From a dream of bloody teeth, Bela gasped awake.
Hands met her shoulders. Firm hands. Both strong and warm.
“Mistress,” Oni said. “Stay still.”
Bela groaned. There was a taste in her mouth, like old leather, and she tried to swallow it away. Her mouth was dry, her lips parched. “Water,” she rasped.
“Of course.” One of Oni’s hands was under her back, lifting her up. “Tewrick,” her maiden said, “the waterskin.”
Bela blinked as she leaned up. The world seemed reluctant to come into focus.
Everything was dark. Was she under the boats still?
Oni had a waterskin to her lips. The water was like ice against her lips and throat, but it felt good. “Easy. You’ve been asleep for two days.”
Bela forced her eyes wider. She saw the little man first. They were indeed still under the boats. After handing Oni the skin, he was pulling back to the same spot where he’d always been. He saw her looking at him, and he averted his eyes.
Her maiden was closer. Bela turned to her, looked into her eyes. She smiled. She started to lift her right hand to touch the girl’s worried face.
Oni caught her arm at the elbow. The touch sent a jolt of … something up into her shoulder. Something that didn’t feel right. “Lie down, mistress,” Oni said. Her voice cracked.
Bela shook. Something was wrong. “What—?”
“We did what we could,” Oni said. “We didn’t have a choice.”
Bela read it in her maiden’s eyes. She remembered the blizzards. The bear. She didn’t need to look down. But she did.
There was a space, a void of cold air, where her right forearm had once been. The stump that remained, just below Oni’s fingers at her elbow, was a bundle of bandages.
“I’m sorry,” Oni whispered.
She was fighting tears, and Bela knew why. She’d never helm again. Not one-handed.
The fact struck Bela with such a remarkable clarity that, for a moment, it stopped her breath in her chest. But then she saw something else behind Oni’s emotions, something that started her heart moving again. Devotion. Loyalty. Love.
With a conscious effort, Bela forced her right arm to relax. She lifted her left hand—her only hand—and brought her fingertips to Oni’s cheek. It was an unfamiliar thing to touch her like this, but Bela was grateful for it. “You did well,” she told her. It was true, though her jaw was tight as she fought to keep from weeping herself. “I would’ve ordered the same.”
Oni closed her eyes and held Bela’s hand to her cheek as she nodded.
I’ll never again stand behind the wheel of my ship, she thought.
Your ship is gone, a voice replied.
The canvas flap at the other end of the shelter shook. Only then did Bela notice that they were alone beneath the boats.
At the sound, Oni opened her eyes and quickly wiped the tears from them to compose herself. “She’s awake,” she said over her shoulder.
The canvas split open, sending a blinding beam of light into the darkness. Bela gasped, instinctively tried to shield her eyes. But the nothingness where her hand had been did nothing to obstruct the brightness.
Fortunately, a moment later, a face blocked it out. Sanyu. “Good. We’re ready to start.”
At Oni’s nod, Sanyu disappeared, and the flaps closed again. The maiden turned to Bela. “You need to try to get up, mistress.”
“The blizzard broke?”
“Yesterday.” She moved her hand to Bela’s back again, to help her get moving. “Go slowly. It was a hard fever.”
*
Sitting in the snow, Bela watched her crew break down the shelter. The morning sun was bright, but her thoughts were dark. She was their weakness now. As weak as a man.
No, she corrected herself. Weaker than that. Tewrick had two arms, and he was putting them both to use in helping the other women flip the two boats and reassemble their supplies in them. She had only one arm, and the difficulty of her ordeal had left her too weak even to walk.
And more than that, the man had saved her. He might’ve saved them all. When they had been screaming for Eshe to help during the attack, the girl had held herself and cried. So it had been the reader—the forgotten little man—who’d picked up the harpoon and charged out into the blizzard. With his help, they’d held the bear off long enough for Neka and Sanyu to pull her back inside. Then the bigger woman had grabbed the second harpoon, strode back out into the storm, and buried it in the beast’s thick neck.
The bear’s fat had made a fire hot enough to sear Bela’s bloodied stump and fight back her fever. The truth was that they’d done well in that. Bela hadn’t lied when she told Oni that she would’ve ordered the same.
The bear’s fur skin was big enough for two cloaks: one for Neka, and one for Tew, who wore his with a pride that was strange to see. More important was what was beneath the skin: pounds and pounds of fresh meat. A welcome feast for the starving women, with enough to feed them for days to come.
The beast that had taken Bela’s ship, her crew, and now her hand had also given them a chance at life.
Looking around, she noticed little sign of her struggle with the white monster. The storm had wiped it away. Beyond the bloodied pile of bones, all that she could see was a white blankness that reminded her of the dried sheets of parchment that made up the reader’s books.
But where those pale sheets were covered in the black marks of ink that he could turn into the sounds of words, the vast plane of ice and snow was featureless, and the only sound was that of the wind.
It was almost as if the god of storms had wiped the world clean while they’d been beneath the overturned boats—erased it of people and their squabbles and their bloodshed, of everything but their small, forgotten troop, clinging to the barren, cold edge of the earth. Nothing else remained.
Oni ran a shadow line to determine the direction they needed to go. No one spoke of going anywhere but north. There was nothing behind them now. They all seemed to understand that. All that they could do was move forward, step by trudging step, until they found their place of rest.
The boats loaded, north known, Bela’s crew hoisted her into a boat with what was left of the meat.
They began to walk.