The Timzinae nodded and moved back, calling to his men. Geder watched the carts, anger and embarrasment giving way to anxiety. The captain and the caravan master exchanged a few words, and the captain looked up. He frowned at Geder, shrugged, and turned away. If there was going to be resistance, it would come now and it would come hard. Geder shifted in his saddle, the still-healing wound in his leg aching in anticipation. Movement came from the mill house, from every cart. How many soldiers would they have? If the full wealth of the Medean bank was sitting in those carts, every carter would be a swordsman or an archer. Geder’s scalp began to crawl. If they had bowmen hidden in those carts, he’d be sprouting arrows. Fear shifted in his belly like he’d eaten bad fish. Trying to seem casual, he turned his horse and trotted to the rear of their formation.
To judge by the expressions of the soldiers, he hadn’t fooled anybody.
The first of the guards lumbered out from the carts, half a dozen swords in her arms like firewood. She dropped them on the ground where Geder had ordered. Then a thin boy hardly old enough to be a soldier with two unstrung bows and a backload of quivers. Slowly, the unpromising parade went on, the sad pile of arms and armor growing until ten guards and a wild-haired cunning man marched out to the road in wool and cotton, counted ten paces from the heap, and stood in the clear, hugging themselves against the cold.
“Move in,” Geder said.
The soldiers walked forward, blades drawn. The carters stood by their carts and smiled or frowned or looked around in confusion. Geder rode a slow turn around the little encampment. The sound of the search seemed to follow him-voices fierce and querulous, wood clacking, metal clanging against metal. He watched as his men pulled ingots of pig iron out of a cart and dropped them to the ground. One man scratched at the metal to be sure it was only what it seemed, then spat and turned back to the search.
Midday came and went. A chill wind picked up, setting the snow to skitter and swirl around their ankles. The soldiers unloaded each cart, looked under them, examined the horse and mules, and began going through the mill house. Geder got off his horse at the edge of the mill pond and looked at the bare carts, the frigid carters, the ineffectual sun in the watery sky. One of the carters-a sickly-looking girl with pale hair and skin-crouched by bolts of fallen wool and pretended not to watch Geder. He knew what she saw. A puffed-up nobleman bullying her and her friends. He wanted to go to her, to explain that it wasn’t like that. That he wasn’t like that.
Instead, he turned away. The shifting dust of snow moved over the ice like ripples on water. Geder walked along the edge, trying not to feel the girl’s gaze on him. Some idiot had been skating. White marks showed where blades had cut across the thin ice. Lucky they didn’t break through. He’d read an essay once outlining the time it took each of the thirteen races to die in icy water. Well, twelve, really. The Drowned weren’t…
Geder stopped almost before he knew what stopped him. On the edge of the pond, a long, low drift of snow swept out onto the ice. The white blade marks vanished into it, and then out of it again as if the skater had passed directly through the little drift. Or it hadn’t been there until after the skater had passed. Geder walked closer. The snow itself looked odd. It didn’t have the ice-crust he expected, and it was smooth as broom-swept sand. Geder looked up. The guards were on the far side of the caravan. His own soldiers grouped at the mouth of the mill house. He walked around the curious snow.
Deep scores and marks marred the surface of the ice. Poking out just at ankle height, something black and square. He squatted, brushing the snow away. A box, half drowned in recently cut ice and then covered over. And others beside it, all of them crusted over with thin ice and hidden by the carefully arranged snowdrift. He looked up. The girl carter was standing now, craning her neck to see him, her hands knotted at her belly. Geder took out his knife and forced the latch. Topaz, jade, emerald, pearl, gold and silver filigree as delicate as frost. Geder pulled back like the gems had stung him, and then, as he understood what he was seeing, felt a sunrise in his chest, relief and pleasure rushing through him, unknotting his muscles and bringing a grin to his face.
He’d done it. He’d found the missing caravan and the hidden wealth of Vanai. No more of Geder Palliako, the expendable idiot. No more apologizing for what he liked to read or the roundness of his belly. Oh, no. His name would be carried back to Camnipol and King Simeon on a carriage of gold by horses with rubies on their reins. He would be the talk of the court, praised and honored and celebrated in the highest circles of the kingdom.
Except, of course, that he wouldn’t. The name that would be celebrated in Camnipol was Alan Klin’s.
Alan Klin, who’d humiliated him. Who’d burned his book.
Geder took a long, deep breath, let it out slowly, and closed the lid. A moment later, he opened it again, dug two double handfuls of gems out, and poured them down his shirt. The lovely little stones gathered around his belly where his belt cinched tight. He closed his jacket to cover the lumps, lowered the lid again, and scraped the snow back over it. As he stood, a wide, black joy filled him and made his first pleasure seem weak. When he walked back to the carts, he didn’t need to remind himself to hold his head high. The girl watched him approach. Geder grinned at her like he was greeting an old friend or a lover. An accomplice. Briefly, he lifted a single finger to his lips. Don’t tell.
The girl’s eyes went wide. Half a breath later she nodded, only once. I won’t. He could have kissed her.
When he found his second, the Timzinae had finished leading the common soldiers through the mill house. Geder noticed that the conversation among the soldiers stopped when he walked in the room, but this time it didn’t bother him. The interior of the house smelled of mold and smoke, and the signs of the caravan’s night in the shelter marked the stones of the flooring. A broom leaned against the far wall. Its head was wet, and a thin puddle of water darkened the stones beneath it. Geder pointedly ignored it.
“What have you found?” he asked.
“Nothing, my lord,” the second said.
“We’re wasting time here,” Geder said. “Gather the men. We should move on.”
The second looked around. One of the soldiers-a young Timzinae with black scales that shone like he’d polished them-shrugged.
“My lord, we haven’t turned the basement. If you’d like-”
“Do you really think there’s a point to it?” Geder asked. When the second didn’t reply at once: “Honestly.”
“Honestly, no.”
“Then let’s get the men together and go.”
The caravan master, sitting on a stool, made a rough impatient noise in the back of his throat. Geder turned to him.
“On behalf of empire and king, I apologize for this inconvenience,” he said with a bow.
“Think nothing of it,” the ’van master said sourly.
Outside, the soldiers fell into position as they had every time before. Geder lifted himself to his own saddle carefully. His belt held. The gems and jewels dug at his skin, pinching a little at his sides. None fell out. The caravan guards watched with well-feigned lack of interest as Geder drew his sword in salute, turned his horse, and moved forward at a gentle walk. With every step they took away from the caravan, he felt his spine relax. The sun, already sliding down toward the horizon, half blinded him, and he craned his neck, counting the soldiers behind him to make sure no one had doubled back or been left behind. None had.
At the top of the ridge, Geder paused. His second came to his side.
“We can make camp at the same place as last night, my lord,” he said. “Strike out south and west in the morning.”
Geder shook his head. “East,” he said.
“Lord?”
“Let’s go east,” Geder said. “Gilea’s not far, and we can spend a few days someplace warm before we go back to Vanai.”
“We’re going back?” the second asked, his voice carefully neutral.
“May as well,” Geder said, struggling against his smile. “We aren’t going to find anything.”
Dawson
Winter business.
The words themselves reeked of desperation. From the longest night to first thaw, noblemen took to their estates or they followed the King’s Hunt. They took stock of what sort of men their sons were becoming,
