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The silence caught her attention. No sound of steel on stone as Torchay sharpened one of his numberless blades. She’d tried to count them once, the dirks and daggers and short swords secreted in every place conceivable around Torchay’s body. But just when she thought she had them all, he would produce another from some invisible spot. And whenever he had a spare moment, he would sharpen them. The rasping sound had played accompaniment to every quiet moment of the last nine years. Until now.
He sat in his usual place beside the street door, a wicked little blade—needle thin and razor sharp—in one hand, his whetstone forgotten in the other as he watched her.
The skin between her shoulder blades prickled. She did not have time for this now, whatever it was. They had a battle to fight, probably before dawn. She refused to encourage him. But she could not refuse to listen if he chose to speak.
“Yes, I’m your bodyguard,” he said finally. “I’ve served you for nine years. I’d like to think I’ve done a good job of it.”
“You have. Exemplary.” Was that what had his hair on too tight? His qualifications record?
“For nine years, I’ve been no farther from you than a spoken word. I know you better than anyone. Better than your family. Better than your naitani.” He paused and looked at his blade as if wondering why he held it. “The battle tomorrow—it’s not like the bandits we’ve fought before. It doesn’t look good, does it.” He didn’t ask a question.
“No. It doesn’t.” Kallista still didn’t know where Torchay was going with this, but she had never given him anything less than the truth.
“This time tomorrow, we’ll most likely be dead.”
“Very probably.”
He looked at her then, his clear blue eyes holding her gaze. “If I’m going to die, Kallista, I want to die with friends. The army isn’t a good place for making them. You’re the only person I can think of who I’d consider a friend. You’re my captain, my naitan, and I’m your bodyguard. But—is it possible—could we not also be friends?”
Friendship. Was that all he wanted? Such a simple, utterly difficult thing. Someone who cared about him not because they had to, not for ties of blood or marriage, but simply because they liked him.
Did Kallista have friends? Naitani in the army were too valuable, too rare to concentrate them in large numbers, and the regular officers were often what the average citizen thought them: dim and sometimes cruel. She’d met a few fellow naitani she liked, but postings in the far corners of the Adaran continent kept her from furthering the acquaintance.
The person Kallista knew best, the one whose moods she could interpret just from the sound of steel on stone or the huff of breath through his beaked nose, the one who kept her secrets and guarded her privacy, was Torchay. Was that friendship?
She rather thought it was. “We are friends, Torchay,” she said. “You’ve perhaps been a better friend to me than I have to you, but we have been friends for a long time. Why else would we have lasted nine years?”
Torchay slicked his knife along the stone, a satisfied sound. “I thought so.”
“You know, you’ll sharpen that knife away to nothing if you keep that up.”
He grinned at the familiar comment. “Perhaps,” he said in his regular response. “But it will be a very sharp nothing.”
They were friends. Everything was exactly the same as before, and everything was different. She knew. At least one person in this world considered her a friend.
Torchay’s head came up at the noise of doors opening and closing, boots clattering on flagstone. “That will be Beltis and Hamonn.”
CHAPTER TWO
Torchay put away his blade so quickly Kallista did not see where and picked up the cloaks tossed on the bench beside him. The blue he handed to Kallista, and draped the blue-trimmed black over his forearm. It would likely get cold before dawn, she realized, and as usual, Torchay had already thought of it.
“I’ll have them assemble in the courtyard,” he said and disappeared into the outer rooms where the others lived.
Kallista led her troop through the dark streets of Ukiny by a pale steady light courtesy of the South naitan Iranda. Her best skill was lighting up a dark battlefield, but she could also scorch enemy soldiers, depending on how far away they were, how many they were and whether the local chickens had danced a waltz or a strut that morning. Iranda’s magic was not under the best of control, but she hadn’t burnt any Adaran soldiers since she’d been under Kallista’s command.
Only five naitani besides herself, plus their five bodyguards, made up Kallista’s troop. Three wore the yellow tunics of South naitani—Beltis the fire thrower, Iranda the scorcher and a girl from the eastern coast who could spoil the enemy’s food. Kallista wasn’t sure what use Mora would be in battle, but she was part of the troop, so she would be with them.
The lone naitan in the green of East magic could cause uncontrollable growth in plant life. Rynver was one of the few male naitani in the military. Men did have magic, but it was less common—perhaps one in every ten rather than the one-in-five rate of women born with magic. His parents hadn’t expected their son to have magic, so Rynver had never learned to control it. His military service had already stretched beyond the required six years, but when he learned control, like Iranda, he’d be gone. Back to civilian life, working on a farm somewhere.
The other North naitan wouldn’t have to wait. When Adessay turned twenty-two and finished his tour of mandatory military duty, he had a place waiting in one of the western mines. Today, he would be spilling debris from the breach down the glacis as the Tibrans tried to climb it, rolling stones in their path and generally disrupting their advance. He didn’t have a great deal of power to put behind his earthmoving, but that and his excellent control was why he would be welcomed outside the army.
Beltis would spend her life in the military, like Kallista, because her fire starting was too powerful, exploding ovens and setting houses on fire even after years of working on her control. Kallista’s control was so fine she could set tiny blue sparks dancing from finger to finger—and sometimes did when a staff meeting droned on and on and on. But no one had any use for her lightning, save Adara’s defense forces. Defending the helpless gave her magic some use, gave her life a purpose.
When her troop was disposed to her satisfaction, Kallista wrapped herself in her cloak and went to stand near the arrow slit in the parapet. The lights of campfires spread down the beach as far as she could see. She’d have suspected the Tibrans of lighting more fires than they had troops to demoralize Ukiny’s garrison, but she had watched them unloading. She had never seen such a vast army, never imagined a need for such a thing.
Kallista turned her face into the wind, feeling it rush past her from the shore, from the North. She squared up her shoulders, pointing them east and west so that North lay directly before her. First the Jeroan Sea, then the lower fringes of the Tibran continent. It rose to a high plateau ringed by cliffs, or so she’d been told, and beyond that, mountains. Mountains as high and wild as the Devil’s Tooth range along the neck that bridged the sea, but colder. Beyond the mountains lay pure North. Cold, clear, rational. Utterly unlike Kallista’s own hot-tempered, impulsive, passion-ruled nature.
Perhaps that was why the One had given her North magic, so that its icy control could provide what she did not possess in herself. Kallista opened herself to the North, calling its cold clarity into her mind and soul, filling herself with its sharp-edged magic.
She sensed Torchay’s presence behind her. “You should sleep, Sergeant.”
“So should you. Your rest is more important than mine. Your lightning will be needed. We guards have divided the watch.”
Kallista glanced toward Beltis’s stocky guard who stood over his charge. Hamonn gave her a tiny nod, acknowledging his duty, accepting it from her. “You’re right,” she said. “The battle will begin when it begins.”
She lay down where she was, her back against the fortification, and listened to the quiet sounds Torchay made as he settled close by. “Sleep well, friend.”
The silence that answered had her fearing she’d overstepped some unknown bounds, until at last he spoke, his voice even quieter than hers. “And you also…friend.”
“Stop! Wait, dammit—what kind of friend are you?” Stone bent over, hands on his knees, and tried to decide whether the contents of his stomach were going to come out. He knew he’d feel better if he could just shed his jacket in this infernal heat, but the padded gray nuisance was part of the uniform. They could unbutton it, but they couldn’t leave it off even in camp.
“I’m your only friend, thank you. No one else would put up with your rubbish.”
Stone tilted his head and peered up at Fox who had stopped after all and was waiting, swaying slightly in the offshore wind, his face strange and shadowy in the firelight coming from the nearby crossway between tents. Stone knew that face better than his own. Both of them named Warrior, of the highest caste Tibre had to offer, below only the Rulers themselves. Both of them vo’Tsekrish, of the king’s own city.
They had been partnered the day they left women’s quarters to begin warrior training, when they were six years old. They were now twenty-two. Or maybe twenty-three. Stone didn’t keep track of that sort of thing.
He and Fox had learned to read side by side from the same book. They had learned to fight back-to-back against the same teachers. They had even discovered the pleasures of women at the same time, though not with the same woman. Stone trusted Fox with his life.
But at the moment, he could cheerfully throttle him. “I thought you said you knew where women’s quarters were.”
“I didn’t say that. You did.” Fox grabbed a handful of Stone’s hair and pulled him more or less upright, leaning down until they stood eye to eye.
Stone envied him those few inches that made the lean necessary. “’S not fair,” he muttered. “I should be the taller. I’m lead in this pair.”
“You’re drunk.” Fox shoved and Stone staggered back several paces.
“Am not. If I was drunk, I’d have fallen. ’Sides, Stores won’t give us enough to get drunk. Just enough to get pleasantly snockered. Besides that, you’re drunk too.”
“Not drunk. Snockered.” Fox frowned. “Why d’you suppose that is?”
“Dunno.” Stone looked around for a place to sit. He didn’t recognize the tents—though why he thought he should since all something-thousand of them looked exactly alike, he didn’t know.
The tents were wide enough for a tall man to stretch out without getting his feet wet, long enough for six men to sleep side by side without quite touching, and high enough to stand up in if you didn’t mind ducking a bit. Or ducking a bit more if you were Fox. And they were set up in identical long rows with space between them for walking and mustering.
Stone didn’t recognize the warriors strolling about, either. Except for Fox. He recognized him. Worse luck. “Dunno why we’re snockered,” he said again, “’cept the First and Finest are always a little snockered when they go charging up through the breach. And ’cause they gave us the stuff and what else were we to do with it but drink it?”
“Maybe that’s why.” Fox set a small keg on its end and plopped down on it. “Give us these fancy red poufs of trousers so we’ll be sure to get shot at. Get us just snockered enough we’ll run like lunatics into that hellmouth, and call us a brilliant-sounding name like First and Finest so we won’t realize we’re something else entirely, like First and Foolishest.”
“No such word as foolishest,” Stone offered, nodding sagely. Or as sagely as he could, given that he was at least a quarter full of some truly vile liquor. “And you shouldn’t talk that way. It’ll get back to the Rulers. You do realize you’re sitting on a keg of black powder, don’t you?”
Carefully, Fox leaned to one side and peered down at his impromptu seat. “Damn me, so I am. Suppose it wouldn’t do to get myself blown to bits prematurely.”
“No. Won’t do at all.” Stone took his partner’s hand and hauled him to his feet. “D’you suppose we started drinking too early? They haven’t started the cannonade yet, have they?” He froze, trying to force thought through his slightly pickled brain, to hear what he ought to be hearing. “Have I gone deaf?”
Just then, the concentrated thunder of hundreds of cannon firing simultaneously at close range threatened to knock both men off none-too-steady feet.
“Did you hear that?” Fox said when the noise faded.
“Yes.”
“Then you’re not deaf.”
“Do you know where we are?” Again Stone tried to pick out landmarks.
“Haven’t a clue.”
“I don’t suppose you know where women’s quarters are from here.”
“Not a bit.”
Stone shoved his hair out of his face with both hands. “Why doesn’t your hair ever get in your way? It’s just like mine, yellow and curly. It should get in your way like mine.”
“I remember to get mine cut.” Fox produced a length of string, bunched Stone’s hair together on the top of his head and tied it off. “You look ridiculous. Like there’s a fountain sprouting from your head.”
“Don’t care. It’s out of my way. Thanks, brodir.”
“Anytime.” Fox paused, then pointed at the banner hanging above a nearby tent. “Isn’t that the vo’Haav banner?”
Stone turned, looked. The banner was hard to see in the firelight, but he thought he recognized a black bear on the yellow flag. “If a bear is vo’Haav’s emblem, then it is.”
“Our camp is always just to the east of theirs.”
“Don’t tell me you know where east is. The sun’s down. The moon’s not up yet.”
Fox pointed. “The city is east. Therefore east is that way. Our tent is also that way.”
Stone sighed, his chest heaving in his disappointment. “I really wanted a woman tonight.”
“One last time before we die.”
Anger flashing like sparks in dry grass, Stone swung, his fist plowing into his partner’s face, knocking him to his backside. Stone spat in the sand beside him, invoking the warrior’s god. “Don’t say that,” he ordered, fists clenched. “Maybe we’ll die, but maybe we won’t. It’s not up to us. You go into battle knowing you’ll die, Khralsh will give you what you want. Death is easy.”
Once more he reached down and pulled Fox to his feet. “You go into battle determined to live, maybe he lets you live. Life, that’s not so easy, not in battle. Either way, Khralsh decides. But if you ask for what you want, maybe he gives it.”
“And maybe he doesn’t.” Fox couldn’t meet Stone’s gaze.
“Maybe not.” Stone shook the wrist he gripped, jarring his partner’s whole body, willing him to understand, to believe. “But who guaranteed you life to begin with? Remember that Bureaucrat we saw get run down by the ale wagon? Or the Farmer who got gored by his bull? Everybody dies, Fox, sooner or later. Swear your life to Khralsh, let him look after it. You can’t.”
This time, Fox’s sharp brown gaze locked onto Stone’s. He envied Fox his eyes as well. Few others had the pale blue of Stone’s eyes. Their mentors had always shuddered and called them uncanny, witchy. But he didn’t mind uncanny now if it convinced Fox.
Slowly, Fox nodded. “All right. I’ll swear. With you at my shoulder I believe it.”
“Then swear. We swear together, we fight together, fight well, and surely Khralsh will let us live.”
“I swear. I swear myself to Khralsh. I ask for life, but my life in his hands whatever happens.” Fox spat in the sand, offering a body fluid precious to the warrior god.
Stone copied him. “And so I swear also. My life to Khralsh.”
They stood another moment, swaying faintly when the wind gusted through, setting tent walls to flapping.
“D’you suppose we ought to try to sleep?” Stone scratched his head, careful not to disturb his new topknot.
The cannon crashed again, less in unison than before.
“In this noise?” Fox turned his partner and pushed him in the direction of their division. “You can try.”
“Why do you always have all the answers?”
“Because somebody has to, and you obviously don’t.”
Stone punched Fox in the shoulder hard enough to send him reeling to the far side of the tent street. “What is it I have then?”
“Lunatic courage.”
“You have courage. Plenty of it. I’ve seen it.”
“Ah, but I have the sensible sort of courage. Somebody has to be the crazy one, the one who’ll charge cannon with a misfired musket or volunteer for First and Finest. And that’s you.”
“You were right there charging and volunteering with me.”
“We’re paired. Where else am I supposed to be but at your back, making sure you don’t get your fool self killed.”
Stone thought long enough they passed two tents, trying to work his way to Fox’s meaning. The cannon’s booming, now a steady rumble as the big guns fired at will, seemed to shake the alcohol from his brain. “You’re pissed.” He stopped in the throughway. “Not drunk pissed. Angry pissed. Because I volunteered.”
“I’m not angry.” Fox took his arm and got him moving again. “I was. But I’m not anymore. You convinced me we’d live through this. And if we don’t, Khralsh will welcome us to his hall.”
“Yes.” Stone believed it. He couldn’t believe anything else. “Volunteering for First and Finest will get us noticed. It could get us promoted.”
Fox sighed. “Don’t you ever get tired?”
“Of what?”
“This.” Fox swept his arm in a half circle, indicating the camp around them, the cannon, the city with its broken walls. “Living in tents. Slogging through mud or heat or rain or all three to the next camp. Fighting. Bleeding. Healing up so we can do it all over again. Don’t you wish we could rest for a little while? Go home, soak in the baths, spend some time with a woman who has all her teeth?”
“I don’t know, I rather like the toothless one. The way she can wrap her mouth aro—”
Fox shoved him and Stone broke off, laughing. His laughter didn’t last long. They’d reached their own tent, shared with two other pairs, all elsewhere just now. They probably knew how to find the women’s tents.
