The waterfall thundered down, down, down, into a pool clutched between rock walls. The water was blue, glacial, half-frozen. Impossibly long icicles hung down from the mountainside, glinting in the sunlight, and rainbows draped themselves across the water like cobwebs. I stared in awe.
River, crouched at the edge of the cliff, turned his head slightly and tapped a finger against his lips. It was too late—at the sound of my approaching footsteps, the dragons he had been watching spread their wings and took flight. They were feral, I knew immediately. Feral dragons are smaller than domestic ones, barely the size of my two fists stuck together, and their lights were usually colorless. It was a family—two adults and four offspring. The baby dragons bobbed clumsily a few times, chirping, as they followed their parents up the waterfall to settle on some distant ledge.
A cloud of mist rose between me and River. I stepped through it, blinking, and he grabbed my hand.
“Careful,” he said. “There’s a lot of—”
“Ice,” I snapped.
He laughed. I laughed too, surprising myself. It felt like a reflex. I was still amazed. It wasn’t that I had never done anything as difficult, or dangerous. But I had never climbed with someone like River, who seemed to understand the mountain on an intuitive level that went beyond ordinary senses. The way I understood it.
We made our way along the ledge to the nearest fall of water, where we washed the dirt from our hands and took turns tilting our heads back to drink. We kept hold of each other, for safety, though River never seemed to put a foot wrong, and his eyesight in that world of mist and shadow seemed sharper than mine. I nudged him slightly as he drank, and he stumbled, the water trickling over his head and plastering his hair down on one side. He gave me another wicked smile. He tugged my arm as we clambered over a boulder, so that I had to stab my foot into a tiny crevice to arrest my fall. I half scowled, half grinned at him. A challenge hung between us like electricity.
My left hand was cold from the waterfall, but my right, pressed against River’s, was warm, almost hot. His palm was as rough and callused as mine. He did not attempt to hold me with his left hand, the one with the missing fingertips, as if he thought it would bother me. To show him that it didn’t, I made a point of reaching for it myself.
We settled on a ledge overlooking the meadow and the valley, with the waterfall at our backs. I could see the others—small, blobby dots far below—but I didn’t think they could see us.
I gazed over the landscape, exultant. I had traveled farther in the last two days than many villagers had in their lifetimes. The days had been grueling, certainly—but they had also brought moments of exquisite wonder unlike anything I had ever experienced, a wonder so complete I felt like an ember stoked to life by a gust of wind.
This is what being a real explorer would feel like. Every day would be like this.
“I’m not easily surprised,” River said, “but you keep surprising me.”
I swung my legs back and forth, equal parts tired and content. “I surprise you?”
“I never thought someone like you could exist.” He watched me with a half smile on his face. “A girl from a tiny village many explorers have never even heard of, with greater skill than most of them will ever possess.”
I flushed. Something in his gaze made my heart speed up and froze my tongue.
Get a grip, I lectured myself. Did I want River to think I was some delicate child, overcome by a compliment?
“I’m sure you’ve met girls like me,” I said, keeping my voice light. “You’ve traveled from one end of the Empire to the other.”
“Yes, I have,” he said, in a tone of quiet wonderment that clearly negated my first statement and deepened the color in my cheeks. We were still holding hands—for safety, I repeated in my head. An impulsive urge to move closer to him battled with an urge to pull away, and ended in a stalemate. I stayed put.
This is River Shara, I lectured myself. Not some village boy you can flirt with on Kunigai Lookout. It didn’t matter what he looked like. It didn’t matter that I felt strangely comfortable in his presence—more comfortable, in a way, than I did even with Tem. He was the Royal Explorer, and second in power to the emperor himself. I dropped his hand.
River, to my relief, seemed unaware of my confusion. He leaned against the rock. “Perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised, given your mother’s reputation. Did you come here with her?”
I flinched. “No. We—we traveled through the forest.”
As I said it, a memory flitted through my mind. Lusha and me, racing each other through the trees. I had been all knees and elbows then, tripping over my own feet at every opportunity. Our mother laughing her booming laugh—the mountains seemed alive with it.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“It’s all right.”
He looked away, his eyes hooded as he gazed over the mountains. “My mother died a year ago.”
It was the first time I had heard River speak of his family. He spoke of other subjects freely enough, and perhaps that was why I hadn’t noticed.
“What was she like?” I said. “Noble and elegant, I suppose.”
For some reason, River laughed at this. He seemed to consider. “She was . . . respected.”
I examined him. He met my gaze, and the invisible thread that had been forming between us since the night of the banquet gave a thrum. I looked away, feeling almost drunk. I forced myself to focus.
“River,” I said quietly, “what is this expedition about? And please don’t tell me the emperor commanded you to keep silent. I find it hard to believe you care about following orders.”
He smiled. “Everyone at court cares about following orders. The emperor doesn’t generally issue requests.”
“Well, we’re not at court, are we? And the emperor is hundreds of miles away.”
He seemed to consider me. “What do you know about the witches?”
“The witches?” I blinked in surprise. “The usual stories. They devour human hearts and steal children from their beds. They cast spells to make crops wither and animals sicken, solely for their own amusement. They move like shadow and are hungry as fire.” Hearts of shadow, eyes of flame, the old rhyme went. None escape who witches claim.
“I’m not talking about stories,” he said, plucking at stalks of grass. “What do you know to be fact?”
I frowned. “They attacked Azmiri once—burned half the village to the ground. They attacked other villages too, and summoned floods to the farmlands of the delta. They wanted to starve the emperor’s armies.”