‘Too bad,’ he mutters, half to himself, before swinging over to the other side of the gate.
He lets his arms take some of the strain, enjoying the exertion, riding the shadow like the cusp of a wave. The same procedure on the right-hand side; a quick press of the trigger and a disgruntled yowl as the gun bores its way into the rock.
Another quick check confirms that the battlements are still clear. Bless Shroudweaver and his magnetic personality.
Slickwalker works quickly. Taking the first shiver gingerly out of his pack, and settling it in the etched niche, before packing the hollow as full as he can, six or seven deep. Enough to level a sailing ship, and then the same again on the other side.
He covers them with a cloth to keep them still until they’re secure. His fingers linger a little on their rough shells. ‘Don’t let me down,’ he mutters.
The clink of metal from above ends that one-sided conversation.
Quick as a shudder, he flows away from the gate, back to his perch, to the empty nests and discarded bones. The guards on the battlements are none the wiser, chatting companionably. Slickwalker smiles. Enjoy it while you can.
He lets the gun have one last look at his handiwork before the shadow pulls him back towards Crowkisser. It’s enough to make a mountain burn. Enough to open Thell to her armies.
He sighs happily. A week to end this, no more. And if a worry lingers, the shadow claims it, and him, as he flows away from the mountain, and back to her arms.
70
The rain withdraws over the hills
but the hills remain
the hills withdraw over the horizon
but we remain
—Drykesang
They try to kill her in the third week. She stands barefoot on a low boundary wall, moss rough between her toes, her tongue alive with certainty.
The rising sun is warm on her back, her calves ache from walking, her thighs ache from riding. Her teeth are still thick with the taste of sleep, of Slickwalker, of a scorched meat breakfast.
Crowkisser watches her people watching her. Her army hangs on the edges of her words like birds on a branch. They’d hated her at first, god, how they’d hated her. Almost as much as they’d feared her. Kept her cowering behind the broken temple columns, hiding in Slickwalker’s protective shadow. Now here they are, choosing to march, to fight; not just for Astic, but for everyone still held in place by the old systems. She couldn’t be prouder.
They’d given up their names, but they’d received themselves in return. New people, for her new world, stronger and braver and free from the gods. Free from any authority but her guiding hand.
She wished Slick could see them, could see the world he was helping to build. This morning, like every morning, he was out scouting, tirelessly, flowing over field, hill and hamlet. Ferreting out the secrets of the Midlands, and the Barrowlands after that, always finding a way to make the land cough up enough food to keep them moving. Steering her people clear of the dangers; of theswamps and the scree slopes and the great storms that rolled over the plains like hammers, turning the earth to mud, and pounding the trees down into the soil. This was an unforgiving land. Half his time was spent finding the lees of hills, dry hollows where branches cut the wind into softness and offered up space for fires, for catching breath; they would be in trouble without him.
The locals fled before her army, sealing their doors with unfriendly eyes. Their minds heavy with stories of children lost to older wars, taken by bright-eyed leaders who threw them onto blades and spears, or left them to drown in that rain and mud. They couldn’t understand that this was different, thatshewas different. In time, she would make them understand, as she had helped Astic understand. For now, she drove onwards, turning her eyes from their warding gestures and their tense hands. Victory at Thell would persuade them more than days of talking ever could.
For that she needs her people. The people in front of her now.
In the crowd, she sees so many familiar faces, hundreds of miles from the winding Astic streets they called home. Crabflick, with his chipped tooth and easy smile, a boy with mussable hair who used to leave offerings on the temple steps, who now sits and breakfasts with her, complaining like clockwork about fish-bones and dry bread. A bit behind him sits Sandsinger, one of the oldest to march, grizzled and whiskered, her wiry arms loose on the buckthorn club she’s taken such a shine too. She was fast with it, too. Before the south, she’d told Crowkisser she’d been a netwife, mending ropes for her husband, mending herself when he drank. Crowkisser had opened him throat to gut one day, took him apart, tore his essence out and let it wither against the sky. They’d been close ever since. Sandsinger was like her grandmother, if her grandmother had drank too much, and licked the sea from her chapped knuckles each morning.
So many more familiar faces. Men and women that she treasured, from their scarred faces to their hopeful eyes. Above all, at the edges of the crowd, her long men lingered, quiet and watchful, palms light on the fishers’ knives that gave them their name. Sea men, quiet men, brave enough to find the dangerous voicesraised against her and hush them with salt and rope. At home in Astic, she’d felt them gather in the evenings, seasoning their ale with weeping, holding each other close and telling themselves they were doing the hardest, proudest work.
If only they knew how right they were. Her new world rested on the shoulders of brave, uncomplicated men.
Atop the wall, she keeps talking. Exhorting them towards the battle to come. As her voice rises and falls, her mind wanders to the faces that didn’t make it this far. There were always a few dissenters. Named ones first, like Fallon’s poor wife, her first, most brutal example. A necessary evil, to show the repercussions of clinging to an old name, and old ways. There hadn’t been many after the Lady of the Grey Towers, and none of them with her fortitude. Perhaps she’d lost patience with the later ones and dealt with them too harshly. She could still taste the first names she’d taken. The Lady Fallon strongest among them, like a wet, oil-slick hole in her tongue. Of the later ones, those idiot rebels, nothing remained. She’d shredded them like so many strips of carrion. After that, no one clung to their old names any more. Still, other, smarter opponents took new names, and nursed old grudges. She was hated for so many reasons – cartels she’d pushed from business, soldiers and dignitaries she’d cast down, every criminal who felt aggrieved to be punished for a crime. A whole corrupt rats’ nest was flushed clean when the south burnt, and still they chittered at her from the wreckage.
Most of them had come around in time. She’d talked to them, over tea, by fires, under temple pillars strung by wet-hung ropes. Most of them came around. Some grudgingly, some dissembling, but that faded over time. Resignation drifted into acceptance. Acceptance into compliance. Compliance into furtherance of her goals.
For those that didn’t recant there were the long men, and beyond the long men, Slick. She would have been lost long ago without him. His laugh, his crooked shoulders and slender hands, his steady fingers.
It’s the fingers that pull her back to the present. Fingers tensedin the crowd, pushing through knots, past smiling faces. A set face above them, the man’s lips white, one hand moving bodies aside, the other unpicking the clasps on a tight-drawn cloak. He moves fast, and as he does, Crowkisser catches just a glimpse of red thread, and a brief flash of gold light. God light.
His head is thrown back as he leaps for her, that light blossoming like a struck flame, spilling from his eyes and mouth, that smell of spice, a taste of honey. The sickly twist of magic on the tongue. Her heart lurches in panic.
