THE sight of home took Svirakir’s breath away.
“Atmospheric pressure,” he panted. “You get up this high and—the air’s thinner. But it doesn’t—bother me. I’m bred—for it.”
His guide watched him through sheepskin and furs, a halo of fuzz around sunburnt skin and pale eyes. The wisp of hide below her chin gave her a goatlike mien. “You should rest.”
“No, no,” he pretended to pant, “let’s keep going.” He was certain she was walking him into a trap, and he did not want to be late for it. The panting was to convince her that he was weak, and, despite the long estoc sword on his left hip and the arming sword on his right, entirely defenseless.
He’d hired his goat-chinned guide in Duchy Vultjag, where he’d found Tain Hu’s people not merely surviving the Stakhieczi conquest but thriving off it. It was the futures contracts that had done it. Vultjag had secured its grain in advance, and the Radascine Combine merchants in the south had, despite the invasion and the edicts against sending food north, honored that contract: either they delivered to Vultjag at the agreed-upon price, or they had to sell at cut rate to the provincial government. It was worth the cost of smuggling the grain, especially if there would not be a grain market in a year.
Vultjag was, therefore, the only duchy in the north with a supply of grain. While the rest of the north paid obscene premiums for the leavings of ransacked granaries, Tain Hu’s people were grinding more flour than they could eat. So they sold their surplus to those who had too much gold and not enough bread.
The Stakhieczi invaders had quickly learned that they could not take the bread by force. Mansion Chechniada, the Avalanche House, had sent fighters to seize the Vultjag granaries—and been bloodied so badly in jagisczion forest ambush that they ended up paying weregild just to get their column out of the woods alive. The Stakhieczi trained for close tunnel fighting and open-field war against cavalry. Both required close formations, iron discipline, and very little woodscraft. They had no answer to swift, harrying rangers except to burn the villages and kill the people—and that would cost them the granaries, too.
So those same rangers were now doing very well as hired scouts and hunting guides for the invaders. Svir had made it known in Vultjag that he needed a guide into the mountains, and waited for one of the pathfinders to approach him.
Goat Face had come.
Now he dawdled in the shadow of the col, studying the two peaks, this home he’d missed with all his heart and hoped to never see again. The clean stone, the clear air, the sheer space of it all. There was Camich Swiet on the left, the Sugar Peak, named for the shining snowpack on its summit. It held no actual sugar: a treasure rarer than salt and more precious than platinum.
And Karakys on the right, where he had spent so many sunny days playing on the freeze-dry terraces, or building luges for fatally swift sleds. Eagles soared here, high above the green line where the last trees grew. A round-faced fox had been dogging their trail, which was an omen of procht, the Stakhi word for things which come of thinking. Procht might intimate a well-timed hunting foray or a clever new climbing route. It might also mean treachery afoot. Svir wasn’t hunting for condor eggs or scouting out a place to abseil, so he expected this fox was an omen of treachery.
Treacherously beautiful. That was a good word for the Wintercrests. In High Stakhieczi that was one word, muticzi. The same word used for a false thaw. “Treacherous summer.”
“Bring me home,” he told Goat Face.
They zagged their way upslope, as if intending to crest the col and then turn right, up the length of the ridge toward Karakys. The boulder field was exactly as he remembered it. He stooped to look for a place where he’d cut his name: but cold had cracked the stone.
“Up here,” Goat Face called, “quickly, now, or you’ll burn raw red. The sun is fiercer here. Come!”
Svir crested the col. And gasped in awe. He had a perfect view of the erbajaste, the dry lake bed between the two mountains. The clay shimmered flat and cracked as human skin. The great flocks of orange flamingos had gone away. He’d chased those stupid promenading birds as a boy, with Pirilong at his side. Later they’d been lovers—he and Pirilong, not he and the flamingos—in the summer fields north of the lake, where they could explore each other without his brother or Pirilong’s disapproving parents trying to make them reform. You’re too old for this, Svir, you need to find a woman with a womb.…
He’d been manful about it, at first. He’d stood and she’d knelt and he’d touched her toasted-grain curls and the low bones of her cheeks in wonder. But he hated the etiquette of it, the requirement to penetrate but never yield. They ran together, side by side; not above and below. And when at last he knelt she never tried to stop him: although it would woman Svir, and man Pirilong, and throw both of them into danger, for Svir was a Prince of the Mansions, and as his brother kept reminding him, a woman, with or without a womb, could not be a Prince.
He wondered if he’d see Pirilong again. He wondered if she was still a woman. Or if the Masquerade tide had licked its way up the mountains, and convinced everyone to give up the bad old ways in favor of the bad new.
Silver reflection caught his eye. Like the bracelet Baru had used to signal him, back in Annalila Fortress. His eyes went by reflex to the light: the glint of steel.
There was an army camped down there.
“Oh kings,” Svir breathed. “It’s the fucking Uczenith.” Mansion Hussacht’s ancestral rivals had laid siege to his brother’s throne. And there were no Hussacht jagata to challenge them. They had all gone to war.
“I was paid to show you this,” Goat Face called. “They had me wait for you, in Vultjag. They told me to bring you here.”
She’d moved away from him, out of reach of a knife and a lunge. The sun glinted off the smear of yak butter around her cracked lips. “They needed to know if the woman who promised your return was telling the truth.”
“Oh, I know,” Svir said. “The Uczenith paid you. No hard feelings.” His return would be a victory for his brother, and the Uczenith could not allow that. “You’d better run, now. They’ll kill you, too, when they’ve finished with me.”
“What procht,” a man called. “Betray our guide? Go back on our word? You are lost to the mansions, Svirakir. Seduced by the world and its low ways.”
“Better we spare your brother the grief of knowing it,” another man said.
Four jagata fighters in steel plate rose from their hides among the boulders. They had him squared, one at each compass point: and they were armed with long blades and short triangular stabbing swords. Tunnel-fighting weapons. Masquerade “experts” liked to say they were forged to make triangular wounds, but the truth, as with most things Stakhi, was simpler. The triangular blade gave the sword strength to punch through armor. They would use those blades to crush Svir’s face before they cut him apart.
“Hello, boys,” he said, smiling at the shadows under their sun visors. “Let me guess what I’ve missed. My return would prove my brother’s a worthy and Necessary king, and you Uczenith can’t have that. So you’ll stab me to death, destroy my face, and throw my pieces down a crevasse. Right?”
“That’s right,” the first one said. Goat Face had vanished in the scree.
“I’ve found the legitimate heir to your mansion,” Svir said. “I know who killed Kubarycz the Iron-Browed in single combat.” That made the men halt for a moment, crouching like they felt a tremor in the rock. “It was a man named Tain Hu. Tain Hu, Duke of Vultjag, consort of the rightful Queen of Aurdwynn. He killed Kubarycz and all his heirs. He won the right to rule you. I serve Tain Hu’s house, I serve his queen, and that means I serve the legitimate lord of the Mansion Uczenith. That means I serve your rightful lord. Now you will damn well remember our oaths and listen to me—”
The jagata looked at each other. Despite their codes of honor, knights were, in Svir’s experience, a lot of thugs, rapists, and brutes. But would they kill a Prince of the Mansions to conceal what had happened to Kubarycz? Were they that craven—
“Kill him quick,” one of the jagata said.
“Aye,” the next said.
“Aye.”
“Aye.”
“You people are satires,” Svir snarled, and went for his flare pistol.
Four longswords rose against him. He would break out north: unarmored, he would be faster climbing the slope, but not much faster. He had seen armored jagata do somersaults and handstands in their plate, and free-climbing rock faces was a basic knightly skill.
He shot the northern jagata in his armored face, dropped the pistol, and charged.
The man ducked his head by reflex and took the rocket on his helm. Goat Face was screaming, “Procht! Murder! They’re murdering the Prince! They’re murdering Tain Hu’s Prince!” Svir grinned wildly—so the brigand bitch of Vultjag still lived in her people’s hearts! He should’ve mentioned Tain Hu to Goat Face sooner—
He brushed past the knight. The cold clean air burnt his throat. For an instant he was a boy again, dashing with Pirilong across the seam in the world where the sky met the earth.
The jagata got him by the back of the belt.
The trick knot at Svir’s waist let go and the belt slithered off. The North Knight stumbled back, suddenly off balance. Svir, whirling, drawing, lifted the pointed estoc sword to high ox guard, gripped it halfway down the blade with his left hand, and, with his strong right, thrust the sword into the seam between the knight’s helmet and his collar. There were not many ways to instantly kill a man, and the narrow estoc blade made small deep wounds: but the throat would do.
But there was no seam. The knight had an armored bevor, one solid piece protecting his neck and jaw, and it stopped even the estoc’s hardened point cold. He grabbed for Svir’s shirtfront—seized it, pulled him close, lifted his own sword for Svir’s stomach—Svir, as he’d been trained, flipped the estoc around, and, gripping it by the midsection and its tip, swung the pommel down like a hammer on the knight’s helmet. The mordstrike left the North Knight dazed, and a dazed tunnel fighter always crouches, gets his guard up, and waits.
There was no time to fight. Unarmored longsword duels ended in one or two strokes: the first cross and the first, usually fatal, counter. There were four of them and they all had armor so Svir was the only one who would be dying in two strokes here. He tore away and ran. Three jagata came after him, silent but for the actuation of steel. Goat Face was still screaming murder.
Someone up ahead answered. Svir scrambled up the ridge toward Karakys, and down toward him came a man, a beautiful young Maia cavalryman in leather chaps, his narrow hips and powerful legs scrambling on the scree. “Svirakir!” he cried. “Svirakir, to me!”
It was either salvation or a trap. Svir, always gambling on trap, jagged north, across the ridgeline, into the wind shadow—
—and found the West Knight waiting for him, swift on familiar ground.
The longsword came up off his shoulder and down on Svir like a bar of dawn. He half-sworded the estoc and parried with both hands but the huge longsword smashed the estoc down onto his chest, drove him to his knees. If Svir had not dropped one end of the estoc the West Knight would have simply ground the sword into Svir’s face and neck. As it was the block turned the longsword away to the left—but the bigger blade caught one of the estoc’s parrying spurs and ripped it from Svir’s hands.
No hesitation. Svir lunged from his knees and tackled the armored man. If he could get his arming sword out, wedge it through the man’s visor—
The West Knight headbutted him. Steel obliterated sight: Svir lost motor control. An armored gauntlet smashed him in the ear and smote him to the rock. His blood gushed over stone. “Fuck!” he bellowed, and kicked the jagata in the crotch, doing nothing. “Fuck you! Kill me now and the whole world will know! You’ve been seen murdering me! The guide knows it, that man knows it—will you lie? Will you lie, now, about who you killed here? I am a Prince! I am the brother of the Necessary King!”
The West Knight looked down at him in disgust. Finally, breathing evenly, barely winded, he sheathed his sword. “You live,” he said, “by procht alone.”
The Maia cavalryman swam into Svir’s wavering vision. “In the name of the King, leave that man be!”
The four assassins closed their sun visors and marched contemptuously down toward the Uczenith camp. The cavalryman helped Svir to his feet. “Thanks,” Svir said, beaming bloodily at him. “Shame we didn’t get to fight it out. Would’ve been an interesting matchup. To whom do I owe my continued life?”
“Ihuake Ro,” he said, grinning back. He was a pretty fuck, wasn’t he? Those folded eyes. “You’re Svirakir? The eunuch’s been promising your arrival. The king had given up all hope of your return. There’s been fighting. Bad fighting. We aren’t ready for winter. He hopes you’ll make a difference.”
“I see we both have good timing,” Svir panted. “I don’t like last-second reprieves—”
“Nothing last-second about it,” the cavalier said. “Your brother’s weather-woman Ochtanze gets word from agents in Vultjag. She knew you’d arrive today. We were supposed to meet you downslope, before you were ambushed.”
“But?”
“But there was a cave-in. Probably sabotage. Another act of Uzenith, ah”—he pursed his lips around the strange word—“procht. I had to climb up an air shaft.”
Svir dusted himself off. Mustn’t look disheveled in front of the horseman. “I’ve brought my brother a bride. And a political weapon to make the Uczenith shit their guts out. This matter of their rightful lord.”
“A bride,” the horseman said. His dark face hardened. “The bride is Heingyl Ri?”
Svir smiled fixedly at him, mind tunneling, trying to deduce what angle this man Ihuake Ro would take. “Yes. Heingyl Ri, Governor of Aurdwynn.”
“That madman Dziransi says he had a prophecy. A dream from the hammer.”
Svir had to laugh. “Did he, now?”
“Dziransi’s certain that a woman will be brought here. To prove the King’s vengeance is inescapable. You didn’t bring a woman named Baru, did you?”
“No,” Svir said. “Just myself. And important news. Tell me, Mister Ihuake Ro, what brings you to our high mountains? Anything I can help with?”
“I am searching for allies to free my ancestral duchy.” Now those cocky brown eyes were wary. “My companion Nayauru Aia makes suit for the king’s hand. I protect her.”
“Then we both have an interest in preserving the king?”
“We have interests in the king. They may not be common interests.”
“Have you thought about going over to those bastards?” Svir suggested, pointing to the shining army in the lake bed, the Uczenith in all their cynical grandeur.
“Of course not,” Ro snapped. “I know exactly what happens when a Necessary King falls. I’ve never liked thieves, rapists, or tyrants. Your people will be all that to us and more.”
He was sharp, then. “Are you any good in a fight, Ihuake Ro?”
The cavalier smiled hungrily. “Better than you, Prince Svirakir.”
Svir felt the lightning.
Long ago, in a faraway place, a secret fire had passed through Svir’s body. It had aligned something in him … something that thundered in the empty spaces of his mind. Whenever he didn’t know what to do, that palefire leapt within him, and a solution came.
His brother was at reign’s end. His home mansion was invested by its oldest foe. When his brother was scalped of his crown, the Stakhieczi would run rampant in Aurdwynn until starvation and plague scattered them.
But the lightning told him that he was not going to die here. The lightning told him that he had a destiny across the farthest sea.
“I’ll handle the procht and politics,” he said. “There may be some legalities to resolve … it may require bloodshed. If it comes to trial by combat, you’ll be my champion.”
“Champion in what cause, Your Highness?”
Svir looked up at his brother’s mountain: the mountain of his past. “A marriage,” he said. “The strangest web of marriages you ever did see.”
He looked around for Goat Face. She was gone. He began to walk uphill, into the katabatic wind. Ihuake Ro sighed and followed him.
Svir opened his mouth to the cold onrushing air. He began to sing.
On the lake below, speartips whirled in white sun-tip arcs. The drilling Uczenith phalanxes presented their faces to all sides, surrounded by imaginary foes, surrounded as the Stakhieczi were always surrounded, by drought, by dissent, by white cold death.