Jarnulf needed to make a decision, and soon. Within half a day or less they would reach the spot where he had left the dead Norn scouts and signed the bloody work with his customary White Hand, so it was only good sense to keep as far away from these newcomers and their pet giant as possible. Still, there was something here he didn’t understand, something that tugged at him and made him want to know more. Was this the sign he had asked God for? Or merely another strange event in this strangest of seasons?
And that is my weakness, he told himself. At least some would say so. Father used to tell me, “Make curiosity your strength.” But Master Xoka always said, “Wisdom seeks for nothing, because in time Death finds all, and then all lessons are learned.” And still, all these years later, I swing back and forth like a weathercock between those two voices.
At last, Father’s way won out: Jarnulf began to move closer, but not too close, his movements parallel with the route of the strange traveling party. A Hun? could pick up a scent when even the sharp nose of a Hikeda’ya could not, and the last thing Jarnulf wanted was to become the quarry of a hunting giant.
The Talons found a place to rest that would be sheltered from the rising sun by a stone outcrop, but although Nezeru’s legs were weary from the climb through the pass and the long descent, and an hour or two of sleep would be a useful thing, sleep would not come. The strange conversation with Saomeji had set her mind awhirl.
What could Akhenabi have seen in her? Ordinarily, to earn the notice of one of the high nobles of Nakkiga was a mark of pride, an invisible but very real badge that one would wear for an entire lifetime. And to be picked out by one of the Landborn was an honor so far beyond that as to be almost unknown. Why then did she feel as though a terrible weight now hung above her head?
Nezeru had always known she was different. She was always treated with careful distance by her father’s family, friends, and servants, but other children had not been so circumspect. Every look and word of those lucky enough to have two Hikeda’ya parents reinforced Nezeru’s knowledge that she was not like them, would never fully be one of them. She was a necessity caused by the failure of ordinary breeding, and thus a faintly embarrassing reminder of how far the Hikeda’ya had fallen from their years of glory.
There were no halfbloods in the Garden. She had been told that many times, in words and in other ways just as plain.
But she was nevertheless part of a group of successful recent births among the highest families, some of which had been barren for centuries, and whether she was fully accepted or not by those whose blood was entirely of the Garden, she was still noticed. In the year of her birth, only a few hundred children had been born to Nakkiga’s noble families, and less than a quarter of those were full Hikeda’ya blood. Thus, when she proved superior to virtually all her fellows at the fighting games arranged between the youngest children; faster, smarter, and just as willing to hurt her own muddied, mongrel kind as she was to inflict pain on those who had scorned her for her birth, it did not escape the attention of the nobility. The Order of Sacrifice was always hungry for warriors in the years after their terrible defeat at old Asu’a. Like a drunkard trying to play a game of Thieves’ Poetry, the odds had been against her from the first, and yet somehow she had overcome the shame of her blood to become a warrior. But that had not made the murmurs and the scornful faces that had surrounded her all her life any easier to ignore.
The crunching of snow and the smell of something spoiled came to her in the same moment, scattering her thoughts. Nezeru sat up, but it was only the giant, Goh Gam Gar, making his way across the snow in the last shadows of the dying night, headed away from the camp. Makho trailed a few paces behind the beast, his face an inscrutable mask.
“Lie down,” the chieftain told her. “This is nothing to do with you.”
She wanted no argument with Makho—at the moment she did not want his attention in any form—but although she eased herself back to the ground, she watched as the giant led him out from beneath the overhanging rock.
The giant wants to piss, she realized, and our leader does not want him doing that too near our camp. Someone without her training might have smiled at the idea, the leader of a Queen’s Hand trailing his pet giant like a shepherd following his dog.
The two shapes, the small and the vast, were silhouetted for a brief moment against the purple sky and fading stars as she lay back down to rest. She had only just curled up and closed her eyes when the horses all began to shriek at once, and the ground beneath her heaved with a sharp, painful noise like a wedge splitting stone, followed immediately by the most terrifyingly deep roar of anger and surprise she had ever heard—a sound she could not have imagined being made by any living thing.
The ground was tipping and sliding, or that was how it seemed as Nezeru tried to struggle to her feet. Only a few paces away the dim field of white that had stretched beside them had become a huge, jagged circle of gray and black, and things—many hundreds of things—were streaming up out of the dark circle and onto the surface. She could still hear the giant bellowing, but his roars were muffled. Nezeru realized he must have fallen through a hole in the ice.
“‘Ware!” shouted Kemme “Furi’a!” His sword rang as he tugged it from his scabbard. She struggled to find her own blade in the shards of ice at her feet. The first of the small black shapes came at them on all fours, scrambling like infant spiders, their eyes glinting in the half-light, their tiny faces twisted in eager fury. They had already pulled down one of the horses and, judging by the animal’s panicked shrieks, were eating it alive.
Goblins, she realized, and her heart grew cold and heavy. The giant has fallen through into one of their nests. She heard Goh Gam Gar bellow again, but this time it was garbled, as though the great beast choked on his own blood.
He was gone from sight now, lost in the frozen earth, and the squeaking little manlike things the Hikeda’ya called Furi’a and mortals called “Diggers” were flooding up out of the broken ice like fire ants from a nest—already dozens had swarmed over Kemme and Ibi-Khai. She could not see or hear any sign of Makho, who had almost certainly gone down with the giant when the ice broke.
This is the end, then, Nezeru thought. We will never escape so many. Small, broken-nailed hands grabbed at her legs and squealing shapes began to climb her as though she were a tree. She did not even have time to sing her death song one last time before the creatures swarmed over her.
18
A Bad Book
Lillia had spent so much of her life staring at the painting of Saint Wiglaf behind the altar that she almost considered him a relative—the boring sort. Morning services were particularly hard. Lillia loved God as she should, but it was so difficult to sit still first thing in the day and listen to Father Nulles read from the Book of the Aedon about all the things God didn’t want people to do.
At least it was an interesting painting: even as he was being hung from a tree for being an Aedonite, Saint Wiglaf was denouncing the Hernystiri usurper, King Tethtain. When she was little she had thought the martyr’s name was Wiglamp because of the shining lines that surrounded his head in the painting, and she still thought of him that way, brave Wiglamp calling on God even as Tethtain’s men tried to lift him from the ground, four of them straining against the rope as scowling, bearded Tethtain looked on. It had taken ten men to hang the single slender monk, which was a miracle, although Lillia had always thought it would have been a better miracle if they hadn’t been able to hang him at all.
She tugged at Countess Rhona’s hand, softly at first, then harder, trying to get her attention.
“Lillia, what is it?”
“I have to make water.”
“Father is almost done. Hold yourself just a bit longer.”
Lillia groaned, but quietly. Father Nulles was nice, in his rather pink-faced way, and she didn’t want to upset him. She just didn’t want to be in the chapel any longer.
At last Father finished listing the Great Sins and performed the blessing. Usually Rhona would speak with him for a little while afterward, but this time she just made Lillia curtsey, then pressed a silver coin into the priest’s hand for the poor.
“I don’t feel that well myself,” the countess said as Lillia returned from the chapel privy and they made their way out into the long Walking Hall. “In fact, I think I need to lie down for a while.”
“Lie down?” Lillia was horrified. “But I told you, there’s a fair in the commons at Erchester today. They even have a bear who dances!”
“I’m sorry, honey-rabbit, but my courses are on me, and I only want to lay myself down.”
Lillia made a face; it felt like an ugly one. “You said you’d take me. You’re a liar!”
“Your manners are growing worse every day.”
“You have to take me. You promised!”
Rhona frowned. “No, I don’t, because I haven’t the strength, whether I promised or not. What if I were dying—may the gods turn their ears away—what then? No, child, you’ll have to stay home today.”