The Whitefire Crossing (24 page)

Just as I reached the ground, Kiran exclaimed, “Oh! What are those?”

A group of mountain goats perched on the cliff’s edge, watching us. The adults were shaggy and disheveled, their thick winter coats falling out in clumps. Several fuzzy, bright-eyed babies peered down from between their mothers’ legs.

The sharp knock of bouncing rocks sounded from the couloir. The goats scattered.

Shit! “’Ware rock!” I yelled, and ducked, my arms going up to shield my head. A sudden violent shove from behind sent me sprawling into a snowbank. Amidst the whining buzz of rocks flying past, I heard a dull thud, and Kiran cried out.

I thrashed free of the snowbank, my stomach dropping into my boots. A rock strike to the head would kill Kiran instantly, magic or no magic. If all this had been for nothing—!

He lay curled on the ground clutching his left arm. Blood trickled between his fingers, but he was alive. The force of my relief near dropped me into the snowbank again.

I squatted beside him. “Let me see your arm.”

Wordlessly, he took his hand away. The rock had gouged a deep cut, and his lower arm was bent at a strange angle.

“What the hell were you thinking? You should’ve stayed clear,” I growled, digging through my pack for my charm stash. I didn’t own anything near so powerful as the convoy’s precious store of bonemender charms, but my little pains-ease and skinseal charms were better than nothing.

“A rock was going to hit you. I could see it,” he said, in a small voice. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

So he’d taken the hit instead, from a rock big enough to kill if it’d hit my skull or spine. I should’ve been grateful, but instead I felt unsettled, even angry. Far easier to remember he was a liar and a murderer when he didn’t pull stunts like this.

Damn it, his saving me didn’t mean he was a nice guy. He’d only feared his chance to cross the border would vanish if I got too badly hurt to continue.

I reached for his arm, and he pulled it away with a hiss of pain. “Don’t touch it!” His voice broke and wavered on the words.

“I have to clean and bind it,” I said as patiently as I could, and reached for it again.

He leaned away from me. “No! If you do, I don’t know if I could stop, I—”

“Stop what?” I snapped. We’d already wasted enough time on the climb to the notch, and now this.

His eyes looked almost black, his pupils were dilated so far. “It hurts and it wants to heal, and I need power to do it, and up here there’s only you.”

Horror froze my tongue. I stumbled backward, as if that would make a difference. He hadn’t needed a touch to steal Harken’s life.

A bitter grimace twisted Kiran’s mouth. “I won’t take from you. Not on purpose. But if you touch me, you’ll bypass my barriers, and it might happen...accidentally.” His eyes dropped away from mine on the final word.

I shuddered. Khalmet’s hand, but the thought of my life draining away with me helpless to stop it was a nasty one. In my mind’s eye I saw the staring eyes of the dead mule teams. An idea made me straighten.

“What about the goats? Can’t you, uh...
take
from them?” Even if we could no longer see them, they wouldn’t be far.

He gave a tiny shake of his head. “I’d have to drop my barriers, and that’s dangerous. Ruslan can reach me, then. The only way to draw power and remain safe from him is by touch.”

“Damn.” I edged closer and peered at his arm with my hands clasped firmly behind my back. “That’s a bad break. If I can’t touch you, you’ll have to fix it up yourself. Awkward, but I’ve got a pains-ease charm that should help some—”

“A healing charm won’t work on me, not while I hold my barriers.” Kiran twisted to look down the valley. “If we can reach the trees, I think I could safely take enough
ikilhia
from them to heal it myself.”

“Yeah, well, that’s a good couple hours of walking. You’ve got to bind the arm and put it in a sling, or you’ll pass out from pain long before we hit treeline,” I told him. “Then we’d be well and truly fucked, because I sure as hell can’t carry you without touching you. Unless...” I peered at him. “You were out cold after the avalanche, and I hauled your skinny ass back to the convoy without dying of it.”

“My collapse then was from pressing my magic too far, not a physical injury.” Kiran looked down at his misshapen arm. His next words came out thin and airless. “I told you of the ritual Ruslan performed, when I came of age. That ritual did more than bind me to him. A whole and healthy body has a specific pattern—and mine is now linked directly to my magic. Any marring of that pattern, and my magic seeks to repair it, as instinctively as breathing.”

I swallowed, my mouth gone dry. “You’re saying that to
not
take power to heal yourself is like deliberately holding your breath.”

He nodded, eyes still downcast.

Every time I thought this trip couldn’t get worse, Khalmet proved me wrong. “How long can you...?”

“Long enough to reach those trees.”

Gods. I tossed Kiran the waterskin, and prayed the confidence in his words was warranted. “Clean that cut off with some water while I make some bandages.”

It took almost an hour, but eventually he got the arm bound up. I tied a rough sling for him out of a length of rope, and strapped his pack onto mine with another. My side felt like a rock bear had clawed it when I heaved on the doubled pack. “Mother of maidens, what I wouldn’t give for a mule,” I muttered. I’d need that pains-ease charm myself by the time we stopped again. Assuming I wasn’t a drained husk of a corpse.

The sun was already sinking into the haze above the forested hills. We’d never make the trees before it set. I sighed, heavily. Another grueling march in the dark, under a looming threat I had no defense against. Gods, I’d never thought the day would come when I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of the mountains.

At least we’d already made it over the worst terrain. Soon after we started walking, the valley widened, talus fields mixing with marshy tundra dotted with old snowbanks. A stream appeared from under the snow, gurgling downward through the rocks, the water shining white in occasional tumbling falls.

At first Kiran moved along in silence, his face pinched and inward-looking, his arm cradled in the sling against his chest. He wasn’t able to walk very fast, but I wasn’t exactly sprinting either, with my side screaming and the weight of both our packs crushing my spine and shoulders. We’d been going maybe an hour when Kiran spoke up.

“Do you think you could...talk about something?”

“What? Why?” I certainly didn’t feel like talking.

“I think it would help me,” he said, sounding apologetic. He was looking white around the mouth, and he wouldn’t meet my eyes.

I tried to sound casual, and not like every instinct was yammering at me to run. “Uh. Fine. What do you want me to talk about?”

He started to shrug, and stopped with a gasp, his face lined with pain. “I don’t know. Something—something interesting. How did you learn to climb, and be an outrider?”

I considered making up a tale, but I felt too tired and nervous to bother. He’d likely guessed most of the truth, anyway. “When I was a kid, I was a Taint thief. My handler taught all of us to climb. He thought it made us better at the job.”

“A Taint thief, truly? That’s why you were sold? I’d read of such things, but only in children’s tales...” He sounded fascinated. I guessed the distraction thing was working. “What did you steal?”

“Jewelry, coin, charms...whatever our handler asked us to get.” Which had sometimes included far stranger things than coin or charms. Though Red Dal did plenty of freelance work, he made the biggest money from jobs on commission. Between highsiders, merchant houses, and ganglords, he had no shortage of customers desperate to get their hands on valuable goods protected behind wards. I’d lifted everything from intricate Sulanian bone sculptures to a spymaster’s secret records.

“I’ve never met anyone strongly Tainted. Could you truly fly, and shatter ward patterns, like in the tales?”

Mother of maidens, but the memories burned like salt in a wound. “Yes.”

He checked at the bitter violence of the word. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to...I was only curious.”

“I know.” Most were, even Ninavel natives who’d had some trace of the Taint themselves. Didn’t make talking about it any easier. Before I could come up with a change of subject, he spoke again.

“What happened, then, after you...after?”

“My handler sold me to someone else.” Another set of memories I didn’t care to revisit. Those first weeks in Tavian’s hands were a black blur. Some Tainters never surfaced from the soul-destroying depression that followed the Change, and ended up dead because they just didn’t care anymore. That might’ve been me, but for Jylla. Her handler had sold her off to Tavian scant weeks before me. Somehow, we’d pulled each other through, our shared shock turning first to anger, then determination.

I’d thought we’d had a bond nothing could break. Yet she’d stolen every kenet I owned and cast me aside like all we’d shared meant nothing. I kicked steps over a mud-smeared snowbank with sullen violence.

“Your handler sold you to an outrider?” Kiran asked.

“Of course not. What in Shaikar’s hells would an outrider want with a newly Changed city brat?” Tavian’s gang had sold taphtha, lionclaw, and other addictive drugs to merchant house men who preferred to keep their vices secret. Tavian had wanted a runner boy who could slither into unlikely places for drops, and knew how to keep his mouth shut.

Jylla, he’d had other uses for. The old, sick anger twisted in my gut, no matter that Tavian was seven years dead.

“But then, how did you...?”

I reined in my tongue with an effort. Not Kiran’s fault he’d dredged up memories so bitter. “You’ve heard us talk of Sethan, right? Some two years after my Change, I met him on the street one day.” And by “met,” I meant “tried to steal from.” I’d had this crazy idea in those days that I’d prove you didn’t need the Taint to steal. I’d become the best thief in Ninavel, and then Red Dal would take me back. Gods, what a fucking idiot I’d been.

I’d known better than to pick pockets; too dangerous without the Taint, if the mark wore warding charms. Instead, I’d resorted to simple snatches from busy street markets. Once my chosen mark was distracted in a conversation, I’d grab his parcels, take off down a side alley, and climb straight up to a roof. Most people never thought to look up, and I’d had no idea that adults who weren’t handlers could climb.

Yeah, and then I’d tried that on Sethan. Gods, I’d nearly fallen off the wall when he swarmed right up after me. We’d ended up in this crazy chase all over walls and rooftops. No matter what I did, I couldn’t shake him. He’d finally caught up just as I started a suicidal jump across a blank section of wall, some hundred feet above a flagstone courtyard. I’d known that without the Taint the jump was too far, but Red Dal had hammered into my head that death was preferable to capture. Sethan had grabbed the strap of my rucksack and somehow managed to jerk me back and keep his own precarious hold. He’d dragged me onto a roof, ignoring my kicking and biting, and yelled at me not for stealing, but for nearly killing myself.

“We got to talking, and he invited me to come climbing with him on real rock,” I told Kiran. Once he’d stopped yelling, Sethan had told me I was a hell of a climber, and I’d heard in his voice that he meant it. It was the first time since my Change anybody’d told me I was good at anything.

“It was just some easy cliffs next to the Juntar mine, but I wasn’t even halfway up before I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life climbing.” The dizzy elation I’d felt on the cliff had been a drug strong as any Tavian sold. I’d never thought to feel like that again, Changed as I was. “Sethan and I kept climbing together, got to be friends, and the next year he took me on as apprentice.” After Jylla and I had killed Tavian; though Sethan had never known that part.

“He taught you outriding...and then later he died, in a rockfall?”

“Right.” I didn’t stop the word from coming out curt and cold. It’d be a bright day in Shaikar’s hells before I talked about that rockfall to anyone, let alone Kiran.

If he heard the warning in my tone, he didn’t heed it. “But if Sethan is dead...why do you need money for his sake?”

Gods all damn it, I’d forgotten he’d overheard my fight with Cara. I stopped dead and fixed him with my fiercest glare. “That’s none of your fucking business.” Hell if I’d spill my secrets to a liar like him, especially when I wasn’t certain whose ears they might end up in if Gerran sold him out.

“Isn’t it?” His expression wavered between defiant and pleading. “My life depends on your need for that money. But without knowing why you need it, how can I trust it’s truly so important to you that you’ll not betray me?”

“Use your gods-damned eyes! You think I would’ve abandoned the convoy, given up outriding, and risked death at a blood mage’s hands if that money wasn’t fucking vital to me?”

He winced. “I truly am sorry it’s cost you so much to help me. My offer stands—if there’s anything I can do for you, after reaching Kost—please, just tell me.”

My gaze lit on his bandaged arm, and my anger faded. Regardless of his motives, he’d spared me injury or worse today. “If I think of something, I’ll let you know,” I said, and walked on.

He took a breath, but before he could raise another unpleasant topic, I blurted out the first question that came to mind.

“You said Ruslan raised you—how young were you apprenticed?” I had no idea how that worked for mages, and I had to admit I was curious.

“Five, perhaps six years of age? I’m not exactly sure.” Kiran sighed. “I don’t remember anything before Ruslan. He always said it was because my life only truly started when I came to him.”

“Huh.” What a crock of manipulative horseshit. Red Dal trotted out similar crap with his Tainters, and we hadn’t seen through it either. I quashed an unwilling pang of sympathy. “Was it hard, learning to do magic?” Using the Taint had been easy as breathing, but street stories said spellcasting was different, even for powerful mages.

Kiran started to answer, then fell silent as we negotiated a stretch of talus and he had to concentrate to keep from jostling his arm. His voice was breathless when he next spoke. “Sometimes. There’s a lot to learn, both to design spells and cast them. Even a tiny mistake in a channel pattern can result in enough spillover to destroy both of you in an instant.”