I look over at the eastern edge of the gathering.
Aislin has uncrossed her arms.
Instead she is holding one of the painted objects in both hands and she's looking down at it with the expression of someone who has encountered a thing they did not expect to encounter, which is to say an expression that isn't armor. She turns it over. Looks at the back. Tilts it. Something in her face does a thing that isn't quite a smile but has the structural bones of one.
"This," Drogath says, grandly, gesturing at the object in her hands and everyone's hands, "is only the beginning."
If this is what the next few weeks hold, I am going to have an excellent month.
7
AISLIN
The painted wooden egg sits on the table in my room like it belongs there, which it does not.
I'd brought it back because leaving it behind had felt rude in a way I couldn't justify refusing, and now it's there next to my sharpened stick and my leather-wrapped river stone like a small cheerful accusation. It's red with a gold stripe down the middle. Someone had clearly done it with care. The symmetry is almost perfect.
I ignore it and go to bed.
Ursik is alreadyat the sparring ground when I arrive.
Normally he is on time. I've been able to count on that. But now something has changed — he's here before me, moving through the basic warm-up sequence I'd watched him do that first morning, the slow shoulder rolls and the weight shifts from foot to foot, and he looks completely unbothered by the hour and by the cold and by existing generally.
"You're early," I say.
"You're on time." He doesn't stop moving. "I was early."
"I don't care about the distinction."
"Good morning to you too."
I set down my outer layer on a low branch and roll my sleeves. The air still has teeth in it this far north at dawn, even as the season turns. The frost on the ground crunches under my boots. I walk through my own warm-up and don't look at him, which is the default.
"So," Ursik says.
"Don't."
"I haven't said anything."
"You were about to." I roll my left shoulder and feel the joint pop satisfyingly. "Don't."
"We both know I'm no good at being quiet." He completes his shoulder roll and turns to face me. In the low morning light he is very large and very difficult to make peripheral, which is a physical quality I resent him for. "I was going to say that Drogath looked particularly excellent yesterday. Very dramatic entrance. I thought the horn was a good touch."
"The horn was three blasts."
"Aconsideredthree blasts."
"It was loud."
"It wasceremonial?—"
"Ursik." I face him squarely. "I don't care about the horn."
He grins. It does the thing it does where it takes over most of his face and he looks like an enormous idiot who is delighted with himself. I have catalogued this expression extensively. It has not grown less irritating.
"So," he says again. "What did you think of Peter the Long-Eared?"
I give him the look that has historically ended conversations and start toward the marked centre of the sparring ground. He falls into position opposite me with the ease of someone who has done this enough times that his body knows the choreography before his brain does.
