Another cuff. ‘I’m on the clock, damn it. What did youdoto this anyway?’
Icecaller glances over her shoulder. ‘Just a scrape. Took a hard fall in the circle.’
Steelfinder snorts. ‘You? Who was brave enough to do that?’
She lids her eyes. ‘Jealous?’
The needle lingers, beaded. Icecaller grins. ‘Relax, dipshit, it was Dad. Who else is gonna knock me on my ass?’
Steelfinder shrugs. ‘I don’t know. Nigh maybe? How’s she coming along?’
‘Full of shit and bollocks as usual. She’s great. The other kids don’t want to fight her anymore. They’re running out of teeth.’
‘She takes after her big sister.’ The needle dips and runs as angles blossom, black and red and black again. ‘You can’t leave damage this long. It’s dangerous. Anything that gets down to the blood.’
Icecaller shrugs. ‘Barely a scratch.’
Steel’s voice hardens. ‘A scratch is all that’s needed. You know that.’
There’s a quiet then. The low ceiling of their room filled with smoke, a smudged glow from the lights. The blanket feels tight, twined around Icecaller’s feet.
She reaches her hand back, runs it over Steelfinder’s stilled arm. ‘I know. Well. So Skinpainter says anyway.’
She feels Steel’s lips scuff against her hairline. ‘You don’t think they’re right?’
Icecaller twitches her free shoulder. ‘Maybe they are. I only know what I know.’
Steelfinder opens her mouth over the nape of her neck and talks down into the skin. Icecaller feels the vibrations run across her collarbone, as Steelfinder tuts softly. ‘No sense in taking risks. Let me finish you up.’
Her breath smells of spice and sex. Her fingers are cartographers.
The smoke hangs, the light lowers.
Later, Icecaller’s hands are still fucking freezing. She walks the halls of the Stump unsteadily, leaning heavily on her spear. She’s out of shape, too much sleeping and fucking.
Sparring in the ring doesn’t cut it. One scrape isn’t going to keep her strong, not with what’s coming. Not now Crowkisser’s touched the mountain. She can’t shake the memory of her slim body silhouetted against the flame. It doesn’t seem right that one girl could destroy everything she loves, it doesn’t seem fair.
She needs to get her head right. She needs to head out onpatrol. Taste what’s on the wind, and see what the word is outside Thell. The Stump is slumbering its way towards a war and she doesn’t like it. All that chat with Quickfish has just made it worse. The world is coming for them, and she needs to move to meet it.
As she winds her way down the spirals that cut through the body of the mountain, she passes forges, barracks, sleeping halls. Metal rings and runs dully. Hawkers shake bones and trinkets, clutches of them running in small gaggles between the traders, crossing palms and ducking curses.
Far below, her father sits in council with Belltoller and the Deadsingers, four survivors of the rebellion against the Empire, stirring the ashes and finding the fires of a new war. They’re chewing over the words Quickfish has brought them, picking the thorns from Skinpainter’s bold call to aid Quickfish, which is a call to arms in all but name. That sly warlock has put spark to kindling with studied care, sliding the whole mountain towards a confrontation with Crowkisser.
Her da is harder to rile, for all his blood gets hot. Right now, the old man will be a rock in a river, as the councillors drift against him like weeds. She can picture it perfectly.
Belltoller will say little, tall and silent as mountain ash. She will lean against Kinghammer’s ear and whisper, and her words will draw his mind to scars she bears from the last war and to the new scars waiting to blossom if they take up arms. To the inevitability of taking up arms, if they help this wild, spuff-headed boy who has come to their door. In the end, she will support him, for she always has, even though it’s cost her dear.
The Deadsingers will urge caution, their thin fingers will speak of patterns, ravelling and tradition. They will say that the omens caution patience, that the weight of ice lies heavy on the mountain, that the eagles still haunt the high passes. They’ll be happy to remain in the depths, far from the snap and crack of the cairn flags, unable to hear the rattle of the charms in the freshening wind that blows from the south. They will say this, but their eyes will drift to the light slanting into the mountain depths, and their old blood will thrum wild and hot at the thought of turningthe high songs loose again, of working a magic strong enough to pull Arissa Fallon back from the edge of death.
Her father will press his great palms to their shoulders. He will consider their words then retreat to that stark cleft in the depths of the cavern, that small room where he keeps himself, his memories, her childhood toys and her sister’s cot. He’ll pull forth a blunt axe and run a stone along the blade, so that the turn of the stone will fill his fingers and a cup will fill them when the stone does not. Later he will sleep and nothing will change, for now. The idea of leaving the mountain is hard. It’s shaped him since he was a boy. He’s freed the people in it; built a life inside it. Marching to defend it, to defend his friends, still means leaving it and putting the people inside at risk. You can’t rush a decision like that, as much as Quickfish or Skinpainter might want him to.
Icecaller feels a pang of sympathy for him, but her heart and her head still pull her to the world outside. She wants to see what life is like beyond the stone, and the ice. There must be more. And she can always come back to it. Her home will always be here. The thought of staying inside these walls while the world fights for survival fills her with a peculiar kind of frustration, like a fire growing under her toes.
Still, if Crowkisser comes to the mountain, its first daughter will be there to greet her.
The hawkers press closer as she moves through the lower halls. A young boy, pale skinned and strange, thrusts himself in front of her. His hair is strung with feathers, and stream-caught pebbles. He looks the part.
She smiles wearily at him. ‘Go on then, Hawkspit. What am I buying today?’
