed their weaponry with excitement.
Not so with their spellcaster; Tea sat on her bunk, saying nothing, staring down at her open and empty palms as though one of her lost books might materialize between them.
Meanwhile, Remy looked even less pleased than Sage to pass the night among Queensmen.
She wondered, once again, about his time in the army, but didn’t ask what wasn’t her business.
She already knew more about the Agent than she’d wanted to in the first place.
Together, she and Remy had tracked down the base commander as they’d planned, aiming to arrange passage through the gate tomorrow morning.
His mandate was to keep the creatures of the Northlands from coming south—at least, that had been the crown’s claim since the wall and the gate were first built—rather than to keep citizens of Harrow from going north, so he had no cause to deny them except for the hassle of undoing and redoing the wards on the massive gate.
Still, since it was imperative that their purpose remain secret, Remy fulfilled his own purpose in the party by lying through his teeth.
Such was the job of a fixer. He claimed that they’d been hired to track down the rebellious scion of a noble family who’d run away with an adventuring party, traveling into the Northlands late last summer, and gotten himself lost (this part was Sage’s idea, and closer to the truth than Remy knew).
Their lie was corroborated by Briarwall’s records, which listed an opening of the gate for a party of seven, and then again for the same party weeks later, though only six returned.
Remy knew this because he’d tracked down the surviving party members in a tavern in Kingfisher.
Of course, their fallen member wasn’t the heir of anything, but a brute from the fighting pits just like Nura.
He’d taken a wrong step on the perpetual snow crust on one of the high peaks and plunged many feet down into an ice cavern.
He might’ve even successfully climbed out again, if not for the nest of ice nymphs he’d disturbed with his landing.
Regardless of the truth, over glasses of clear mountain moonshine—a bribe Remy had brought along from Hexham—their passage was secured.
Now, as the first snow of the season falls gently as flour from a sifter, there’s no place left to go in the small compound but to bed. After another moment spent pacing outside the shared tent where Araphi awaits, Sage squares her shoulders and pushes through the door flaps.
At least the officers’ accommodations are many times more comfortable than the canvas tarp Sage has been slinging over tree branches for shelter.
The interior is roomy enough for two straw pallets on wooden cots, set to either side of a thick center pole driven permanently into the earth.
There’s also a camp stove—a little iron barrel with a latch door perched on skinny legs and a pipe running up through a roof that’s high enough for Sage to stand upright—so the tent is pleasantly warm compared with the night outside.
Even so, Araphi sits on her cot with a mammoth-skin blanket draped over her shoulders and her knees tucked to her chest, shivering though she’s still fully clothed in her riding dress and the pants beneath.
She blinks up at Sage, her dark eyes ablaze in the glow of an oil lamp set on the ground between them.
“For gods’ sakes,” Sage mutters, spinning around to fasten the leather straps and wooden toggles that tie down the door flaps with practiced fingers.
“D-don’t they use magic to keep warm up here?” Araphi asks. “We had spellwork t-to keep the estate warm in winter, and Harrow isn’t as cold as this.”
Sage shrugs. “As it was in Hexham, magic is a resource in Briarwall, and not an endless one. They don’t just scrape up any spellcaster and send them to the gate.
They send battle mages to shore up the wall, and the kingdom has few enough of those these days—even during peacetime.
They don’t even have enough for every tower.
Those are often manned by a soldier and his horse, trained only to keep watch over the warding runes and summon a mage for repairs as needed. ”
“Such c-competent horses!”
Sage cuts a sharp glance over her shoulder to find Araphi smiling devilishly, despite her chattering teeth.
Scowling, Sage resists the urge to banter and instead turns back to knot the last strap, keeping out the wind while properly sealing them inside together.
“There now, the stove will suffice to heat the tent,” she declares, all business. “We should get to—”
“Is that why the barbed wolves were in the south?” Araphi interrupts her to ask. “Because there aren’t enough mages to keep up the wards on the wall?”
Settling back on her heels, Sage appraises the bard.
It seems an honest question, and she’s clearly sobered with the memory of the wolves.
“The wall wasn’t meant to keep the wolves out,” Sage explains.
“Not really. They were much closer to the cities than they ought to have been, perhaps driven from their dens for the same reason Hexham stays mobile. But there have always been beasts in the south, and there are always beasts slipping through.” She resists the urge to press a palm to her stomach and the long-healed scar, thinking of one in particular.
“But I thought—”
“No, you were taught.” Sage takes her turn to interrupt. “I remember what they used to tell us as children, even in the schoolhouses of the Rookery. That the wall protects us from wild creatures. But not really. Not from all of them.”
“But there are monsters in the Northlands, you said it yourself!”
“There are wilder and more terrifying creatures in the Northlands, to be sure. There are bound to be where there’s far fewer people.
No roads carved through their hunting grounds, nobody burning their woods to make way for estates or slums or barracks, nobody to pillage their nests for the magical properties of their eggs and feathers and claws.
Nobody but adventurers,” she amends. “Some creatures are caught by the wards if they roam too far south. But mostly, the wall is to keep out creatures of a certain size and intelligence. That’s what the wards were designed for. ”
“People, you mean?”
Sage nods. “Those who refuse to pledge themselves—or their taxes—to the crown.”
“But…” The bard’s brow furrows, and Sage gives her the time to compose her thoughts. “Has nobody questioned the nature of the runes, then? Surely someone has spoken out. One of the soldiers, one of the mages?”
“Sure, they have. But the crown claims it’s to keep out invaders, should the pirates of the Upper Islands try to enter through the Northlands, or some current neighbor-turned-enemy, as Perpignan was so recently.
Still, it keeps out people born in Harrow all the same, and it always has.
Now, we should get to sleep,” Sage finishes her command, turning her back on the bard once more.
“The sooner we do, the sooner we start traveling tomorrow.” She lowers the wick on the lamp and extinguishes the flame, then crosses to her cot.
Kicking off her boots, she lays her knife down on the hardened earth at the head of the pallet, then tucks herself in without another word.
It’s really much easier if they don’t talk.
Ideally they’ll never speak again. Every time they do, she remembers Araphi’s murmurings of pleasure as Sage licked a stripe from her shoulder to her collarbone, tasting the mineral-rich water of the hot springs and sweet skin, and something entirely unique to the bard that could have been a figment of her imagination, conjured by the inescapable scent of lemons.
She also remembers the whisper of hurt in Araphi’s voice when she asked, Who’s Ollie? her fingers stilling inside Sage.
She’s an idiot for letting this happen, not once but twice.
Letting herself kiss somebody she’d have to share a campfire with the next morning, and the day after that.
Worse, somebody she wants to share a campfire with.
And worst of all, an engaged somebody—which wasn’t even a consideration last time.
Curse the gods; she’s been so careful for so long.
But it’s all right. She’ll be much more careful going forward. She’ll keep her distance in every way possible, even when stuffed together in the same tent. She’ll—
“I don’t think I can sleep,” Araphi complains from her side of the tent.
“You haven’t even tried. You’re not even lying down!” She can see the shape of Araphi silhouetted against the canvas wall, faintly lit from the outside by snow and starlight.
Araphi tips stiffly onto her side, and Sage rolls over to face her own tent wall and close her eyes.
“Well, now I can’t stop thinking about the Northlands, with all this talk of them. How cold will it be?”
Sage sighs. “Cold.”
“Have you traveled there before?”
“Twice.”
“In winter?”
“No.”
“Denby says his father used to be an adventurer, before he discovered and claimed the Oreborn mines. He lost three toes to frostbite in the Northlands in his youth. He smelted a new set for himself when he got back.”
“How fascinating,” Sage grits out. “Such a remarkable story your fiancé has told you about something that didn’t happen to him.”
Silence falls. Hopefully, Araphi is too stung to speak further.