Chapter Nine
I have not been able to get Titus to talk.
Our road has grown steeper, full of wind and ice, relentless with its constant switchbacks. We are so high into the mountains
that the trees are scarce and stunted. Not long now until we’re above the tree line entirely. And not long after that, we’ll
reach the crossroads. We’ll have a choice then: the king’s road will branch slightly east and downslope, continuing along
the trade route toward the Grimsvold border and my family’s devastated inn.
There are moments when I feel I would give anything to go back home, even for a day or so. I want to rummage through the wreckage,
salvage anything from my life before. I want to say goodbye to my family.
Just as often, the thought turns my stomach into knots. Could I bear to gaze upon the burned-out skeleton of the place I loved?
What if the bodies of my parents are there, rotting, alone, unburied? I don’t know that I could survive losing them all over
again.
But I’m guessing we’ll ignore that route, choosing instead to take the west fork, a path so rarely traveled it’s little more than a faint impression against dirt and stone, marked by rock cairns and wind-shredded flags. It will take us even higher, to the great Spires and the Fedor mine.
It’s a terrible place to travel, even in summer.
Tonight, for the first time since fleeing the trading outpost, we risk a small fire. Titus and I sit shoulder to shoulder
on a log, hovering over the fire’s meager warmth. He managed to bag a squirrel, which now drips and crackles over the flames.
If we had time, I’d give it a proper roast, but this poor creature will be burned on the outside and raw on the inside, and
I’m so hungry and tired that I hardly care.
“We’re running out of supplies,” Titus says.
“I can stretch the food two days,” I tell him. “Longer if we find more game.”
“Will two days’ worth get us to the Fedor mine?”
So I was right about the path we’ll take. “No.”
“What if we travel at night and—”
“Still no. The mine is two days’ journey past the crossroads, which we haven’t even reached yet. And trust me, my lord, that
path is not one to tread at night. Even with your particular ability.”
He frowns at me. “Don’t call me ‘my lord,’ ” he says.
I blink up at him. “But you’re my liege now. I swore an oath.”
“Please, Bria.”
I shrug. “Your will . . . Titus.”
A drop of fat hisses on the coals. Something rustles in the nearby grass. Probably a meadow vole. The thinning vegetation
of high altitude makes me feel exposed and vulnerable. It’s too dark to see what’s out there, but I can’t help but feel that
what’s out there can see us just fine.
“This is important,” Titus continues. “If you call me ‘my lord’ in front of others, we’ll be memorable. So don’t make a habit of it. Or of showing me too much deference in general. If anyone asks, you’re my sister.”
I refrain from pointing out how poorly that worked last time. “Don’t worry,” I say. “Not showing deference is a particular
specialty of mine.”
The firelight dances across his features, so I can’t tell if I’m sensing amusement there or imagining it.
After a long pause, I venture, “We traveled fast and far, hardly stopping to rest. So maybe the Deathsworn will give up. Maybe
we’ve lost them.”
“The Deathsworn never give up,” he says. “Once they’ve performed the contract ritual, an assassin is committed for life. The
only way out of a Deathsworn contract is death: the mark’s, the assassin’s, or the client’s.”
Growing up at the Three Corners Inn, I heard rumors of the Deathsworn, but I never believed them. Any more than I believed
stories about the ghost Gifts or a great continent flying out there beyond the Edge of the World. These were tales used to
frighten or inspire children. Nothing real. Nothing to worry about.
“How much does it cost,” I wonder aloud, “to buy someone’s lifetime commitment?”
“About the same as it costs for a king to buy a wife,” he says. “A crown’s ransom.”
I have no idea how much that is. Probably more than I can imagine. I stare at his profile. He has a too-long nose that somehow sets right on his face. It’s a classically Corthan profile, and I would suspect royal lineage even if he hadn’t demonstrated his Gift of healing.
After a long moment of silence, I dare to ask, “So who would pay a crown’s ransom to have you dead?”
Titus stares into the flames. Firelight turns his red-brown hair nearly orange, and for the barest moment, I imagine him becoming
fire itself, leaping into the night sky blazing with light and heat.
Instead he shifts beside me on the log so he can reach back and scratch an itch on his rear. A normal man after all, barely
more than a boy.
I assume he’s going to ignore my question, the same way he has ignored so many. I reach forward to retrieve the almost-cooked
squirrel and nearly jump out of my skin when he speaks.
“Someone with a crown, of course.”
“Of course,” I say, and then I add: “I’m sorry.”
I’m not a half-wit. Titus’s royal Gift, his fine Thordin stallion, and his beautiful longbow all attest to the fact that he
is a prince. And the Corthan king has way more offspring than he knows what to do with, if inn gossip is to be believed. So
yes, I guessed long ago that Titus is one of King Jaydeth’s many rumored children, but it’s nice for him to acknowledge it,
even if vaguely.
“Why?” I ask.
Titus grabs the spit, removes the squirrel from the fire. As it steams in the wintery night air, he says, “That’s a story
for another night.”
If I persist, Titus will clamp his mouth shut and ignore me for a day, so I shrug and say, “In that case, let’s put out this fire before anyone sees it.”
We wake with the dawn to discover ice coating our bedrolls and our packs. The horses’ breaths frost in the air, and my waterskin
crunches when I squeeze it.
“It will be dangerous to continue sleeping out in the open,” Titus observes as we quickly break camp.
“We need better gear,” I agree as Apple lips a mouthful of stale oats from my palm. “Even a small tent would help.”
“A tent makes it hard to see your surroundings,” Titus says. “Hard to flee.”
“True.” I lead Apple to a rock so I can mount up. “But I’ve yet to see a critter who’s frozen solid flee anything.”
“We’re getting close to your inn, yes?” he says.
Hope and dread do battle in my chest, making it difficult to draw breath. “Yes,” I manage. Maybe he means to visit the place,
salvage what we can.
“So you would know if there’s a trading post nearby.”
“There isn’t. Our inn was the only thing that passed for a trading post way up here near the Spires. The slavers set it on
fire, but there were a few outbuildings. A deep cellar. It’s possible there’s some scavenge to be had, if it hasn’t been looted
already.”
Titus swings up onto Blackwind’s back, and the stallion dances in place, ready to be off. “If we detoured there before going
to the mine, how long would it take?”
I consider hedging, since I haven’t made up my mind about whether or not I want to see the place ever again, but I am sworn to his service and we Angarsolds are known for honor and truth.
So I say, “I’m not entirely certain how far away we are.
But once we reach the crossroads, it’s two days each way, three if the road is iced over, impassable if we get another blizzard. ”
“I see.” He guides Blackwind through the trees surrounding our campsite, and I follow on Apple. Before breaking through to
the open road, he hesitates a moment, listening, and if I’m not mistaken, sniffing the air. “We’re clear,” he says. “We need to travel fast.” And with that, he urges Blackwind forward.
“Watch for ice,” I say to his back. “We can’t afford to lose one of our mounts.”
The one good thing about the fast-approaching winter is that we are unlikely to run into more mistwraiths. They prefer to
haunt the ravines and hollows, caves and swamps. They like cold, dark moisture rather than icy open barrens.
But we might encounter them when we reach the mine, and we’ll have to be prepared. My grandfather used to tell stories of
mistwraiths, passed down from his father and grandfather who worked the Fedor mine. According to him, mistwraiths take a long
winter sleep during the coldest months, huddling inside the earth like bears, awaiting the spring. With the melt and the warm
northern winds, they creep from their caves and hollows to feast on the unwary.
As we ride, I try to remember everything I’ve ever heard about the Fedor mine.
Rich in silver during its peak, with the occasional rhodochrosite deposit, the mine provided jobs for over a hundred men and women during the warm season.
They were dangerous jobs, but they paid well, and the mine made our baron the richest man in Grimsvold, aside from the king himself, who took his own cut.
By the time my father was a young man, the silver was drying up. And when the big cave-in killed more than fifty people, including
my grandfather, the mine was shut down once and for all.
In the years since, it has probably been taken over by denning animals and mistwraiths. The supports are likely rotted away,
the lowest levels filled with water, the higher levels slick with ice. I can’t imagine what Titus wants with the place.
We reach the crossroads before the sun finds its apex. The wider, well-traveled path is maintained, cleared of brush and occasionally
cobbled against mud and ice. It leads down into a valley thick with pines. Beyond is my burned-out home.
The other path is a faint track, barely a scratch against the hard granite, and it turns sharply upward, toward the wall of
impossibly high mountains known as the Spires.
Ahead of me, Titus pulls up Blackwind and considers. A warm breeze follows at our back, and the air feels tight and tense,
prickling at my skin. I twist in my saddle, and sure enough, a dark cloud bank approaches from the south. The clouds crackle
with light. Gooseflesh forms on my arms.
“Titus,” I call out. “Storm coming.”
He looks over his shoulder at me. “Again? Already?”
“The mountains are pesky that way.”