Chapter 21
The trail changed beneath my boots sometime around midmorning, and I was the only one who noticed.
It was subtle, the way the snow compacted differently underfoot, slightly less give, the ground beneath harder and older than what we'd been crossing.
The rock formation to the northeast sat at an angle I didn't recognize from any caravan route I'd ever walked.
The mountains far in the distance reflected like sunlight on glass, and I could only imagine how dazzling that would be if you got any closer.
I had no plans of ever getting closer.
I had been farther north than most people in Crystallese would ever go.
The temperature felt like it plummeted, and with every breath I inhaled, I could feel the ice scratching at my throat.
The tree line, sparse as it was, had thinned to almost nothing.
Nothing grew here.
Nothing.
Those trees were dead husks. How they still stood was a question for someone far more clever than me to answer.
The landscape was breathtakingly beautiful if you liked pale gray skies and crisp, frozen white. The Frozen Mountains loomed, giving an ethereal feel to everything in the absolute quiet of our surroundings. But the danger in this land lay in its simplicity.
If the temperature didn’t kill you, the gnawing hunger in your belly would. I was grateful for the rations we’d gained from the soldiers we’d lost. I had agreed to take these people north, but I also had to take them back, and that would be just as difficult.
And still, I kept walking north. The snow reached my knees at points, but I still kept leading them north.
I kept my pace steady and my expression neutral. I was reading the land the same way I always did, but now it was with intention rather than instinct and educated guesswork dressed up as confidence. The difference between those two was one I felt acutely, even if nobody else could see it.
Because out here, farther than I’d ever traveled, I couldn’t find the trail as easily. This was the very edge of what I knew. Everything past here was nothing more than assumption. One wrong step, and I could lead them to their deaths, and mine.
Baxley fell into step beside me sometime later.
I knew it was him by his height. The cold and wind chill had all of us buried under our cloaks, hoods low, neck warmers, and face wraps nearly covering our entire faces.
I knew Baxley’s height, Captain Marson’s straight back, Larana because she was slighter than the men, and Nicco…
well, I would recognize him anywhere, I think.
I recognized the hunter in him, in the way he moved, the way he held himself.
Yes, Nicco, I would know him in the darkest of nights.
The others in the group? To be fair, I hardly knew them before we all wrapped ourselves up like we were walking bedrolls.
I waited for Baxley to speak.
“I find it strange that you never pushed for an answer.”
“What was the question?”
“Why we're going to Iskaeld.”
I was quiet for a moment. “I assumed I'd find out when it was relevant.”
“Mm.” He was quiet too, for a few steps. “It's relevant now. It’s not much farther now.”
“You’ve been before?” I asked in surprise.
“Me? No.” I saw his eyes crinkle as he smiled beneath his wrappings, and I glared at his evasive answer. “Met someone who’s been before. They told me, roughly, what to expect.”
“Then tell me. And while you’re at it, tell me why you’re doing all this for only ten gold.”
He laughed at that. “Only?”
“It’s a life-changing amount for me. For you? Not so much.”
Baxley gave a noncommittal shrug. “Maybe.”
“Oh, don’t go quiet now,” I snapped. “Talk.”
“Do you remember a few days ago, Nicco said to you that there are more of you than you let on?”
I nodded. “Truthfully, I don’t know what he meant by that.”
Baxley bobbed his head once. “I get that. Your capital is way down south in your kingdom. Tell me, have you ever ventured to Glassfyr?”
“No.”
“The city is large. Very few people struggle to put food on the table. Your king’s army is sizable.”
We had an army? I felt foolish for thinking it. Of course, we’d have an army. Every kingdom would need one to defend itself. The lands of Cinderia and Darysia were always squabbling.
Hotter lands meant hotter tempers, in my opinion. In Crystallese, we had cool tempers. I thought of my own temper. Mostly cool tempers.
“I think it is unlikely your king has traveled far into his own kingdom,” Baxley continued. “The king of Darysia likes to know things. He wanted to know your kingdom’s population. Here we are.”
I stopped walking. “What? That’s… What?”
Baxley nodded. Not slowing as I hurried to catch up with him. I was panting when I did.
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s called census work,” he told me. “There are soldiers counting settlements, assessing population numbers. Checking in trade routes, confirming the gemstone output from the mines.”
“Mines?” I asked stupidly.
This time, he was the one to look at me in confusion.
“Crystallese is renowned for its diamonds. Where else do you think your kingdom’s wealth comes from?” He gestured to the frozen land. “It sure as shit isn’t ice.”
I felt even more out of my depth. “Baxley?” My voice was low. “I don’t know what a diamond is.”
This time, he stopped walking. “You don’t…” He looked me over. “You know of the mines to the southwest of your kingdom?”
I shook my head. “I’ve never been. I’m not needed in fairer climates.”
He still looked confused, but he resumed walking.
“Diamonds are found underground. They’re like…
stones. But the kind formed under extreme cold and pressure deep in the ground.
They are as clear as ice. Well, the ones from Crystallese are.
Your kingdom produces the kind of stone that Darysia and Florlunia and Cinderia all have appetites for. ”
“Oh, you mean the ice rocks?”
“Is that what you call them?” he asked curiously.
“I don’t know. I think so. I’m… they are worth money?”
He chuckled. “A lot of money.”
“And you, Captain Marson, and his men are looking for these… stones?”
Baxley nodded. “Kind of. The crown wanted to know what was actually up here and whether the reports it had been receiving were accurate. That's what Marson was told, and why his men were sent,” Baxley said, when he'd finished.
I looked at him. He was still watching the trail ahead, his expression giving nothing.
“You don’t believe it?”
“Don’t I?”
“You said, ‘that's what Marson was told.’” I kept my voice even. “Not that's why we're here.”
He said nothing.
“Baxley.”
“I like talking with you. You listen,” he said, pleasantly, with the tone of a man who had decided to pay a compliment instead of answering a question.
I let the silence stretch. “A census?” When he nodded, I carried on. “A census doesn't need mercenaries, does it? It doesn't need men like you. Women like Larana. That's a job for a, a… clerk? Not fighters.”
“Mm, you'd think,” Baxley agreed.
“So… is something else happening?”
He looked at me then, briefly, with that steady, not unkind expression. “Something else is always happening,” he said. “The question is whether knowing it would change what you do.”
I thought about it. “I'm already walking north,” I said. “I'm already past the point where knowing would have changed the decision.”
He nodded slowly, as if this were the right answer to a question he'd been asking for longer than this conversation. “Aye,” he said. “You are.”
He dropped back without another word, moving to check on the soldiers behind us, and I was left with the official version of a reason and the very clear impression that it was approximately half the truth.
I tried to understand everything Baxley had shared with me. Diamonds? I’d lived here my whole life. Why had I never heard of the land beneath my feet being mined for stones?
And a census sounded like an information-gathering exercise. That wasn’t the work of mercenaries.
By midafternoon, the landscape had shifted again, in ways I could not name with certainty. I just knew the feel of it was different. The light was flatter, if that was possible in a country where the sky was already the color of old pewter.
The cold had a different quality to it, not sharper, not exactly, just more absolute. More committed. Almost solid.
I growled in frustration at my own inability to describe it. I wished I were a scholar. I’d be warm if I were a scholar.
And bored. Horribly, horribly bored.
I stopped at the crest of a low ridge and looked north.
Nothing.
This wasn’t just an empty flat snowfield or frozen plain. It was the kind of place that hadn't yet decided what it wanted to be. The horizon was hazy, with sky and land blending, making it difficult to gauge distance. It could have been a league or even ten. It was impossible to tell.
I stood there for longer than I should have.
“Problem?”
Nicco had joined me. I hadn't heard him move up from the group. I was beginning to accept that I probably never would.
“No problem,” I said, forcing my tone to be casual. “Reading the terrain.”
“And what does it say?”
I looked north for another moment. “That it hasn't made up its mind yet.”
He stood beside me and looked at the same horizon I was looking at, and for a while, neither of us said anything. The group had slowed behind us, grateful for the pause, and the sounds of people resting and drinking from tin cups drifted up from behind us.
“You've been here before,” he said.
“No.”
“But you know it.”
“I know terrain,” I said. “This is terrain.”
He was quiet for a moment. “You hesitated,” he said. “Earlier. Before you chose the route east of the mountains.”
I kept my expression still. He'd noticed. Of course he'd noticed. “The snow was uncertain that way.”
“The snow is uncertain everywhere.”
“More uncertain there.”
He turned his head slightly, just enough to see me without actually looking at me. I felt his eyes on me and didn’t look back.