‘A golden one?’
‘With a diamond like that.’ And he made a shape the size of a hen’s egg with his thumb and forefinger and eyed her through it.
She still wasn’t sure whether this was all some kind of a joke. ‘You.’
‘Me.’
‘That got through a whole winter in one pair of trousers.’
He shrugged. ‘I’d lost the chain by then.’
‘Any particular way I should act around royalty?’
‘The odd curtsy wouldn’t go amiss.’
She snorted. ‘Fuck yourself.’
‘Fuck yourself,
‘King Lamb,’ she muttered, crawling into the blankets to make the most of his already fading warmth. ‘King Lamb.’
‘I had a different name.’
Shy looked sideways at him. ‘What name?’
He sat there in the wide mouth of the cave, hunched black against the star-speckled night, and she couldn’t guess at what was on his face. ‘Don’t matter,’ he said. ‘No good ever came of it.’
Next morning the snow whirled down on a wind that came from every way at once, bitter as a bankrupt. They mounted up with all the joy of folk riding to their own hangings and pressed on, uphill, uphill. The forest thinned out, trees shrinking, withering, twisting like folk in pain. They threaded through bare rocks and the way grew narrow—an old stream bed, maybe, though sometimes it looked more like a man-made stair worn almost smooth by years and weather. Jubair sent one of his men back with the horses and Shy half-wished she was going with him. The rest of them toiled on by foot.
‘What the hell are these Dragon bastards doing up here anyhow?’ Shy grunted at Sweet. Didn’t seem like a place anyone in their right mind would want to visit, let alone live in.
‘Can’t say I know exactly… why they’re up here.’ The old scout had to talk in rushes between his heaving breaths. ‘But they been here a long time.’
‘She hasn’t told you?’ asked Shy, nodding at Crying Rock, striding on hard up ahead.
‘I reckon it’s on account… o’ my reluctance to ask those kind o’ questions… she’s stuck with me down the years.’
‘Ain’t for your good looks, I can tell you that.’
‘There’s more to life than looks.’ He glanced sideways at her. ‘Luckily for us both.’
‘What would they want with children?’
He stopped to take a swallow of water and offered one to her while the mercenaries laboured past under the considerable burden of their many weapons. ‘The way I hear it, no children are born here. Something in the land. They turn barren. All the Dragon People were taken from someone else, one time or another. Used to be that meant Ghosts mostly, maybe Imperials, the odd Northman strayed down from the Sea of Teeth. Looks like since the prospectors drove the Ghosts out they’re casting their net wider. Buying children off the likes of Cantliss.’
‘Less talk!’ hissed Crying Rock from above. ‘More walk!’
The snow came down weightier than ever but didn’t drift as deep, and when Shy peeled the wrappings off her face she found the wind wasn’t half so keen. An hour later the snow was slippery slush on the wet rock, and she pulled her soaked gloves off and could still feel her fingertips. An hour after that the snow still fell but the ground was bare, and Shy was sweating fast enough she had to strip her coat off and wedge it in her pack. The others were doing the same. She bent and pressed her palm to the earth and there was a strange warmth, like it was the wall of a baker’s and the oven was stoked on the other side.
‘There is fire below,’ said Crying Rock.
‘There is?’ Shy snatched her hand back like flames might pop from the dirt then and there. ‘Can’t say that notion floods a woman with optimism.’
‘Better’n freezing the crap up my arse, ain’t it?’ said Sweet, pulling his shirt off to reveal another underneath. Shy wondered how many he had on. Or if he’d keep taking them off until he disappeared altogether.
‘Is that why the Dragon People live up here?’ Savian pressed his own palm to the warm dirt. ‘Because of the fire?’
‘Or because they live here there is a fire.’ Crying Rock stared up the slope, bare rock and scree now, crusted in places with stains of yellow sulphur, overlooked by a towering bastard of a rock face. ‘This way may be watched.’
‘Certainly it will be,’ said Jubair. ‘God sees all.’
‘Ain’t God as’ll put an arrow in your arse if we keep on this path,’ said Sweet.
Jubair shrugged. ‘God puts all things where they must be.’
‘What now, then?’ asked Savian.
Crying Rock was already uncoiling a rope from her pack. ‘Now we climb.’
Shy rubbed at her temples. ‘Had a nasty feeling she’d say that.’
Damn it if the climbing wasn’t even harder than the walking and a long drop scarier. Crying Rock swarmed up like a spider and Lamb wasn’t much slower, seeming well at home among the mountains, the two of them getting ropes ready for the rest. Shy brought up the rear with Savian, cursing and fumbling at the slick rock, arms aching from the effort and her hands burning from the hemp.
‘Haven’t had the chance to thank you,’ she said as she waited on a ledge.
He didn’t make a sound but the hissing of the rope through his gnarled hands as he pulled it up behind them.
‘For what you did back in Crease.’ Silence. ‘Ain’t had my life saved so often that I overlook it.’ Silence. ‘Remember?’
She thought he gave the tiniest shrug.
‘Get the feeling you’ve been avoiding mention of it.’
Silence. He avoided mentioning anything wherever possible.
‘Probably you ain’t much of a one for taking thanks.’
More silence.
‘Probably I ain’t much of a one for giving ’em.’
‘You’re taking your time about it, all right.’
‘Thanks, then. Reckon I’d be good and dead if it weren’t for you.’
Savian pressed his thin lips together even tighter and gave a throaty grunt. ‘Reckon you or your father would’ve done the same for me.’
‘He ain’t my father.’
‘That’s between you two. But if you were to ask, I’d say you could do worse.’
Shy snorted. ‘I used to think so.’
‘This isn’t what he wanted, you know. Or the way he wanted it.’
‘I used to think that, too. Not so sure any more. Family, eh?’
‘Family.’
‘Where’s Corlin got to?’
‘She can look after herself.’
‘Oh, no doubt.’ Shy dropped her voice. ‘Look, Savian, I know what you are.’
He looked up at her hard. ‘That so?’
‘I know what you got under there,’ and she moved her eyes down to his forearms, blue with tattoos, she knew, under his coat.
‘Can’t fathom your meaning,’ but tweaking one of his sleeves down even so.
She leaned closer and whispered, ‘Just pretend you can, then. When Cosca got to talking about rebels, well, my big fucking mouth ran away with me, like always. I meant well, like always, trying to help out… but I haven’t, have I?’
‘Not a lot.’
‘My fault you’re in this fix. If that bastard Lorsen finds out what you got there… what I’m saying is, you should go. This ain’t your fight. Naught to stop you slipping away, and no shortage of empty to slip into.’
