The Greensward, as Kayden referred to it, was a sea of grasses. He called it a plain; a level flatland with the smallest of gently rolling rises, washed over with knee-high grasses that in warmer days would have waved under the brushing touch of the wind. The grasses were brittle now, shades of brown and gold, but Shae could imagine how, in summer, the landed sea would have rippled green.
The road cut across it like a ribbon untied and flung out across the landscape: a cart-wide path where the passing of horses and wagons had trampled and broken the grasses into submission—paralleled on either side by the lumicklines running between stone pillars, their blue glow pale and faint in the daylight.
For the greater part of the chilly morning, she and Kayden followed that road east.
Ahead, the broad surface of the Greensward gave way to larger hills lined with tall trees. That’s what Kayden assured her, anyway. For all the hours they rode, Shae could see nothing beyond the sweeping plain but the high mountains of the Pillars upon the horizon, that wall of sharp peaks as tall as the sky. Somewhere at their distant feet, she assumed, hidden from view by the curvature of the world, hid the promised hills and forests.
They rode mostly in silence under the cold sun, trailing a fog from the mingled breath of horses and riders. A few birds chirped and twittered up from the grasses—little things, fast and sure—but there were not many. When Shae asked why there were so few, he told her that most of the birds had flown south to spend the winter in the Heron Marshes. It was warmer there, he said. On some days it would be like they didn’t even have a winter.
Winter.
It had seemed so strange a concept. In the Fair Isles, there were months of summer and months of rain. Here in Aionia, it was months of summer and months of such cold that mountain creeks would seize up and cease running, as still and stiff as streams of stone.
At least that’s what Kayden said. She’d laughed, thinking it some kind of Windborn joke, the first time he’d said it. Water was water. Rock was rock. But Kayden hadn’t been jesting.
Water would indeed freeze, he insisted.
Shae had felt cold, seen snow, when she’d first come over the Pillars in the Windborn airship that had brought her here. But only now, when every hour pushed the cold deeper into her flesh, every mile brought more chilled stiffness to her bones, did she begin to understand what winter might mean.
It was unnatural and wrong, and it frightened her.
They stopped for lunch on a grassy rise that was no different than any other on the Greensward. No fire for the brief rest. Just a chance to stretch their legs and relieve themselves before breaking off some chunks of the bread that Kayden had brought from the kitchens at Felcamp. There was a rock not far from the road, a flat boulder like an island in the grassy sea, and the two of them sat down upon it while the horses grazed free, sniffing out any remaining bits of greenery in the brush.
Shae watched them for a time, but after a few minutes, she found herself staring at the lumicklines. “They’ll really stop an aluman?” she asked.
Kayden had been studying a bank of clouds that was growing along the western horizon behind them. He turned back when she spoke, and he quickly saw what she was talking about. “That they will.”
“How?”
“I’ve told you before,” he said. “I don’t really know. The power shuts them down somehow.”
“Are the lines always blue?”
“That’s the lumick. Or at least that’s what I’ve been told.”
Shae took another bite of her bread and chewed on it slowly, sucking out the flavors as she thought. “Is that why the place we’re going to is called the Blue Keep? It has lots of lumicks there?”
Kayden nodded, picking at the lichen on the rock beside him. “They say the lumicklines run across the walls and gates of the pass to keep the alumen at bay. A lumicker there wouldn’t have title to the place like I will, but I assure you he’d be thought far more valuable to the Blue Keep than I would ever be.”
“There’s a lumicker there?” Shae couldn’t help but be interested in the possibility of meeting someone who could tell her how these Windborn wonders really worked.
Kayden looked up. “Don’t get too excited, Shae. Even if there is, the lumickers don’t share their secrets. Not even much with each other, I’m told.”
“Oh.”
He smiled. “Not that a lumicker has ever faced down a Bone Pirate.”
Shae thought about throwing the last bite of her bread at him, but she ate it instead. If the first day of their travels had been any indication, there were many hours to go before they’d stop for the night and eat dinner.
Still savoring the bite, she stood and stretched before she resettled the warm cloak about her shoulders. When she looked back, Kayden was once again staring at the clouds to the west, which had definitely moved closer. “We should get going,” she said.
Kayden did not disagree. He swallowed the last of his own bread, stood, then wiped his hands on his thick woolen trousers. “Mount up,” he said. “By sundown tomorrow, we should be getting close to Homilden, a village on the edge of the Greensward. This time of year, there should be plenty of space at its inn. Good food and a welcome bed.”
“I’ll take that,” Shae said.
“As will I,” he agreed.
*
It was only a couple of hours later, as they came over a slight rise in the road, that Kayden reined in his horse. What light there had been was behind them—they’d been chasing their growing shadows since lunch—but the clouds looming over them had set a gloom upon the plains. Nevertheless, Kayden shielded his eyes as he stood up in his stirrups, as if it would make him see better.
Shae tried to follow the line of his gaze, but she could see nothing. “What is it?”
He pulled his hand down and chewed on his lip before answering. “I think it’s a wagon.” Shae stared again. She still couldn’t see anything. Then, sighing at her own forgetfulness, she felt inside her pockets and retrieved the brass spyglass that the Bone Pirate had gifted her when she’d been made a shipmaiden—one of the few things of her old life that she’d had with her when Kayden took her aboard his airship. She extended it, then peered through its magnifying lenses, fighting away the strangeness of searching out a wagon on the road instead of sails on the sea.
It was indeed a wagon, stopped upon the road itself; a hard-sided wooden box on four wheels, its two horses unhitched and grazing as lazily as their own had at midday. “It’s not moving,” she said.
Kayden made a sound of agreement. “Might be it’s broken down. Might also be bandits.”
Shae pulled the spyglass down. “Bandits?”
He sat back in his saddle, smiled as he looked over at her. “Land pirates, remember?”
Shae cracked her neck, thinking how good it would feel to be doing something again if they were attacked, but at the same time missing the skull mask and the steady beat of the skin drums and the waves that should’ve been filling her ears. “Are bandits likely on the road?”
The first specks of a cold rain began pocking the dirt around them. Kayden glanced up at the clouds overhead, then shrugged. “Can be. We could go around, but I’d rather not leave the road. And maybe it’s someone who could use some help.” He started his horse forward at an easy pace.
Shae put the glass away and followed close beside him. The raindrops were starting to fall harder. “To’whir’s spit,” she muttered.
“Spit?”
“To’whir is the god of storms, remember?” Shae said. “He arose from the union of Mother Sea and Father Sky.”
“So the rain is his spit?”
They had a steady pace, so she was able to use one hand to pull up the hood of her cloak to ward off the coming rain. “His spit. His tears. It is him himself, for he is the Storm.”
Kayden narrowed his eyes, then seemed to shrug. “Sometimes I think I can understand you,” he said. He pulled up his own hood. “Sometimes I think I never will.”
“Oh, I suspect you don’t understand a lot of women,” Shae muttered. If Kayden heard her, he did not respond.
The road dipped down into a long, shallow low. Only when they broke over the next rise did they see the features of the wagon clearly.
It was like nothing in the Fair Isles—longer than it was wide, with tall wooden sides sloping slightly outward from the wheels. There was a window in the side wall that she could see, no different from the windows she’d had aboard ship. The roof above was curved planks, like a boat flipped upside down, and it extended out over a bench seat at the front, where a two-horse team would normally be hitched. The wooden wheels were tall enough that a ladder was needed to get down from the door at the wagon’s back end. Another ladder looked to be permanently affixed to the wood beside the door, running up from the back step to the roof. The sides were all painted in bright-blue paint, the wheels and window trim an even brighter yellow.
“A lumicker’s wagon,” Kayden said as they rode on.
The sight of it was bewildering to Shae. It was a house on wheels. “They all look like that?”
“More or less.”
Shae thought of how the Bone Pirate had a sea chest filled with the flags of different houses, which more than once they’d used to slip closer to their unsuspecting prey. “Could it still be bandits? Using a lumicker’s wagon?”
“Not a chance,” Kayden said, picking up his pace to close the distance to it. “No bandit would attack a lumicker.”
“Because the lumicklines protect everyone?”
“That, and the lumickers have things that make my handcannons look like toys.” A gloom passed over him, but he physically shook it away. “Anyway,” he continued, “you can see it’s a lumicker since he’s working on the lines.”
Sure enough, as Shae looked closely, she could see that the wagon was beside one of the stone pillars that held up the lumicklines along the Greensward Road. Now that she knew where to focus her eyes, she could see that the lumicker himself had climbed atop the wagon. He was kneeling upon its roof and appeared to be working on a pillar on the north side of the road. She could see, too, that the lumickline beside him was unlit; it glowed blue going into the pillar, but it was a lifeless cable on the other side.
“Hello there!” Kayden called out when they were close.
The man atop the wagon glanced up, saw them, and stood to meet their approach. He wore a wide-brimmed brown hat, peaked at the ridge, and a knee-length brown coat with leather patches on the elbows and hips. There were silver tools in his hands and at his belt that were unlike anything Shae had ever seen. He was gripping a pipe between his teeth.
“Lumickers aren’t the trusting sort,” Kayden whispered over at her. “Probably shouldn’t mention that you’re a pirate.”
“Bandit.”
“That too.”
Closer now, and Shae could see that the man wore a thick, grey mustache, its ends curling up against his cheeks. He eyed them warily, and when they were a stone’s throw from the wagon, he held up a tool that looked like it was part blade. “That’s plenty far right there, you four,” he said around his pipe.
Kayden reined in his horse and pulled back his hood. Shae did the same, trying not to look confused by the inclusion of the horses in his counting of their party.
“We’re just passing by, sir,” Kayden said. “Would’ve given you wide berth but didn’t know if maybe you needed help.”
The lumicker lowered the tool in his hand, but he didn’t appear to relax. His stare, coming out from under his wide-brimmed hat, seemed to be measuring them as the rain fell. “You got a silver turn-knuckle?”
Kayden blinked. “A silver—”
The lumicker puffed on his pipe. “Turn-knuckle.”
Kayden shook his head. “I don’t know what that is.”
The lumicker chuckled to himself, and Shae was glad to see that Kayden was just as confused as she was. “Reckon you can’t be much help, then.”
Kayden gave a half-bow, then wiped rain off his face with what looked like an embarrassed smile. “Should’ve realized that when we got close,” he said.
“So,” the lumicker said after a moment, “you’re heading to Homilden?”
“We are,” Kayden said.
The lumicker pulled his pipe, looked at the bowl, sniffed, and then used it to point down the road. “It’s another day, day and half.”
Kayden glanced over at Shae. “That’s … that’s what we figured. Camping on the road tonight.”
The man gave a single nod of his chin, apparently aimed at their saddlebags. “Got yourselves tent and supplies?”
“We do,” Kayden said. “Can I ask, how far is the line out?”
“Just here to the next pillar. You’ll be fine beyond that.”
“Thank you,” Kayden said.
The lumicker put a hand to his hat in what looked like a kind of farewell. He put his pipe back into his mouth.
Kayden nodded, then lifted up his hood again and signaled to Shae to start forward.
They trotted their horses around the wagon, keeping as much distance as they could. Shae felt the lumicker’s gaze as he watched them pass by and continue on down the road in the rain.
After a minute she started to turn in the saddle to look back at the wagon, but Kayden’s quick hush stopped her. “Don’t look back. He’ll think it’s suspicious.”
Shae stiffened up, locking her gaze on the road as it cut through the grass sea ahead. “You think he’s still watching?”
“I know he is. Like I said: they aren’t the trusting sort.”