No one had.
I forced my attention back to my feet. One step at a time. That was all this was: a series of steps. I beat the anxious voice back to a dark corner of my mind, and prayed it would stay there—at least for now.
We stopped that night in the shadow of Mount Imja, at a spring that bubbled from between two enormous boulders crowned with juniper trees. The spray from the water as it tumbled down the rock was cool against my face. I removed my boots and waded into the spring, crouching to cup the icy water in my hands and splash it across my sweaty brow.
I surveyed the terrain, pleased with myself. We had reached our destination with time to spare—there was still an hour of daylight to make camp. I couldn’t help gloating at Dargye, who seemed to be avoiding my eyes.
“Let’s set up the tents here,” I said to Aimo, gesturing. “Dargye, build the fire against that rock.”
“It’s too wet,” the man said shortly, barely breaking his stride. He dropped an armful of firewood on the ground, too close to the tents for my liking. The wind would surely blow the smoke into our shelters as we slept.
I opened my mouth to protest, but Dargye began noisily breaking the scraps of wood into smaller pieces with his bare hands, his enormous muscles straining. Muttering, I turned away.
“Don’t let him do that,” Tem said quietly.
I sighed. “It doesn’t matter. It’s just a campfire.”
“I don’t think so.” Tem turned back to his pack. “You’re in charge, Kamzin.”
I chewed my lip. I was annoyed at both of them now. After a second’s thought, I called out, “Dargye.”
The man looked up, glowering. A small flame flickered among the moss he cupped between his hands. “What?”
I walked up to the fire calmly, and then, just as calmly, snuffed out the flame with my bare foot—one quick stomp. The large man almost fell over backward in surprise.
“The fire,” I said, “will go over there.”
Then I walked away. When I snuck a glance some moments later, Dargye was hunched by the patch of earth I had indicated, rebuilding the fire.
I allowed myself a smile of triumph while surreptitiously pressing my foot into the cold sand of the streambank. It didn’t hurt—much. My soles were as tough as leather after so many summer evenings spent roaming the mountainside barefoot.
Aimo was watching me from behind the yak. I wondered if she would be angry at me, for her brother’s sake, but there was a quiet amusement in her eyes.
“Is he always like that?” I muttered.
Her smile grew. “Yes,” she said in her typical matter-of-fact tone.
I laughed. She did too, a pleasant, rumbling sound.
“I wonder why he decided to join this expedition, as he hates taking direction,” I said, helping Aimo untie one of the satchels.
The woman smiled again, rolling her eyes slightly. “For me,” she said. “He wants to protect me.”
“To protect you?” I repeated. “Then it was your idea?” I had assumed, when Dargye volunteered to join the expedition, offering his sister as an additional assistant, that it had been the other way around.
Aimo nodded, bending her head over our supplies.
“Why?”
Her eyes drifted away, and she flushed slightly. Tem reappeared at my side then, and began noisily unloading the layers of oilcloth and wooden stakes that would serve as our tents. Dargye called to his sister, and she moved away.
The dragons soared toward us, skimming the pool of water before coming to rest on the bank. We had brought five. All day they had alternated between sleeping among the yak’s satchels and flying above us. A plump one nosed up to me, pawing my leg with its front feet. I winced at the pinch of its talons. Fortunately, Tem distracted it with a handful of dried chickpeas from his pocket.
“Ouch!” He laughed as the dragon devoured the snack. “That was my finger.”
I laughed along with him, relieved to feel some of the tension drain away. Tem and I had not spoken since morning. Once the dragon finished the snack, though, Tem went to help Norbu with his satchels. I felt a pang as I watched him go. There was still a distance between us, and I didn’t know how to close it.
Dinner was a plain meal of rice and mung beans. We ate seated on the grass around the fire, enjoying the warmth it brought to the cooling twilight air. Aimo caught fish from the pool, but they were so small that they only amounted to a mouthful or two for each of us. I eyed the water moodily as my stomach gave a growl, wondering why I had thought the rations I’d brought would be sufficient. Tem often teased me about my appetite, claiming I could devour as much as fifty dragons in a single sitting. He probably wasn’t far off.
Everyone else seemed content with their meals, however. Norbu selected a talisman from the tangled mass he wore around his neck, closed his eyes, and began muttering to himself. Dargye and Aimo murmured together on the other side of the fire—or, rather, Dargye murmured; Aimo listened with a long-suffering expression on her face. River sprawled across the grass, watching the stars appear and chatting easily with Tem about the geological differences between the Arya and the Drakkar Mountains. River was certainly not the haughty, ill-tempered explorer his reputation suggested—he had talked so much through the day that I wondered how he had enough breath to keep up with us—but unlike Mara, little of his conversation involved bragging. When one of his famous exploits came up—his expedition into barbarian territory, for example, where he’d spent weeks spying undetected on their rough camps, or the time he’d rescued twelve soldiers patrolling the northern reaches of the Empire from an avalanche—he shrugged it off, as if bored by the subject. I found myself biting my tongue to keep from asking questions about the deeds he referred to so casually, many of which had already become legend. For some reason, I didn’t want him to know I was listening.
Despite the growing chill, River seemed comfortable in his shirtsleeves, and used his magnificent chuba as a pillow. I had to suppress an urge to yank the garment out from beneath his head. If the emperor ever honored me with a tahrskin chuba, I told myself, I would never treat it with such disrespect.
Absently, I rubbed my shoulders, which burned from the chafing straps of my pack. As River spoke, his face became animated. I had seen explorers who had been marred by their profession—noses lost to frostbite, cheeks carved with deep furrows by the elements. River was nothing like them. Everything about him was sharp and beautiful—an unexpected sort of beauty. It wasn’t just the strangeness of his eyes, it was how he held himself, with a loping, lazy grace that put me in mind of a leopard or lynx more than a boy my own age. All the boys I knew were like Tem—awkward and gangly, all bony limbs and overlarge feet that always seemed to be in the way of each other.