Thawed Fortunes (18 page)

The confident young man who'd just finished
one of the more challenging forms with panache and grace, who'd
approached her with calm despite the fact that she still had the
ability to add untold unpleasantness to his life, bore so little
resemblance to the figure before her.

"I know that you're headed to evening
prayers. I won't keep you, I just came to ask you to accompany
Javin, Mar'li and me down on the expedition to the lowlands."

A trace of spirit suddenly returned,
flickering through clear, blue eyes. "I didn't think you needed to
ask. You're the head of the bloodline."

On'li felt her own temper start to rise, but
grabbed it with a mental hand and forced it back down where it
belonged. "Javin and I have discussed the matter. We won't order
you down with us. Even if a newly married pair didn't traditionally
have some right to remain in the Capital during the time
immediately after the ceremony, we still wouldn't force you to come
with us."

The silence was uncomfortable, but somehow it
lacked the edge that On'li had expected.

"Why?"

"Because we would like you there. Frankly I
don't like the idea of leaving you alone with her. She's obviously
worse than I expected. As to why we're asking rather than ordering,
mostly because it isn't a critical matter, and you were right. You
deserve some thanks, some latitude for what you've been
through."

Va'del's gaze was steady. "This is how you'd
treat Ba'loc and Pavir?"

There was another flicker of something in
Va'del's eyes as she nodded, an emotion that On'li couldn't
identify.

"I'll come then."

On'li nodded again, ventured a small smile.
"I didn't want to influence your decision beforehand, but I'll do
what I can to see that Jain is included in this party, just like
the last time we sent you out."

The look in Va'del's eye
was the first one all night that On'li hadn't had any difficulty
recognizing.
As long as we can all still
feel gratitude we're not too far gone.

##

Va'del picked up half the assembled packs and
then waited while a pair of brand new Guard trainees picked up the
rest. Once he was sure that they weren't leaving anything behind,
the young man nodded to the two boys and then led the way out of
the small suite of rooms.

Va'del wasn't going to miss the rooms in the
slightest. The suite was the same one that Vi'en had shared with
her late husband, and she'd refused to move. Instead Va'del had
found himself relegated to a bed in the smallest of the rooms,
where he slept for a few cycles each night before fleeing almost as
soon as he woke each morning.

Vi'en seemed to have an endless supply of
friends from her old bloodline, all of who appeared to be in
complete agreement with her that Va'del still had a long way to go
before becoming an acceptable husband.

He'd tried, at least at first. Unfortunately,
every single thing he did turned out not to be good enough for her.
He'd even read through a protocol book to make sure he wasn't
neglecting some important duty. All he'd really learned was that
Vi'en wasn't holding up a number of the duties that were
traditionally a wife's responsibility. He'd tried a couple of times
to broach the idea that she was being remiss, but she'd just
laughed, and responded that Bob'ae hadn't ever expected that kind
of subservience out of her. He'd overheard her laughing with her
friends about the irony of 'some child who wasn't even a full
Guadel' expecting such things.

Va'del had still been expected to attend
classes on the subjects that he hadn't tested as well in, but
luckily the other candidates had no idea how his wife mocked him.
Now that Be'ter had been discredited and Va'del had been promoted,
the other boys actually treated him with the same kind of respect
they would have shown a full Guadel.

Now that Va'del was a sub-Guadel, he could in
theory begin courting a second wife, but Vi'en had reiterated her
restriction of no more than three cycles a week with Jain, and the
young man had complied with her wishes. He didn't really have much
of a choice. He had to figure out how to keep Vi'en happy or she'd
never let him marry Jain once the traditional year had passed.

Va'del hadn't expected Jain to react well to
the restriction, but he'd expected her to behave a little more
rationally after having told him to go through with the marriage.
It almost seemed like she expected him to instinctively understand
that what she said and what she meant weren't actually the same
thing.

Being included with Javin, On'li and Mar'li
in the group headed down to the lowlands was a relief. With any
luck Vi'en's friends wouldn't be on the trip, thereby saving him
from having to listen to them talk about all of the ways he wasn't
a proper Guadel yet.

Va'del and the two trainees rounded a corner
in one of the corridors leading to the stables and he was
immediately struck by the amount of sheer activity filling up to
overflowing what he'd always thought was a more than adequate
space.

Neither On'li or the rampant rumors had
hinted that the group headed down was this big. Trade caravans were
always huge, but this was beyond even that. It felt like they'd
included half the Council and two thirds of the Guard in order to
assemble so many people.

Callan, the stable master who Va'del had been
apprenticed to for a short time before being included in the
candidate classes, saw the trio standing with their mouths open and
waved Va'del over.

"Javin told me that you'd be in this circus.
I found a couple of decent gurra for you. Nothing like that pair of
I'rone's that you used to travel with, but serviceable beasts all
the same."

Va'del followed Callan's pointing finger and
nodded his thanks before gesturing for the two boys to follow him
through the shifting crowd. The two gurra were indeed decent
animals. Va'del made their acquaintance and, after finding that
neither animal was an exception to the rule that the way to a
gurra's heart was through a vigorous scratch behind its ear,
checked their feet pads and the thickness of their coats before
thanking the boys and sending them on their way.

Neither animal was in its prime, and Va'del
suspected that Callan would have preferred not to be sending them
off on such a long trip, but the stable master had let their coats
grow out a bit to help make up for the fact that they weren't as
hardy as younger animals, and as long as Va'del was careful to make
sure neither gurra was pushed too hard, they should hold up just
fine.

After harnessing both gurra, Va'del picked
the more stubborn of the two creatures and began hanging his packs
from it. The task wasn't as simple as one might expect. If the
weight wasn't evenly balanced, the creature could lose its footing
on the treacherous ice and snow. Additionally, you wanted to make
sure that the vital pieces of equipment were where you could get at
them quickly should the need arise. Food and water were of course
very near the top of that list. The caravan would stop at night for
big meals, but anyone who didn't eat and drink at least something
at each of the many short stops they'd take during the course of
the day would never make it until evening.

Va'del had just finished arranging the last
of his packs the way he wanted it when Vi'en pushed her way through
the crowd. "What? You're not even going to pack my gurra for me? I
suppose I should have expected as much."

His ears burning from embarrassment, Va'del
nearly gave his wife a piece of his mind, but a whip-thin man who
looked like an older version of Fi'lin interrupted Vi'en. "If I'd
caught him packing your beast for you I'd have given him a sound
dressing-down. Old Bob'ae might have known where to put stuff well
enough to get away with packing your gurra for you, but there isn't
any way Va'del could know that yet. You'll pack your own beast and
you'll hurry. I heard some nonsense about you claiming to still be
in Va'ma's bloodline, but if I have to hold the caravan up for you,
both Javin and Va'ma will hear about it."

Si'mon nodded to Va'del. "It's a pleasure to
be traveling with you again youngster. That was a fine piece of
work you did surviving the cold to face those bandits. I'll be
hoping that we can manage to finish this journey together for a
change."

"I'd very much like that as well, Guadel
Si'mon."

Vi'en looked like she wanted to bite the
caravan master's head off, but she swallowed whatever she was going
to say, and set about tying her various packs to the gurra as
Si'mon was pulled away to deal with one of the handful of minor
emergencies that always seemed to crop up whenever a party went
outside.

As the still-muttering Guadel finished
packing her poor beast, one of Callan's senior apprentices came by
to check their loads. The boy patted Va'del's gurra as he made sure
that the weight was balanced evenly, and that the straps were all
tensioned correctly. "Looks good. This one be called Frost."

The boy shrugged at Va'del's surprised look.
"It's a stupid name, but seems like every time we get a batch of
beasts in from an outlying village there is at least one of them
named either Frost or Snow. Some of them will answer to something
different given enough time, but this old guy refuses to come to
anything other than the name those fool villagers hung on him."

The apprentice turned to Vi'en's gurra. "This
fine lady is called Dainty." The boy fussed with a couple of straps
and then finally straightened. "She'll be okay for today, but
you'll want to make sure that you don't put any more weight over
this front right quarter or she'll go lame. If anything you should
move a little of the burden back to the opposite corner."

Va'del nodded his thanks to the stable hand
and got the poor boy moving along before Vi'en could explode. It
was funny. She thought nothing at all about insulting Va'del in
front of others, but bristled if there was anyone around to see her
reprimanded in the slightest way. It was going to be a long
journey.

##

On'li helped Mar'li into her heavy coat as
Si'mon started moving people out into the cold. For all that the
older woman hated being on the Council and dealing with the
unending petty politics, she hadn't missed going out into the cold.
It seemed like the older she got, the less resistant her body was
to temperature extremes.

Once it had been decided that a group was
going to be sent down, the Council had decided a proper show of
force was called for, and quickly expanded the size of the caravan
beyond anything they'd ever sent down to the lowlands before. It
was hard to pick any one person from the mass of hooded individuals
standing around the stable, but amazingly enough On'li was able to
find Va'del's tall form after only a few moments of searching.

He looked miserable, so much so that On'li
wasn't sure even Jain's presence would cheer him up. Not that
anyone could really blame him though. If On'li had really known
just how hard Vi'en was to get along with, she'd have told him to
reject the marriage offer out of hand.

The women of the various bloodlines had a
longstanding tradition of competing to see which group was able to
supply the most worked gemstones. The magical gems required years
of effort to create, but the unending supply of light, heat and
breathable air was the only thing that allowed the People to
survive, and to a limited extent even thrive, at such high
altitudes.

Vi'en had incredibly expected the Stephens
bloodline to outfit her, all the while refusing to work together
with them on the heat stone that the Stephens women had been tasked
with preparing for the next village location the scouts managed to
find.

Before On'li could lose herself any more than
she already had in remembered anger from her last confrontation
with Vi'en, Javin caught her attention and led her and Mar'li out
into the biting cold.

Va'del's legs didn't burn from exhaustion
like they had the first few days of the trip, but they were still
very tired. On the plus side, it had warmed up somewhat since the
caravan had started descending down the mountain, and some of the
guards and Guadel who'd made the trip before had started talking
about what the lowlands were like.

All of the younger members of the caravan,
whether guards, Daughters or gurra tenders, had created mental
checklists of the various signposts they would see along the way,
and eagerly marked each off as they encountered it.

The fact that they would be entering an
entirely different world hadn't truly sunk in for Va'del until the
caravan had arrived at the way cave with the Guadel family and
small detachment of guardsmen tasked with watching the mountainside
for groups trying to scale the cruel slopes. The way cave had been
too small to accommodate such a large group, so most of them had
spent a cold night in their emergency tents, all too painfully
aware of the fragile bubble of warmth and light just a score of
feet from them.

The entire caravan seemed to be restless to
arrive, eager to return to, or become acquainted with, a place
where warmth was the rule rather than the carefully guarded
exception. Even more incredible to Va'del was the way people were
talking about all of the colors. As long as he could remember
people had talked about the warmth down in the lowlands, but this
was the first time anyone had told him about the variety of colors
to be found below the snowline.

The teenager craned his neck in an attempt to
see what had caused everyone to slow down, but they'd come up to a
curve in the trail, so it was impossible to determine what exactly
was going on. Frost bumped into Va'del in a way he'd learned to
interpret as meaning that Vi'en was impatiently crowding the poor
gurra. Va'del sighed, patted the gurra consolingly, and took
another couple of steps forward despite the fact that it really
wasn't safe to follow the person in front of him quite so
closely.