Page 5

“So, Worrig,” I said to our guide after another hour’s march, mostly up, always west. “Was that it, then? Was where we got you the last village we’re going to see?”

He didn’t get that so I said, “Village,” pointing behind us. Then I said, “Village?” pointing forward.

“Is one more, very small,” he said. “We there before day’s fall.”

“Any inns?”

“No.”

“What is there?”

He said a word I didn’t know in Wostran.

When I shook my head at him, he made the sound of a long letter zed behind his teeth.

I shook my head again.

He made the zed again, then poked me with a finger.

I looked at Galva to see if she knew what he meant, but she was in Galvaland, aware only of the path in front of us.

When I shook my head again, he shook his back, giving up, then marched forward faster, staying out in front of us now, where conversation was presumably better.

I’ll say one thing for the last few miles of the well-known world; it was beautiful. In a bleak way, but grand. Three colors dominated: there was the tawny grass of the hills, which sort of blended with the autumn yellow of the increasingly scarce trees; the middle band of the world, above the rocky hills, were white, snowy mountains, tall and sharp, like the teeth of a great saw; above those, sky like lead. A storm far away. And we were walking toward it.

The air seemed to grow colder with every step.

I rooted around in the donkey’s saddlebags. I passed over the gently moving Book of the Full Shadow, which I’d sprung an iron bear trap on to damp its magic and hold it shut. It didn’t seem to be able to make much trouble shut, besides writhing every now and again like a wicked babby. I kept splonking through the saddlebags until I found the hat I’d chosen, a kind of grayish poof of some squealing something local, not a rabbit. It took the chill off my head nicely, though. So nicely I didn’t even care when Worrig turned around, saw it on me, and made a bucktoothed rodent face at me.

Then sneezed.

Fair play.

I felt fairly stupid when we came to a field of tall, orange flowers, starting to droop with the cold, and a few sluggish bees getting the year’s last pollen from them. Worrig dropped back, made the zed, “ZZZZZZZZZZ,” then poked me in the arm hard enough I still felt his finger after. “Szpezska,” he said, which sort of sounded like buzzing anyway.

“Szpezska,” I repeated, getting a satisfied nod for my pronunciation.

I looked at Galva to see if she’d give it a go, but she didn’t. When I kept looking at her anyway, she said, “I am not going to Wostra.”

“Szpezska,” Worrig said again, prompting me with a gesture. He wanted the Holtish word for it.

“Fucking bee,” I said.

“Fuckinbee,” he repeated.

“That’s fucking perfect.”

This last town was even less of a town than the last not-town. Really, it was a bunch of stacked-stone houses, one of which had a weathered wood sign with the image of a bee burned into it. Worrig motioned me to go up to the door, bleached as gray as the stones around it. I knocked. A girleen of twenty or so with the same tanned face and white-blond hair they all had here opened the door and let us in with a few words in something like Gunnish, and I saw that we were in a place that made all good things that come from the hive: honeycomb, candles, honey of course, but, best of all, mead. Crude glass bottles of it in two sizes, catching what little light there was in a way that made my mouth water.

“I’ll have that, please,” I said.

I was barely outside before I dipped a finger into the honey and offered to share it around. Galva wasn’t having any, but the Wostran had out with a piece of stale-looking bread and poured some on it. I hadn’t had honey for a long moment, and my mouth filled with water at the first burst of that trapped sweetness. A memory came to me, the way they will at a taste or a smell; my eldest sister’s girl, Moirvàn, as a wee babby, tasting honey for the first time. How her green eyes had widened. She’d bounced for the joy of it, her tiny hand pawing the air for the spoon to come back. That’s the moment she’d become my favorite niece, I think, and I know you’re not supposed to name your favorites, but there, I’ve done it, and I’ll lie about it later if I need to. When, soon after, she turned out to be a stammerer, it only made her dearer to me; but the hook was already in.

“Ya sure?” I said to the Spanth, waving the jar at her, but she was sure. I imagined her as a babby, frowning at a spoonful of honey, pointing at the wine bottle, and had a little laugh to myself. Then, as if the gods had conspired to prove her right in her refusal, I was soon gently spitting and pinching at my lips with my fingers. A hair in my mouth, coarse in all that smooth honey. Worse, a short one. I looked at the donkey, hoping it was his, but I didn’t feel optimistic.

“For fuck’s sake,” I said, puckering, and put the jar away.

The Wostran noticed what had happened and nodded, saying, “Is good luck.” He gestured vaguely up ahead, but I had no idea what he was talking about.