Chapter 19
Nobody spoke for the first league.
Nor did they try to catch up with me. That was okay.
I didn't feel like saying anything that might be misinterpreted, and from the quiet around us, neither did anyone else.
We headed north in the calm of people who had just gone through something they couldn't undo and were still figuring out how to feel about it.
I led. That was my job. I put one boot in front of the other and read the snow and didn't think about the woman.
I thought about the woman constantly.
She’s fed, and she’s warm.
Those had been Vorn’s words. Words that I’d repeated back to him, and I'd meant them as justification. They'd felt reasonable at the time, and now, with the cold pressing in from all sides and nothing but open white in every direction, they felt like exactly what they were.
A way of not having to decide.
But Baxley had decided.
He’d made the call. He’d done what he felt was right.
I thought about that for a while, much like how you might turn something over when you already have a sense of what's on the other side but aren't quite ready to face it head-on, even though you know you have to. Even when you knew you’d be disappointed with the outcome.
As I walked, my attention turned toward my body.
The cold was sharper than it should have been.
That was the first thing I noticed — not wind, not temperature exactly, just a biting quality to the air that settled into my bones and didn’t seem likely to shift.
I'd been cold before. I'd definitely been colder than this.
And sometimes I would pull just enough warmth from the earth beneath me to take the edge off, a small thing, barely noticeable, just enough.
I didn’t do it often, I certainly tried not to do it when I was on a trail with others, only when it got to the point I was sure I wouldn’t survive. Like leading eleven merchants through the Cryarek Pass and living to tell the tale.
I reached for my magic and almost stumbled at how much was surging to be free.
My insides were tight with what I thought was tension, but now I suspected it was my magic, ready to boil over.
My magic was ready to be free. Or not ready… hungry. A pot boiling too high for too long, unnoticed, about to bubble over, its contents spilling and lost.
The confrontation, the suppression, that moment in the snow when I'd pressed my fingers to my sternum and forced it back down, had cost more than I'd acknowledged at the time.
I flexed my fingers inside my gloves. They were stiff. Colder than they should be. Because my magic was burning within me, and I couldn’t think of a single way to let it out and free it without announcing to every person here what I carried within me.
And I would sooner die than let them know.
I’d used a little of my magic twice, maybe three times, since I got chosen for this journey. It wasn’t any more or less than a normal trail. Why was my magic reacting this way now?
I remembered what Vorn had said about the Frosttaken. They sought out the Chosen. I was not Chosen, the Verei Kahn did not know of my existence, nor did they need to. I had no wish to join them or their institutions.
I needed to expel some of my magic before it made the decision for me. I just didn’t know how to do that without being seen.
I kept my eyes on the trail and my mind on the problem as I kept walking forward.
A while later, Larana fell into step beside me. Not exactly beside me, slightly behind, the way she always seemed to position herself, at the edge of my peripheral vision rather than directly alongside. Close enough to talk, but far enough to deny it.
I waited for whatever she was about to say, because there was no coincidence she was behind me.
“You handled that well,” she said eventually.
I glanced at her sideways. Her face was wrapped against the cold, only her eyes visible, and they were doing what they always did, moving, checking, watching the tundra with that specific focus.
“I didn't handle it at all,” I said honestly. “I stood there while it resolved itself.”
“Sometimes that's just the same thing.”
I considered that. “Vorn's men are going to come back.”
“Maybe.” She was quiet for a moment. “Probably not. We killed three of theirs. They'll cut the loss.”
I looked back at her again. “You sound certain.”
“I've dealt with people like Vorn before.” Her voice was flat and entirely without elaboration.
I didn't push. With Larana, I was learning, you got what she gave you, and you were grateful for it.
We walked in silence for a while. It wasn't the earlier silence, not the heavy, unresolved silence of the group processing something difficult. This was quieter than that. Quieter and more settled.
“The woman,” Larana said.
I didn't answer.
“You saw her?”
“No.” I swallowed back the taste of bile. “But I knew she was there.”
She’s fed, and she’s warm.
“And you said nothing.” It wasn’t an accusation. It was just a statement, the way she stated most things, observationally and without judgment attached.
“That’s right,” I said, my voice sounded weary even to my ears. “I said nothing.”
Another silence. This one wasn’t as long.
“Neither did I,” Larana told me quietly.
I looked at her then, properly. She was still watching the tundra, her posture unchanged, her expression — what I could see of it beneath the wrappings — giving nothing away. But she'd said it deliberately. I was certain of that. She'd wanted me to hear it.
Wanted me to know it.
It wasn’t absolution, or even justification. But it was company. Companionship in the way of someone who understood that some decisions sat badly, no matter how logical they were, and that the only honest thing you could do was admit it.
I looked back at the trail ahead.
“Baxley was right,” I said finally. I knew it, but saying it out loud was admitting that I’d been wrong.
“Baxley is frequently right,” Larana said, with something in her voice that might have been fondness if she'd ever allowed anyone to think she was capable of it. “It's one of his more irritating qualities.”
I almost smiled.
“Does he know that it’s probably gone wrong?” I asked. “That she’s probably—”
“He knows.” Her voice was quiet as she cut me off. “He knew it when he made the call.”
“And he made it anyway.”
“He always does.” She glanced at me sideways. “That's also irritating.”
This time I did smile, small and private, directed at the snow rather than at her.
“Thank you,” I murmured.
“The thing you might have forgotten,” she said, her voice as quiet as mine. “She also made the choice, Trailfinder.”
I looked up at her, and she was watching me now. “You made your choice to save your companions, you weighed the odds as you knew them, and you knew they weren’t in our favor.” She looked past me to where a small band of the others had fanned out, keeping watch as we traveled.
I swallowed. “And so did she,” I whispered.
Larana nodded solemnly. “You did the right thing.”
“Did I?” I stopped walking, and she did too.
“Last night, in their camp, if you had protested or roused the others, we’d all be mostly dead, and you and I would be tied to a pole in a tent. So yes. You made the right call then.” Her blue eyes were unwavering. “And Baxley made his when the time was right.”
I looked away, and Larana fell back to walk beside the group of men who followed me.
I took in the sight of them.
Nicco was at the front of the group, where he'd been all morning, setting the pace behind me without discussing it with anyone, giving me the distance I needed. Never mind, it was distance from him as much as anything.
Captain Marson had stopped trying to assert precedence somewhere around the second day since the night of the Hulgrim attack and was now simply walking two steps behind him with the expression of a man who’d made peace with his circumstances.
I watched Nicco longer than I should have.
He was looking west. Like Larana, the man was always scouting ahead for trouble.
His hood was drawn, and his neck warmer covered the lower half of his face, leaving only his eyes visible.
His sword rested against his back, the pommel within easy reach if he needed it.
His gray travel cloak was mottled with white, the snow and ice of the territory leaving their mark on the Darysian male.
He walked through the snow with a confidence he shouldn’t have had.
His large body moved effortlessly, with a grace many native sons of Crystallese would envy.
He hadn't said anything since the confrontation that I knew of. Definitely not to me. He might have said something to Baxley, but I doubted it. He didn’t seem like much of a talker beyond the bare minimum required to keep people moving north in subzero temperatures.
Or when he was in the mood to piss me off.
The fact that he seemed to be doing my job right now was one of those times when he’d pissed me off without trying.
He handled silence the way he seemed to handle everything, without acknowledgment, as though it were simply the natural state of the world and had nothing to do with him.
I couldn't work out if he was angry or indifferent.
He was always watchful. Always processing. If it was there, the anger would be filed away somewhere practical, taken out only when it could be useful to him.
That was the part I kept returning to. Not the confrontation. Not Vorn's men, the woman, or Baxley's unrepentant practicality. The part I kept returning to was the moment in the dark outside the shelters when I'd turned and found Nicco already there, already watching, and already decided.
He’d seen her? Or at least knew where she was, and he’d decided to say nothing.
The same as me.
I was sure that Nicco had made his decision without any sense of guilt, whereas I was sure the shame of saying nothing would stay with me for many years to come.