Scarlet and the White Wolf [01] - Scarlet and the White Wolf (13 page)

Scaja gave his son a sharp look, then shook his head and stacked another split onto the armload Scarlet held. "Think?

You mean with my head, or with my Gift?"

Scarlet looked at his boots. "Your Gift, if you please." Scaja could see much about men that was hidden.

"I'm not sure you want to go down this path, son."

"I'm just—"

"Wondering. So you've said. Well, you're old enough to pay the price for your curiosity. This Wolf is not a simple man; I'll say that for him. There's a shadow and a secret on his heart, and he guards it well. Even my grandmother couldn't have seen into it; it's that closed and locked. Like an iron gate hung with chains." Scaja paused in his work and squeezed his eyes shut. When he spoke next, it was in the formal, stilted words of prophecy. "An old pain, but still red and raw as the day it was made. He would savage the one who breached his fortress to approach that wound, or kill him dead."

Scaja opened his eyes and sighed, dropping the High Speech for common Bizye. "I'm sorry, lad, but your Wolf
is
a killer. Whatever he's told you, whatever he's filled your head with, he's got blood on his hands. Keep away from him. Go back to Ankar or Patra even to Volstland, if you're so sweet on danger, but stay clear of the Nerit until he's long gone."

"Is he proud?" Scarlet asked. It occurred to him that perhaps he had wounded Liall's pride when he refused him so 109

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bluntly, and maybe he could apologize and so settle matters that way. He was still thinking of ways to get around Liall, unwilling to see what his father was plainly telling him.

"Is snow cold?" Scaja countered gruffly. He obviously considered the matter closed. "Why ask what you already know?"

He pondered that as he carried his burden in and knelt before the firebox to arrange the wood splits in a pattern, a deep frown digging a furrow between his brows.

"Scarlet,"
Scaja snapped. "Stop mooning and get the wood stacked."

Mooning! He ducked his head and obeyed. Linhona said something to Scaja, too softly for him to hear.

"What?" Scarlet demanded.

Scaja shook his head, gently pushing Linhona into the kitchen. "Naught, boy. Go. Get your work done."

Scarlet sighed and went back for another armful of wood, trying to dismiss all the wondering from his brain.

It did not stay gone for long, and when it came back, it irritated him greatly. After brooding around the house for a full day, he spent the next afternoon working with Scaja to repair a wagon wheel at Tradepoint. He wore his fine new Morturii long-knives at his waist, and that put Scaja in a bad temper.

"What Hilurin goes armed to a friend's house?" Scaja demanded.

"A pedlar," he answered back smartly.

Scaja continued to mumble darkly under his breath as they worked in the cold air with Deni and Zsu looking on, casting 110

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pointed looks between his son and Zsu before shaking his head and muttering about cats and curiosity and the world-wild. Scarlet shook hands with Deni and promised Zsu a set of ribbons from Khurelen, whenever he managed to get there, which prompted another round of black looks. When night fell, Scarlet wandered over to the taberna rather than stay home and confront Scaja about what was bothering him.

Scarlet sipped bitterbeer in the comfy noise of Rufa's place and thought dark things into his cup. There had to be a way to win this Kasiri chieftain over without losing more pride than he had left. However, even the idea of paying Liall's price made him angry. And besides, he found himself thinking, he'd know I was not granting him his demand out of desire. I'd be giving him what he wanted to get what I wanted in return, like a whore.

That thought made him livid and embarrassed all over again, so he paid for another beer to wash it out of his head and was drinking it too quickly when the soldier of the vine appeared beside him. The soldier helped himself to a chair at Scarlet's table and flicked him a mocking smile.

"I hear they caught you again!" he crowed. His scars wrinkled.

Scarlet silently wished him away. "My own doing," he retorted, wiping foam from his lip. "At least they didn't punish Jerivet."

"That must have been a pretty moment," the soldier laughed. "I'm surprised you still have your head on your shoulders. The Wolf isn't known to be forgiving."

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He shrugged irritably, conveniently forgetting that this echoed, more or less, what Scaja had told him about Liall.

"What do you know of him? You've been in the army for some time, by the look of your uniform. When have you faced him?"

The soldier eased back and studied his face. "Oh, I haven't," he said casually. "But I've heard tales. Women raped and strangled, men branded or beheaded."

Despite the soldier's words and even Scaja's warning, Scarlet found that difficult to believe. The first day he had seen Liall, he had witnessed him ordering his tribesman to unhand a woman. It had been easier ordered than done, for the woman was beating the Kasiri boy about his skull.

He had me in his camp, he thought, alone, at night, with armed men all around, and he let me go. Would a murderer spare a woman who defied him? Would he dicker over crockery and the price of tolls, or would he just take what he wanted, no excuses?

Scarlet eyed the solider. What was his aim? Was he here to assess the threat of the krait before reporting back to the Flower Prince, or was he just an idle soldier on his rounds of the villages, looking for a bit of company on the road? The kind of company that one pays for, he thought sourly, and was glad there were no bhoros houses in Lysia. He decided the soldier was a liar and a gossip, and that the Gift had whispered false to Scaja. Liall could not be a killer.

"Well, he's left my head alone."

"You must have a charming tongue in your head, despite your lack of cunning. Or perhaps he's heard of your pretty 112

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sister and hopes to curry favor with you and your father." He leaned forward and Scarlet's nose wrinkled. The soldier's humid breath was musty with stale bitterbeer. "Perhaps that's what you should do, boy. Dress in your sister's clothes and let him steal a kiss or two and he'll let you cross over."

"Keep your own tongue in your head before I cut it out,"

he warned as calmly as he could, resisting the urge to throw his mug at the soldier's face. He was unsettled by how wide the soldier's shot had gone and yet how close it had come.

"And don't speak of my sister."

"Oh, of a certainty, young sir. I beg your pardon." The soldier shrugged the threat off. "The name's Cadan," he informed. "Lately of Patra. I'm newly assigned there, you might say."

"Scarlet," he replied brusquely, rising. He left his mug on the table and left Rufa's, not looking back to see if Cadan was watching him.

Scarlet thought a walk in the night air might cool his temper, but his hands ached with the need to hit something.

Reaching the stone well—named Second Well, the first being near the village gate—in the center of the village square, he crossed his arms and stood shivering as a light, dusty snow began to fall. The snow was little more than a mist and nearly magical in the moonlight. He sighed deeply and allowed the feathery snowfall to calm him.

Why did I defend Liall? he asked himself. It's stupid to be attracted to him, naïve beyond excuse. The man has no honor and can offer me nothing beyond a single night of pleasure, bought at a shameful price.

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Even Scaja knew that, and Scarlet ruefully thought that his father would be more accepting even of the loud and uncouth soldier, rather than a Kasiri robber wolf. At least the soldier was partially Hilurin.

He was quiet coming in, not wanting to wake anyone. As he took off his wet gloves and laid them near the smoldering hearth, he caught sight of his face in the little mirror above the mantle, and it stopped him cold.

The light snow was threaded through his hair like cobwebs, dusting it with white. The snowflakes were melting rapidly, but he saw the plan then as clearly and whole as if sent by a dream. Not his sister's clothing, but his mother's: flour in his hair, padding underneath to give him a matronly figure, and one of Linhona's gowns. He spared a moment to wish his Gift extended to illusion, as his grandmother had been said to be able to do. No one he knew had ever been able to use their Gift like that, or at least, none would admit to it. Linhona would have his ears when she found out, but oh, it was a splendid idea!

He grinned into the mirror. So, a bandit thought he could keep a pedlar from traveling the roads, did he? The Wolf was about to be proved very wrong. No one penned him in.

* * * *

He woke with a start in the small hours of morning, sticky with sweat from the lingering images of a smoky dream.

Scarlet pushed his damp hair back from his face with a shaking hand. There were horses; that much he remembered.

Not like Byzan horses. These were huge beasts with short 114

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tails and curling, wooly coats. He had never seen such creatures, not even in his travels to Taim and Merkit that had taken him dangerously close to the borders of Minh. Much of the dream had been hazy, like looking through fogged glass, but he was unnerved to remember that Liall had been there, and he had not been a gaudy Kasiri in the dream, but clothed in rich fabrics and sitting astride a silver-caparisoned horse.

He, too, had been clad in rich furs and velvet, and he remembered his dream-self shouting and spurring his horse to Liall's side, and all the while he was filled with a sinking, awful feeling in the pit of his stomach that he was too late.

He fumbled to light a candle and then washed his face at the basin before sliding back under the covers. Even with the candle out, it was hard to sleep again. Liall would not leave his thoughts. Who was he, anyway? Was he truly from Norl Udur, the northern kingdom so far away that no Byzan in living memory had taken the journey? Why did he dream about him? He truly did not like the man or what he was trying to force him to do at all. There was nothing alluring about Liall's methods, nothing noble about his krait. The whole source of fascination was the man himself, his long hands, his lofty height, his strange, pale hair, and the knowing looks that felt like intimate caresses.

Scarlet shivered in bed and pulled the covers higher, cursing himself. Stupid boy, he thought morosely. Are you that pained for company that you'll take the first flea-bitten rag-tag who smiles at you?

Yes, Liall was a handsome man, but a detestable one, and as compelling as he was, Scarlet would not be pressured or 115

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pushed. He would not be treated as he had seen the male slaves treated on the block in Morturii, preening and debasing themselves for a bit of attention and the hope of a better future. In part, it was those memories that made him reject Liall so fiercely. Had his sneering refusal set the present in motion? Had he scratched Liall's pride as much as Liall had wounded his own? If he had only laughed and said no, would Liall have treated it all as a joke and let him pass?

Scarlet rolled on his side and sighed. He had no wish to be Liall's friend, but there was no telling how long the krait would hold the southern pass, and he needed to be on good terms with their leader to be able to get through.

* * * *

Two hours before dawn, Scarlet rolled out of bed in the darkness and set about gathering what he needed. First he dressed in his own clothes: his gray wool sweater and his leather breeches and boots and his red pedlar's coat. The gown and cloak would hide it all anyway and would give him a matron's girth. He would
not
walk out of the village in a gown, but he could stop in the woods and dress there, comb the flour into his hair and put on the matron's cap. He had to fumble around his house in the dark to keep Linhona from catching him rifling through her clothes press with the intention of borrowing her gown and bodice and her good green cloak, but he hoped to have it back to her within a month. He lingered over his long-knives, wanting to take them but fearing they would give him away or that he would trip over them if he hid them under the gown. At length, he 116

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decided the roads to Khurelen were safer than the roads north and to leave his weapons at home. It would be a decision he would regret.

Khurelen, the first village over the pass, was several days away, but if he left quickly and made a good start down the Snakepath, he could manage it. He could not take his own pack—Liall would recognize it by now—so he took Scaja's, intending to tie some of the goods into his shirt and fasten some under the wide skirt as well. He would just keep his four-fingered hand hidden in his sleeve as best he could. Last, he tugged on an old pair of brown gloves and filched two apples from the bin before sneaking quietly out of the house.

The moon was full and riding high, outlining long swaths of clean snow interspersed with patches of dark earth as he walked out of Lysia. An owl hooted in the treetops and Scarlet looked up to see the wide shadow of her wings ghosting across the white face of the moon.

He climbed the long trail in the moonlight and reached the woods below the pass only a half-hour before dawn. There, in a wide, cleared circle near a deep ravine, he hung a small brass mirror on the low branch of a young juniper. Almost too much time was spent carefully combing the white flour through his hair before putting on the linen cap, but at last he was done. He peered at himself in the mirror he intended to sell to a steading family on the road to Khurelen, and frowned in disappointment. The disguise did not look half as well as he had thought it might. If anyone got a look at him in broad daylight, the ruse would be over. He tugged the starched cap down tighter and began to put on the gown and the 117