Chapter 70
The Journey Begins
The weeks that followed were spent in preparation.
The men recovered. We trained. We waited for Solaryn.
Days were spent planning, poring over maps.
Some evenings I would find myself at a table with Enovar and Kentan and the Avanki, losing at dice while Enovar held court with increasingly outrageous tales.
Trophi and Wyn would catch my eye from across the table and say nothing, which told me everything.
Those nights made me miss Syle and Uralish and even Aunt Petunis, and I found myself wondering whether Syle had managed to figure out what Aunt Jularin had been planning.
When I returned each night, the routine was the same.
Colsar would be in the chair beside the bed, just back from his run.
We would draw a bath and wash each other without speaking, and when it was done he would lean into me and say, “Tell me everything.” I would work soap through his hair and recount whoever had cheated at dice that evening.
He would tell me about the trees and foliage he had seen, though nothing he encountered compared to the Silver Ash in Veynar, which I still longed to see at first frost.
“There are so many more things to bring when traveling with children,” Colsar said.
I held up the tiny sweater in my hands. “Matron Oramin made me knit this when I first came to Veynar. She was convinced we would be pregnant within the year.”
“She was right,” he said, laughing.
I frowned. “I prefer sewing to knitting, and I have not made them much myself. Maybe I will pack less and make some items for them when we arrive.”
“Perhaps when we arrive you will be lucky enough to be invited to one of Lady Esmeraldis’s sewing events,” Colsar said dryly.
I threw a pillow at him. “She can stay in the capital.”
He laughed loudly at that.
His tone turned more serious. “I spoke to my father today. Everything is in order. A council member will remain here while we’re gone.
"Arabar cannot stay. We need him."
"Indeed we do," Colsar said.
I folded a nightgown and placed it in the trunk. He looked at it. "I do not know why you bother packing that."
“Because if you upset me I will wear it,” I said.
Colsar laughed again. He had been doing that more lately. There was a warmth to him now that surfaced easily, without effort.
His voice lowered. “Yvara. My brother. Mysin. What are your plans?”
I began folding the children’s travel blankets. “Yvara I have not yet decided. Sevrin we must play nice with for now.”
Colsar groaned. “Asha, I have fantasized for months about all the ways I plan on punishing him for what he did—”
“Not yet, Colsar. We need him to cooperate on naming Kiss heir, and we need whatever he knows about Morrath.” I looked at him. “Promise me you will cooperate.”
“I can promise you I will not kill him yet,” he said simply.
I paused. “As for Mysin, I am going to kill him, if he is still alive.”
Colsar said nothing at first. Then, “Asharin.”
“Yes?”
“Come to bed.”
“Already?”
“We must rest. Tomorrow will be a long day of travel.” A pause. “Besides, something about you wanting to murder someone has me aroused.”
I laughed before I could stop it. By the time I climbed onto the bed, he was already reaching for me.
“Is this your idea of resting?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said.
That was the end of the conversation.
The snow followed us out of Shalvar. It never fell hard enough to slow the Avanki or bury the path, but it never stopped either, settling into the mountains until the cold felt worked into everything rather than falling from above.
By the time we reached the higher passes of Gyarin it had become part of the world around us. Part of us.
Saurin and Cambra rode within the transport with the children, its warding holding the worst of the cold back. I could see it moving alongside us, steady and unhurried, and I knew without looking that Cambra's attention would be moving constantly over both of them.
I rode beside Colsar.
My horse had found its rhythm with the terrain, adjusting to the snow-packed ground with a patience I was grateful for. The cold pressed in at every opening in my cloak, but I had stopped fighting it somewhere in the first hour. It was simply part of moving now.
The firebirds cut through the sky above us in wide arcs, pushing forward and circling back and ranging out again.
He had sent them ahead the moment we left Shalvar and had not called them back.
Behind us the column stretched in its order: Veynar soldiers keeping pace through the snow, and at the rear, unhurried and silent, the Shalvar contingent closed the formation like a door no one had yet needed to shut.
I watched him from my horse, the distance between us close enough to speak without raising our voices.
"You have not stopped looking," I said.
"I will not," he answered.
His hand found mine briefly across the space between us before returning to his reins. Certain rather than careful.
"You can," I said. "Nothing has come for us."
"That is not a reason to assume nothing will."
"You have been like this since we left," I said. "Tell me what is on your mind."
He did not answer immediately. The Avanki ahead shifted formation as the path narrowed, their movement clean and practiced, snow breaking beneath their boots and the hooves of the horses among them.
"When you were delivering them," Colsar said at last.
"I could hear you," he continued. "Every part of it. I did not understand what I was hearing. I did not know if you were surviving it or if I was listening to you die."
“I have been in situations where I understood the outcome,” he said. “Even when it was not in my favor. This was different.”
I looked at him. "You weren’t there,” I said quietly.
"No." His jaw shifted. "And I could not fix it."
The wind shifted, carrying the scent of snow and something faint beneath it. One of the firebirds dipped lower, then climbed again and disappeared into the gray.
"You did fix it," I said. "We survived. That is what matters."
"It is not all that matters," he said.
I watched him for a time, then glanced back. Kentan rode at the rear of the column, unhurried, his attention moving across the tree line the way it always did.
“Do you trust him?" I said.
Colsar followed my line of sight. "I do."
"With me? With the children?"
“Yes.”
A brief pause.
"He knows what is mine," Colsar said.
I turned back to the road.
That was enough.
We rode in silence for a time. It was near dusk when Trophi rode alongside and Colsar called to him. "How much farther to the outer Gyarin?"
"Another day," Trophi said. "Less if the pass holds."
Colsar said nothing.
"There are so few undead here," I said eventually.
Ahead, movement broke through the snow along the edge of the path.
Something dragged itself upward, limbs uneven, head tilted at an angle that no longer belonged to the living.
It did not reach us. An Avanki soldier stepped forward, light gathering along his arm before he cut through it.
Another rose behind it and met the same end, then another, each falling before it could close the distance.
The line did not slow.
Trophi rode closer. "They keep their distance. They feel our lightcraft." He inclined his head. "They are drawn to power. But not all power. This they avoid."
I watched another cluster break through the snow further out and fall just as quickly. "This is why they want the wards dropped," I said. "If Alarnans moved like this, the undead would not stand long."
Trophi’s expression shifted slightly. "They would solve the dead," he said. "Not the problems of the living." He held my eyes for a moment. Then inclined his head once, because there was nothing useful to add to that.
The transport moved on. The mountains held their cold around us, and somewhere above in the grey sky the firebirds continued their slow patient circles, watching for what neither of us wanted to find.