‘He did say he thought he was cursed,’ said Rate. ‘Newlin, Emit, now him.’
Tobias rolled his eyes. ‘That’s not cursed. Or only in a manner of speaking.’
Marith made a coughing sound. ‘Just bad luck,’ he said.
The fire crackled and spat. The moon was vast in the sky, the stars broken silver. So many. She would not have thought, in the lights and shelter of the city, looking at the little patch of sky above the Temple, that there could be so many. That they could be so frightening. I should be killing a man again tonight, Thalia thought suddenly.
She pressed closer to Marith and he kissed her and they went off to sleep held tight in each other’s arms, like children rather than lovers beneath the abyssal sky. He had done the work that needed doing, drunk only water, cared for Thalia as though she were the one who had done something great and wonderful. He muttered in his sleep, and scratched at his face, and sighed.
When Thalia awoke next morning, she smelled food cooking. It was already light, the pale white light of morning. A bird seemed to be singing, which confused her. They were in the midst of the desert, surely? The dead place. Yet a bird was singing, and she heard a human voice answer it, trying and failing to whistle.
Marith was gone. She got down from the cart, pulling her cloak around her in the chill of the morning. The sky was pink and golden, still deep blue in the far west but washed over with light. She drew in a deep, long breath of air that was sweet in her mouth. Marith was sitting by the fire, poking a pan in which dried meat was frying. The kettle was boiling for tea. He had his back to her, didn’t see she was watching him. As she watched, the meat sizzled and some of the fat caught, sending up a burst of flame and smoke and a charred smell. He cursed, then laughed, then noticed her.
‘Thalia!’ His face was clean in the clean light. ‘I’m making breakfast! Meat and fried bread. Come and have some.’
Thalia sat down by the fire. Marith solemnly served her burnt fried dried meat and burnt fried stale bread. It stuck to the pan as he scraped it off. Poured her a cup of very strongly brewed tea. She ate carefully and equally solemnly.
‘You can’t cook,’ she said at last.
‘I know.’ He grinned. ‘But since I can command dragons now, I thought I might try it. You would probably have said I couldn’t do either, yesterday morning.’ He took a few sips of tea, then grimaced and poured it away. ‘I won’t be offended. I really cannot seem to learn tea-making. It looks so easy, too.’
Thalia frowned. ‘You shouldn’t waste water. Or food. Tobias will—’
‘I’m not. Look.’ He gestured to the north-east, and Thalia saw, then, the dim shape of trees far away low in the distance.
‘Immish?’
He nodded. ‘Trees. Woods. Fields. Rain. Still a while to them, of course. The whole day, perhaps two. But I’d guess we’re closer than Tobias thought. Once we’re in Immish, there are proper roads, good ones. We can make good time, get better horses. Then one of the eastern ports, Skerneheh or somewhere—’ a look of distaste momentarily crossed his face ‘—and a fast ship up the coast to Ith. And then—’
He broke off. Raised his head, his eyes widening. Thalia looked up too as a great shadow passed above them. The fire flared up in the wind from the beat of vast wings.
The dragon passed overhead, low enough that they saw its scales and the curl of its claws. It spouted flame, but upwards, into the sky. It turned and flew back into the west, gleaming rose-gold in the sun. They saw flame spout again. And then it was no bigger than a bird. And then it was gone.
Thalia let out a long, shaky breath. Marith laughed. ‘And then I’ll make you a queen,’ he said, as if they had not both nearly died.
Birds came increasingly, snapping at little flies. The grass began to appear again, scrub bushes and thorns, lizards and spiders and life. Running water. Only a few days, it had been, but they all leapt at the water, bathing and washing the dust out of their clothes as though it had been years. Marith thought of the other stream, where he had killed a dragon, of the men bathing in the rainwater while Alxine watched. Now he bathed with Thalia, and saw the water run like jewels as she shook out her hair.
‘It’s not fair,’ Rate muttered. ‘That Alxine got so close. Bloody stupid.’ But somehow they didn’t really talk about Alxine, and it didn’t really seem to matter. Yesterday he’d been alive, and the world had been dead. Now he was dead, and the world was coming alive. They were alive, where they might also have been dead.
And he had been killed by a dragon. It was an astonishing way to go. Marith brooded a little, rankled by his own failure to completely control the creature, but also wondered.
After another day Tobias decreed that they were in Immish now, or on the borders at least. Reneneth, the nearest town, couldn’t be more than a few days’ ride away. A different place, different land and sky. Different air, moister, cooler. Different trees from those Thalia knew, taller, thicker, finer leaved; Marith could see wonder in her eyes as she gazed about her, her face confused and delighted by the gradual reawakening of the world around them after the desert. More birds; more flowers; a pair of deer, a mother and child, glimpsed among the trees ahead of them in the gold of the afternoon. The leaves were beginning to turn faint brown and russet: autumn was drawing in, he realized, here where seasons passed and changed and time did not seem to stand still. It would be almost winter by the time they reached Ith. A good season to begin himself anew, when the wind scoured the world clean to begin itself again. He had not liked the unchanging nature of Sorlost.
And then winter … Thalia had never seen winter. He would take her out in a sleigh, racing across the snow wrapped in thick furs. Riding fast over the frost and hearing it crunch underfoot. Skating on the ice of a frozen field. The great feast of Sunreturn, which she did not even know by its right name, when one feasted and danced for a day and a night and day to welcome back the light.
There’d been a very heavy cold three winters back, so long and hard even the great river Emdell had frozen thick enough to stand on and they’d held the feast there on the ice, skating in the dark with the moon making the ice shine, all the ladies of the court whirling around him in fur cloaks, showing only their eyes. He and Carin had ridden upriver together that night; it had snowed again and they had been briefly, utterly alone, the two of them lost in a world of pure and silent white.
He hadn’t thought about Carin for days now, he realized. It shocked him. But the memories were fainter in his mind. So quickly, now … Only a few months it had been. He wondered for a moment which of them he would choose, if somehow he could have a choice.