Lamb, the leader of the Valuers’ Plantation, was the first of the Domain Council members to arrive. She came riding through the gate in a flurry which was strange to see—Lamb was a calm woman, normally. A grandmother of seventeen, fifteen of whom were still alive, she was unflappable as a rule, used to dealing with the minor crises of childhood and the major ones of a large plantation. But she was flushed and uncertain as she dismounted and came to talk to Arvid, who waited courteously for her.
“Fire showed himself?” was the first thing she said. Abruptly, Arvid remembered that Lamb’s grandmother had been a traveling barber who had made her way to the Plantation from the far south.
“You knew of Fire?” he asked. He tried to make his voice calm, but she knew him well, and flicked him a glance of sudden concern.
“I—” She hesitated. “All the women of my family go to the altar at Equinox,” she said finally. “It’s a women’s tradition. I thought… a woman’s secret, nothing more.”
Women, Arvid thought bitterly. But he nodded as though he accepted that pitiful excuse, and Lamb relaxed. He called a maidservant and she escorted Lamb to the hall, while he waited for the other council members to arrive.
Some wouldn’t be there until the next day, but that afternoon four more came; women and men trusted by their towns or regions, elected by their people to represent them. Some were officers, most were not. Domain Councils had no real power separate from the warlord—their advice was simply advice, not law, and the warlord could disregard it if he chose. But in the thirty years Arvid had worked with a council, they had never come to outright disagreement. Negotiation, mutual understanding, mutual respect, that was the key. Other warlords, he knew, routinely ignored their councils, but that was a way to breed discontent and rebellion. He had invested his council with some of his own power—in the regions they represented they could judge minor crimes, decide what matters of policy needed to come before their fellow council members, even settle the smaller tax disputes in their area.
In two, perhaps three generations, Arvid thought, warlords would have returned to their oldest function—the leaders in battle—and ruling, lawmaking, dispensing justice, all would have descended to the councils. He wished fervently that that had happened before he was born.
The council members straggled in over the next day; some would be unable to come for days, but they would have enough to make decisions. What decisions, he had no idea. He walked into the hall unsure of what he was going to say.
When the council met, there was no glass table set on a dais for officers and lower tables for everyone else. Just one large board, made of four tables moved together, and everyone, not just the officers, was served their wine in the precious glass goblets. Arvid sat, as he always did, in the middle of one long side. There were gaps where the councillors from farthest out usually sat, but he saw most of the faces he expected: Sage, Elver, Lamb, the three officers from Long River, Brown Hill and Waterfall, and the Voices from the larger towns.
“I welcome you to Palisade,” he said, the formal greeting. Then he paused, took a breath, and leaned back a little. Only honesty would do here. “Well, this is a shagging mess, isn’t it?”
Laughter circled the table, and they plunged straight into planning: how to keep their people safe and fed and prosperous, how to survive.
It was wonderful. For the first time since the Fire, Arvid put Martine and Ember right out of his mind and concentrated on something else entirely.
Dinner that night was outside, tables set up in the cold twilight so they could all at least see what they were eating without starting the meal early. Martine presided as she always had, and the councillors reacted to her as they always had, with respect and affection and a little awe.
The council separated the next morning, right after the dawn ritual, all of them eager to get back to their families. Lamb paused before she mounted the sway-backed gelding she unaccountably loved so much.
“Your Lady has our best interests at heart, my lord,” she said, and then left hurriedly, before he could reply.
He stood, glaring after her, fists clenched by his side. His groom took one look at his face and veered off to Lily’s smithy. Just as well. How dare she. How dare anyone speak to him of his wife.
Behind him, the fire flared up, sending sparks high into the sky. He hoped it was his imagination that it was laughing at him.
“Ice?” Arvid echoed, frowning. “That’s why it’s so cold?”
“Fire is gone,” Mam said. Her voice was distant, as though she were Seeing things, but her eyes were sharper even than usual, and Elva wondered what had been happening here while she had been gone.
“Fire is gone,” Elva confirmed. “So we are open to attack from Ice.”
“Are you saying,” Arvid said slowly, “that this—this Fire has been protecting us?”
Elva simply nodded.
“For how long?”
Mam Martine spoke, and this time her eyes were clouded with Sight.
“A thousand years,” she said. “They have battled for a thousand years.”
Arvid sat down in his chair, the old workworn chair at his desk that he refused to have replaced. It had been his great-grandfather’s, Elva knew, and was one of the oldest objects in the Last Domain, having been brought from the south when the land was first claimed.
A thousand years was beyond his understanding.
“Ember,” Arvid said. “Ember is caught up in this—battle?”
Martine had her hand up under her breasts, as though trying to still her heart. Elva knew that feeling. Her boys were out there, too, as well as her little sister. Even though they hadn’t grown up together, Ember was family, dear and beloved. So young, just like Ash and Cedar. Against Powers, what chance did they have?
The gods spoke to her gently, Together, they may prevail. Ice has no defense against love. She repeated the words as they came into her mind, the voices of the gods speaking through her, turning her own voice dark and deep, rasping. It was always a surprise to her, that sound. A stranger’s voice.
Mam and Arvid looked up with hope blazing. With the gods in her head, Elva could see them so clearly; they were unhappy, driven, half-crazed with worry and something else that she didn’t fully recognize.
Ice comes, the gods said through her. Arvid flinched, standing up as though to meet the threat head-on; but Mam sat down and clenched her hands in her lap, as though Seeing too much.
We must work together, you and I and the other humans, Elva said to the gods.
They hesitated. She shared with them everything that Sealmother had taught her, and felt them stream away from her to consider it. They would make their decision in their own time, as they always did, but she had to be ready—they all had to be ready—to work with them when they came back. If they came back. No use worrying about that.
“There is a lot we need to do,” Elva said briskly. “If we’re going to hold off this Ice.”