Chapter 21 #2
“You don't know this ground,” he said. It wasn't an accusation. Just a quiet, precise observation from a man who made quiet, precise observations about everything.
“I know snow,” I said.
“Okay.” He turned back to the horizon. “Tell me when you don't.”
I looked at him then, properly, because the instruction had been so straightforward and unexpectedly devoid of condescension that I needed to check it had actually come from him.
His face was unreadable. His eyes were focused ahead. He meant it.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because in terrain you don't know,” he said, “you'll make decisions based on what you expect rather than what's there. I'd rather know when that's happening.”
I turned back to the horizon. The emptiness seemed to stretch endlessly, unfulfilled and pale, and I wondered how long he’d known I was struggling.
“I'll tell you,” I said.
“Good. I don’t like surprises.” He nodded once and moved back down the ridge.
Ugh, even when he was being nice, he was an asshole.
We walked farther, and all the while my magic bubbled inside me, eager to be let out. I’d never felt it like this before. Was it because there was nothing here? Was it my own anxiety about being unsure for the first time, since the first time, that I was subconsciously calling it forth?
I didn’t have the answers. In fact, I had no answers today.
We made camp behind a drift that could have been a stone or a solid lump of ice beneath. Either way, it provided some shelter.
I wished we’d had the sense to barter for one or three or five of Vorn’s tents. No watch was set, the soldiers huddled close around the two fires they built, and we lay down to rest.
I waited until the camp was quiet.
Not long after true dark fell, it didn’t take long for silence to settle. They were tired from walking and fighting their way through the snow. The fire was low, and the only sound was a soft murmur of snores.
I moved carefully, made no sound, and went farther than I strictly needed to before I stopped.
The cold here was the purest I had ever experienced. It wasn't windchill or storm-chill, it was just the cold of a place frozen since before anyone even considered naming it the Frozen Waste. The cold pressed in from all sides with no escape.
I crouched and pressed my bare hand flat against the snow.
The magic came immediately.
Not a trickle, not the careful controlled warmth I usually coaxed forward…
it surged. The way it had been threatening to surge for days, and I bit down hard on the sound that wanted to come with it and forced it outward instead of letting it climb.
Down into the ground, into the rock and frost beneath, it drained away through the earth rather than through the air where someone might see it.
The snow around my hand melted in a wide circle. Wider than I intended.
I pulled back, and the warmth flooded through my body as my magic retreated and the cold rushed in to fill the space it had left. But I was full of warmth, and I wasn’t left shivering like I sometimes was.
I sat back on my heels and breathed. My hands were shaking. Not from cold. This had never happened before. The magic had always been mine to command, mine to direct, a tool I reached for when I needed it and set aside when I didn't.
What was happening now was something different.
Something that didn't feel like a tool.
Something that felt like a tide.
I pressed my hand against the wet ground where the snow had melted and drew the glyph. I didn’t know what it meant. I think it was for closing, or maybe for containing, perhaps small. I didn’t know. I just knew it stopped things, like melted snow spreading farther.
I felt the magic respond eagerly, the way it always responded now, as if it understood what I was asking and was desperate to do as I needed.
When I stood, the cold had already refrozen the ground that had melted. I brushed more snow over it, hoping the evidence was gone and nothing was left to see.
I turned back toward camp.
Nicco was standing at the camp's edge.
Not on watch. They’d set no watch. Nicco simply stood, arms crossed, at the precise point where the firelight stopped and the dark began.
I knew it was him. Earlier, I’d thought I’d know him anywhere. Well, in the dark in the north of Crystallese, I wasn’t wrong. From the broad set of his shoulders, from the way he stood with his feet apart, arms crossed, head slightly bowed, looking at me, assessing the threat he was sure I posed.
I wanted to run. I didn’t. I walked back steadily, putting no hurry into my step.
I didn't explain myself, and he didn’t ask. I passed him close enough to touch, and I kept my eyes forward and my expression empty.
He didn’t say a word.
I lay down by the fire, stared at the embers, and listened to my heartbeat slow. What in the shades had that been?
Three days to Iskaeld. I knew that now. I didn’t know how, but I knew.
Three days to figure out what was happening to my magic, and what exactly Nicco had seen tonight and chosen, again, to say nothing about.
Pretty soon, he’d ask his questions, and I was running out of time to come up with an answer.