Read Snow Like Ashes Online

Authors: Sara Raasch

Tags: #Fantasy, #Young Adult, #Romance, #Adventure

Snow Like Ashes (6 page)

BOOK: Snow Like Ashes
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Silence. Shocked, stunned, I-have-to-be-dreaming silence. My chest cools and I wait for the softest, most delicate tingle of pride. Placing the locket half on the table completed this mission, and now that it’s done, now that I succeeded, I’ve finally proven what I’ve wanted for so long.
This.
That I can help Winter. That I can use what I’m good at—thinking on my feet, ranged fighting, stealth—to help my kingdom. But all I feel is . . . tired.

I step back. Staring at me is the usual lineup: Sir, Finn, Henn, Greer—and Mather.

He is the only one whose attention didn’t get sucked to the box the moment I placed it on the table. His jewel-blue eyes are unreadable as he stares at me, his face locked in an expression that’s either joy or horror. I choose to think it’s joy.

“Meira.”

I flinch and turn to face Sir, who stands, lifting the box.

“Yes?”

He doesn’t look at me, just flicks the lock and lifts the lid, his face gray with dreamlike surprise. I can’t see the locket half from here, but I know what he’s looking at. Sixteen years of fighting, of hoping that once we reunite our conduit’s two halves, we’ll be closer to getting our kingdom back.

“You . . .” Sir looks up at me. Back at the box’s contents. Back at me.

I’ve rendered Sir speechless. Oddly, that small victory makes me feel lighter than retrieving the locket half and surviving Spring did.

Sir starts to ask something but takes a deep breath, coughing as he inhales the stench emanating from me. “Alysson!” he wheezes. “For the love of all that is cold, will you draw Meira a bath?”

I laugh as Alysson hurries in from an adjoining tent. She reaches for me, twitches when she realizes what she’ll be touching, and settles for simply ushering me out with a wave.

“And when you’re done, Meira,” Sir calls, “you’re going to tell me
everything
.”

“Yes, Sir,” I reply, not bothering to hide my smile.

As I leave, Sir’s voice trickles after me. “Snow above. She actually did it.”

It’s not praise, but it makes me smile just the same. Yes, I
did
do it.

It takes five buckets of water, two bars of soap, and a small fire to get rid of the sewer gunk. Once the last of my ruined outfit is crackling away in the flames, Alysson departs to care for my stolen horse. I pull on a clean, white shirt and black pants—sweet snow above,
clean clothes
—and leave my wet hair to dry in the wind as I trek back to the meeting tent.

I take a deep breath, gathering my remaining strength to face Sir, and plunge inside. The giant oak table has been pushed aside to make room for a cluster of pillows, their threadbare brown fabric stretched taut over stuffings of wool and prairie grass. Two bowls—one holding steaming vegetables, the other cradling a handful of frozen berries—wait inside the pillow ring. The cushions surround something else that makes my breath catch on the velvetiness of the warm air: a circular iron fire pit, far enough back so as not to set the pillows aflame but close enough to let the earthy smell of burning coal absorb into the fabric.

Steam rises off wild turnips and onions, twisting into an aroma of savory sweetness. But it’s the berry bowl that makes my stomach do a little dance of excitement as I drop onto a pillow. I haven’t had frozen berries since my last birthday, seven months ago, and seeing the bowl of frosted black and red orbs makes more than hunger twirl through me. Alysson makes them for special occasions, or tries to, when enough ice can be found to freeze the berries solid. They’re a Winterian delicacy, something all the other refugees eat in revered solemnity.

Speaking of Winterian delicacies . . .

The coals shift, sending up a cloud of warmth. Sweat breaks out across my forehead and my nose tingles with the smell of the heat. It isn’t for warmth that we have this fire pit—I think I speak for every Winterian when I say we’d rather be frozen solid than near any kind of spark—it’s for memory. It’s for the same reason I have a fistful of slowly thawing berries in my palm.

Last year, Finn and I bought food in a small market on the outskirts of the Kingdom of Ventralli, one of the Rhythms. While there, he found this pit buried in a pile of iron knickknacks a blacksmith was melting down. When he spent half of our measly savings on it, I expected Sir to beat him with it and make him try to sell it back. But the look on Sir’s face when Finn lugged it into camp launched a pang of helplessness through my body. The gentle, sad pull of wanting.

Winter made this. Or, rather, Winterians mined the coal and the iron that went to other kingdoms like Yakim and Ventralli, which made the fire pit itself. But the coal and iron still came from Winter, a part of our kingdom ripped from the mountains and molded afar.

To improve their kingdoms’ economies, rulers use Royal Conduit magic to enhance certain areas of expertise that their kingdoms developed based on geography or the natural talents of their citizens. If a certain kingdom showed an interest in education, the ruler used magic to make their people excel at learning; if another kingdom showed an aptitude for fighting, the ruler used conduit magic to make their soldiers more lethal. Winter sat north of the richest part of the Klaryns, so our queens enhanced our ability to find minerals and granted us endurance and courage in the bottomless, dark places of the earth.

Spring has their own mines in their section of the Klaryns, but theirs produce deadly powders that fuel their cannons, the only mines in the world that harbor it. That’s what we thought the war was about—Spring wanted to expand their mine holdings. But when they won, they didn’t tear into our mines. They just boarded them all up, like their goal was simply to destroy Winter piece by piece, spirit by spirit, by making us sit back and watch Winter’s most valued possession fall into decay.

Once Angra kills us all, he’ll probably reopen the mines. But as long as we live, it’s more valuable to dangle our useless mines in our faces, taunt us and distract us into making mistakes, getting caught, falling into his open hands. Or at least, that’s what we tell each other, to make it feel less like the war was all for nothing.

I pop a berry in my mouth and stare at the orange and dusty black of the burning coals. The berry numbs my tongue, makes ribbons of ice crawl up my teeth, but its chilly sweetness is suddenly not as enticing. I reach one finger out and put it on the edge of the fire pit, farthest from the heat, and hold it there until the burning sensation creeps up my whole hand. The others set up all this because they want me to know that what I did was important—important enough to burn coal.

But it doesn’t
feel
important. Not like it should.

I’m reminded now, watching the coals burn, of why I never feel like I truly belong to Winter. I want to understand all this as deeply as Sir and Alysson and everyone else, a reminder of a time when everything was how it should be, but all this is wasted on me, someone whose only connection to Winter lies in stories told by others. I thought that if I had a hand in saving Winter, I’d feel like I deserve it, the kingdom everyone else remembers. I thought I could fill the void left by my lack of memories with purpose. That’s what I’ve always told myself: if I matter to Winter, Winter will matter to me. And today I mattered to my kingdom.

Then why don’t I feel anything more for the fire pit than the slight burn on my finger?

Behind me the tent flap stirs, a whisper of noise that could almost be dismissed as the hiss of coals or the wind. My muscles tighten, the hairs on my arms rise. But I don’t flinch, don’t react, just spear a chunk of turnip with a fork.

A breath later, fingers touch the base of my neck where a blade would go if this attacker were truly an attacker. I shiver, but not from the coolness of my wet hair pressing to my skin.

“You’re dead,” Mather says, laughter in his voice.

When I first started learning to fight, he would sneak up on me in the weapons tent or the training yard, slinking noiselessly until he touched my neck and whispered that joking threat. And no matter how many times he did it, it still left me screaming like Angra himself had snuck up on me. Sir, of course, did nothing to stop it; he just said I needed to get better at paying attention to my surroundings.

I look up at Mather and pause midchew. He drops onto the pillow across from me, his face stretching in a grin.

“Dead? I let you sneak up on me,” I snort. “All this future-king-of-Winter stuff has gone to your head, Your Highness.”

Mather’s face twitches at his title. “You always say you let me sneak up on you. Too scared to admit you’re not as good as everyone thinks you are?”

I swallow. “Aren’t we all?”

Mather drops his gaze to the fire pit, the orange glow pulsing in his azure eyes. “William showed me the locket half,” he breathes.

My hand tenses around the fork, and I open my mouth to say something, but all I can think of are the same illusion-shattering questions I asked him before I left. Things that make our veil of happiness evaporate like drops of water on a bed of hot coals. So I just stay quiet, and in the silence he looks up at me, one corner of his mouth cocked curiously.

“It’s strange to think that the last time any Winterian saw it, it was around my mother’s neck.” His eyes focus on something beside my head, something hovering in the patched-together memories everyone has told him too. Memories of his mother, Queen Hannah Dynam. Memories of how Angra himself marched into the Jannuari palace, killed her, and broke the conduit in two.

I recognize that look. Mather’s face takes on the same aura of disappointment whenever he misses a target in practice, or when Sir beats him at sparring, or when I ask him how he’d use magic if he could. Disappointment in himself, in his inability to do what he set out to do, even when it’s far out of his control. He runs a hand over his face to brush it off, and there’s that emotionless veil again, hiding his true feelings behind a smile.

I shake my head slowly. “You’re insane.”

His eyebrows pinch in the suggestion of a smile. “Am I?”

“Yes.” I stab another turnip and leave the fork there. “We got the locket half. You shouldn’t be feeling anything other than happiness right now—
real
happiness, not your fake smiles—Mr. Heir of Winter.”

Mather’s face grows solemn. He pauses, his hands open in his lap like he’s holding all of his worries. “I didn’t feel anything,” he murmurs, a slow, absent thought. “When I saw the locket half. It was the only thing I’ve ever seen of my mother’s. I should have
felt
something.”

I fight to steady my breathing, and my eyes drop for a beat to the fire pit. Wasn’t I just worrying about these same things? I forget sometimes how similar Mather is to me—how we’re both young enough to feel separated from Winter in the same ways. Mather’s lack of feeling is a bit more pressing, though. After all, he’s Winter’s king.

But I don’t have any way to reassure him, any wise words to soothe his fears—if I did, I’d be able to fix my own problems too. “It’s just half of a necklace right now,” I try. “Maybe you’ll feel something when it’s a whole conduit again.”

Mather shrugs. “I’m not supposed to have any connection to it, though, remember? I’m just her son.” His face flashes with shame and he shakes his head. “I’m sorry. You’re right; this is supposed to be a happy day. You got the locket half. Thank you.” He leans forward, his eyes intent. “Really, Meira, thank you.”

My face spasms with confusion, but I can’t do anything to smooth it out. I didn’t know he’d put so much weight on the locket half, that he wanted so badly to have a connection to his mother. I don’t remember my parents or even know who they were, but it never occurred to me that Mather would hurt so badly for people he’d never met either. Does he miss his father too? Hannah’s husband, Duncan, was a Winterian lord before he became king. Does Mather wish he knew him if only to talk to someone in the same situation—king of a female-blooded kingdom?

A heaviness settles in my stomach, filling me with a choking mix of guilt and anxiety—wanting to help Mather, but knowing it’s as out of my power as using Winter’s conduit is out of his.

Thankfully at that moment, the tent flap opens to reveal Sir. He takes in the absent food, my wet hair. I hold my breath, remembering why I’m really here—to tell Sir what happened.

Sir sits next to me, silent. He doesn’t reprimand me for being so casual with our future king, doesn’t berate me up and down for my informality and poo-covered entrance.

Uh-oh.

He withdraws the box from his pocket. “So,” he begins. “Would you care to explain?”

Suddenly I feel like the misbehaving child who first begged Sir to let me help out with the resistance. The child who waved swords around like awkward steel wings and showed absolutely no promise in fighting until I tried ranged weapons like my chakram, and it turned out I could be deadly too. The child he always sees when he looks at me.

The chakram. My heart drops. Snow above, I have to tell Sir I lost another throwing disc. With the decline in Primoria’s iron production due to the disuse of Winter’s mines, weapons have become expensive. And being a Winterian refugee isn’t exactly a lucrative career.

I grab a berry, avoiding Sir’s eyes. “Isn’t anyone else coming? Finn maybe?”

He shakes his head. “Just us. Now talk.”

It’s an order. He’s angry about something, but I have no idea what.

My stomach starts to burn, churning around all the food I’ve shoved into it. Sir has no right to be angry or disappointed. I retrieved half of the locket. I did what he couldn’t do, even after he doubted me. The only thing he should be feeling is awe.

Is that why he’s upset? Because I finally proved that he needs me?

I glare up at him. “It was exactly where you said it was. In the Keep. That’s all.”

“You’re telling me,” Sir begins, “that you were able to waltz into Lynia’s stronghold and retrieve this locket piece with no arrows fired, no men killed, no bloodshed? Because that bruise on your cheek and the lingering stench in here say otherwise. What happened, Meira?”

The wrinkles in Sir’s face deepen. He wears his age more heavily all of a sudden, his naturally white hair ivory from his fifty-some years, not his Winterian heritage. He fingers the box before popping it open and showing me the locket half.

BOOK: Snow Like Ashes
3.81Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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