‘What the hell are these Dragon bastards doing up here anyhow?’ Shy grunted at Sweet. Didn’t seem like a place anyone in their right mind would want to visit, let alone live in.
‘Can’t say I know exactly… why they’re up here.’ The old scout had to talk in rushes between his heaving breaths. ‘But they been here a long time.’
‘She hasn’t told you?’ asked Shy, nodding at Crying Rock, striding on hard up ahead.
‘I reckon it’s on account… o’ my reluctance to ask those kind o’ questions… she’s stuck with me down the years.’
‘Ain’t for your good looks, I can tell you that.’
‘There’s more to life than looks.’ He glanced sideways at her. ‘Luckily for us both.’
‘What would they want with children?’
He stopped to take a swallow of water and offered one to her while the mercenaries laboured past under the considerable burden of their many weapons. ‘The way I hear it, no children are born here. Something in the land. They turn barren. All the Dragon People were taken from someone else, one time or another. Used to be that meant Ghosts mostly, maybe Imperials, the odd Northman strayed down from the Sea of Teeth. Looks like since the prospectors drove the Ghosts out they’re casting their net wider. Buying children off the likes of Cantliss.’
‘Less talk!’ hissed Crying Rock from above. ‘More walk!’
The snow came down weightier than ever but didn’t drift as deep, and when Shy peeled the wrappings off her face she found the wind wasn’t half so keen. An hour later the snow was slippery slush on the wet rock, and she pulled her soaked gloves off and could still feel her fingertips. An hour after that the snow still fell but the ground was bare, and Shy was sweating fast enough she had to strip her coat off and wedge it in her pack. The others were doing the same. She bent and pressed her palm to the earth and there was a strange warmth, like it was the wall of a baker’s and the oven was stoked on the other side.
‘There is fire below,’ said Crying Rock.
‘There is?’ Shy snatched her hand back like flames might pop from the dirt then and there. ‘Can’t say that notion floods a woman with optimism.’
‘Better’n freezing the crap up my arse, ain’t it?’ said Sweet, pulling his shirt off to reveal another underneath. Shy wondered how many he had on. Or if he’d keep taking them off until he disappeared altogether.
‘Is that why the Dragon People live up here?’ Savian pressed his own palm to the warm dirt. ‘Because of the fire?’
‘Or because they live here there is a fire.’ Crying Rock stared up the slope, bare rock and scree now, crusted in places with stains of yellow sulphur, overlooked by a towering bastard of a rock face. ‘This way may be watched.’
‘Certainly it will be,’ said Jubair. ‘God sees all.’
‘Ain’t God as’ll put an arrow in your arse if we keep on this path,’ said Sweet.
Jubair shrugged. ‘God puts all things where they must be.’
‘What now, then?’ asked Savian.
Crying Rock was already uncoiling a rope from her pack. ‘Now we climb.’
Shy rubbed at her temples. ‘Had a nasty feeling she’d say that.’
Damn it if the climbing wasn’t even harder than the walking and a long drop scarier. Crying Rock swarmed up like a spider and Lamb wasn’t much slower, seeming well at home among the mountains, the two of them getting ropes ready for the rest. Shy brought up the rear with Savian, cursing and fumbling at the slick rock, arms aching from the effort and her hands burning from the hemp.
‘Haven’t had the chance to thank you,’ she said as she waited on a ledge.
He didn’t make a sound but the hissing of the rope through his gnarled hands as he pulled it up behind them.
‘For what you did back in Crease.’ Silence. ‘Ain’t had my life saved so often that I overlook it.’ Silence. ‘Remember?’
She thought he gave the tiniest shrug.
‘Get the feeling you’ve been avoiding mention of it.’
Silence. He avoided mentioning anything wherever possible.
‘Probably you ain’t much of a one for taking thanks.’
More silence.
‘Probably I ain’t much of a one for giving ’em.’
‘You’re taking your time about it, all right.’
‘Thanks, then. Reckon I’d be good and dead if it weren’t for you.’
Savian pressed his thin lips together even tighter and gave a throaty grunt. ‘Reckon you or your father would’ve done the same for me.’
‘He ain’t my father.’
‘That’s between you two. But if you were to ask, I’d say you could do worse.’
Shy snorted. ‘I used to think so.’
‘This isn’t what he wanted, you know. Or the way he wanted it.’
‘I used to think that, too. Not so sure any more. Family, eh?’
‘Family.’
‘Where’s Corlin got to?’
‘She can look after herself.’
‘Oh, no doubt.’ Shy dropped her voice. ‘Look, Savian, I know what you are.’
He looked up at her hard. ‘That so?’
‘I know what you got under there,’ and she moved her eyes down to his forearms, blue with tattoos, she knew, under his coat.
‘Can’t fathom your meaning,’ but tweaking one of his sleeves down even so.
She leaned closer and whispered, ‘Just pretend you can, then. When Cosca got to talking about rebels, well, my big fucking mouth ran away with me, like always. I meant well, like always, trying to help out… but I haven’t, have I?’
‘Not a lot.’
‘My fault you’re in this fix. If that bastard Lorsen finds out what you got there… what I’m saying is, you should go. This ain’t your fight. Naught to stop you slipping away, and no shortage of empty to slip into.’
‘And you’d say what? Forgot all about my lost boy, did I? It’d just make ’em curious. Might make trouble for you. Might make trouble for me, in the end. Reckon I’ll just keep my head down and my sleeves down too and stick with you. Best all round.’
‘My big fucking mouth,’ she hissed to herself.
Savian grinned. It might have been the first time she’d ever seen him do it and it was like a lantern uncovered, the lines shifting in his weathered face and his eyes suddenly gleaming. ‘You know what? Your big fucking mouth ain’t to everyone’s taste but I’ve almost got to like it.’ And he put his hand down on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze. ‘You’d best watch out for that prick Sacri, though. Don’t think he sees it that way.’
Nor did she. Not long after that, a rock came clattering down that missed her head by a whisker. She saw Sacri grinning above and was sure he’d kicked it loose on purpose. Soon as she got the chance she told him so and where she’d stick her knife if another rock came along. The other mercenaries were quite tickled by her language.
‘I should teach you some manners, girl,’ snapped Sacri, sticking his jutting jaw out even further, trying to save what face he could.
‘You’d have to fucking know some to teach some.’
He put his hand on his sword, more bluster than meaning to use it, but before he even got the chance Jubair loomed between them.
‘There will be weapons drawn, Sacri,’ he said, ‘but when and against whom I say. These are our allies. We need them to show us the way. Leave the woman be or we will quarrel and a quarrel with me is a heavy weight to carry.’