If she lives. Mar shivered, watching Dhulyn sheathe her weapons. The morning was colder than she’d thought.

Four

IN THE AFTERNOON of the twelfth day, with the pass two days behind them, Parno stopped on a small rise and let the two women ride past him. Dhulyn pulled up her horse and halted Mar with a gesture when he did not follow them.

“What?” she called.

“Look at those clouds,” he said. Dhulyn turned in her saddle to follow the direction of his gaze. The sky was dark and heavy. “If that’s not snow, and soon, I’m a blind man.”

Dhulyn nodded, sighted back along the trail and bit her lower lip. Earlier that morning they had seen what might have been a herder’s hut off to the south of the trail, but Dhulyn had decided it was far too early to stop. They might pay dearly for that decision now. It wasn’t often she laid out the tiles and lost the game.

She looked around at the uneven landscape, rocky and full of pines, pockets of old snow drifted into spots the sun did not reach. “This part of the hills, we should be able to find some reasonably sheltered place,” she said, sighing. They were Mercenaries; they didn’t expect either rain or snow to kill them. If the weather were better, the long-lost Tenebro cousin would be traveling in the company of a merchant’s caravan, and she and Parno would be lucky to get guard’s wages for the same journey they were making now.

“As well we’re not twenty or thirty people,” was all Parno said.

The sky was turning ominously black when the tiles came up swords after all. What looked like a shoulder of hillside jutting out from among a small grouping of firs proved to be two enormous boulders, one partially leaning on the other to form a shallow cave where they touched.

“Plenty of shelter in those trees for the horses,” Parno said.

“And we can cut branches, layer them across the top, extend the shelter right out to here.” She indicated the point where the rocks were farthest apart. “With a fire close to the opening, we’ll stay snug and dry.”

“What odd shapes.” Mar edged the packhorse closer. “I’ve never seen rocks like this.”

“They are not rocks, little Dove.”

“What then?” Mar dismounted and, holding the packhorse’s lead, stepped closer.

Dhulyn brushed off a piece of dried lichen, revealing a remarkably smooth section of whitish stone. “Remnants of a wall, I’d say. Relics of the Caids.”

“The Caids.” Mar stepped back, putting her horse between her and the wall. “I thought they were spirits.”

Dhulyn looked sideways at the girl. “They may be, now. People do swear by them, it’s true. But the Scholars say that they’re an ancient people, long gone. Ancestors to us all, they say. It’s sure that everywhere I’ve journeyed I’ve seen their traces-bits of statues, places too flat for nature that must have been roads, odd formations of rock like these. There are even bits of books left from those times, though all I’ve ever seen were translated copies.” Dhulyn smiled, pushed Mar a little with her fingertips. “Don’t worry, my Dove, the place isn’t haunted.”

Mar nodded, but not as though she was reassured.

“Get the packs stowed,” Dhulyn told her, “then go and collect fire-wood while Parno and I cut branches.”

Snow began to fall as the two Mercenaries placed the last of the branches across the opening and Mar carefully laid and lit the fire as Dhulyn had shown her. Large flakes and fluffy, the snow fell quiet and soft, and at first melted as it hit the ground. But long before they were ready for their suppers, it began to accumulate, thick and light as down.

“No point in setting watch,” Parno said. He crawled past Dhulyn deeper into the cave. “We’d neither see nor hear anyone coming.”

“Any sign of wind?”

“No, thank the Caids.” Parno grinned, touched his forehead with the tips of his fingers in the Mercenary salute. “That would be all we’d need.”

Dhulyn tucked Mar into the warmest corner, from where the girl watched with wide eyes as, after they had eaten their supper rations, the two Mercenaries took it in turns to unpack, testing and examining each item of their clothing, and each piece of metal, checking for signs of dampness or rust. Their bedding was already toasting in the warmth from the fire, and now cloaks and damp hoods were spread out as well.

Parno unwrapped and was assembling the pipes that gave him his nickname “Chanter” as Dhulyn checked over her book, and the few writing materials she carried. There’d been precious little playing-or reading for that matter-since they’d left that last inn, and Dhulyn had noticed that Mar had taken to calling them Wolfshead and Lionsmane, dropping their other nicknames entirely. She supposed it was hard for a town-bred girl to watch them at their daily Shora and think of them as anything but Mercenaries.

As Dhulyn stowed away the last of her belongings she gestured to Mar. “Come, my Dove, your turn. The damp will spoil your things if you don’t take care.”

Mar unpacked slowly, and it seemed to Dhulyn that the girl was shamed to display how little she owned, even to two of a Brotherhood known for traveling light. Her few pieces of clothing were well made of good, if plain, cloth, befitting the foster child of weavers. There was also a very fine pair of bright yellow trousers that Dhulyn eyed covetously, knowing they would never fit her. And a single glass bead on a strand of copper wire, more a child’s plaything than a piece of jewelry.

The girl’s writing supplies were the goods of a professional, not a hobbyist like Dhulyn. Four good pens, their nibs fresh and ready for trimming, and two bottles of differently colored inks, stoppered and sealed with wax. Instead of Dhulyn’s few scraps, Mar had several large sheets of parchment, not new, but carefully scraped clean. Shuffled in among these Dhulyn saw the green-sealed letters Mar had picked up from her friend in the market at Navra. Information from her House, it seemed, that Mar didn’t want to share.

Dhulyn flicked a glance at Parno, and he nodded with the barest inclination of his head.

“How much neater you keep your things than I do mine,” Dhulyn said, reaching out to touch the parchments Mar was shuffling back together. “Are you sure none of these have taken any damp?”

“Oh, yes,” the girl said, thrusting all the pages into the bottom of her pack before picking up the pens and inks with more care.

“I’m glad to see you take such care of the tools of your trade,” Parno said, solemn and sincere. “They’re proof to any who need to know it that you have the means to earn your own living. You have relative wealth and independence even without your noble House, don’t forget it.”

“What’s this last thing?”

Once again, Dhulyn reached out, and this time Mar did nothing to stop her from unwrapping an old cloak, worn, but still showing something of a vivid rose dye in its folds. When there were only a few layers of cloth left, Dhulyn pulled back her hands and let Mar, almost ceremoniously, finish unrolling what was clearly her greatest possession. A bowl, shallow, perhaps as wide as two narrow hands, its exterior intricately patterned and glazed, colors glowing like jewels in the fire’s light. Dhulyn met Mar’s gaze and smiled, her own delight mirrored in the younger woman’s eyes.

“It is beautiful,” Dhulyn said simply. “May I?” Mar passed it carefully into the older woman’s hands. Dhulyn turned it over a few times in her long fingers, measuring and weighing it unconsciously as she examined the patterns. Along the narrow base there were geometric shapes-lines, triangles, circles and squares-but on the upper edge… “I know these designs,” she said softly, “Look! Am I wrong? What’s this along the edge?” She held out the bowl at an angle, so the light fell clearly along its green-bordered rim.