The People fled. As they fled, they formed not a column but a wave front, because like animals migrating, they took courses that meant that despite any disaster they could imagine-the Rukh, a sudden thaw, the end of the ice-some of them would survive.
They moved as quickly as they could. And every warrior on every route but one stopped and cracked any ice sheet he could after he’d crossed it.
Ta-se-ho stood in what had been the town’s central space with Nita Qwan and Gas-a-ho. They were the last to depart-Small Hands and her family were already well along to the west.
“Now you have power,” Ta-se-ho said.
“Not for long,” Nita Qwan said.
Gas-a-ho snorted.
Ta-se-ho shrugged. “You have it. The People have given it to you and you wear it well.” He turned his face away. “Babies and old people will die.”
Nita Qwan nodded. “I know.”
Ta-se-ho grunted and lit his pipe. They passed it back and forth for a long time.
“Never forget,” Ta-se-ho said. “And you will never become Kevin Orley.” He put his pipe away. “I’m too old for this.”
And then the three men began to walk west.
Ticondaga-Ghause Muriens
Ghause wriggled into her shift, her haunches cold from working naked in her casting chamber exposed to the chilly mountain air. Outside, snow was drifted six feet high or more against the fortress’s impregnable walls and filled its ditches.
Her husband watched her. He was fully dressed, sitting comfortably in a low armchair that folded for easy stowage. Most of the castle’s furniture was one form of camp furniture or another. The Muriens were a military family.
“I thank God on my knees every day,” the Earl of Westwall said, “that my wife had the sense to sell her soul to Satan for beauty. Christ crucified, woman. How do you keep yourself so?”
“Flattery will get you everywhere,” she said, but she didn’t purr or wiggle her hips. It was too damned cold. “Do you know that when I rode south to Albinkirk, there were flowers?”
The earl shrugged. “It was one hell of a winter, and I use the term hell advisedly. Cold as a witch’s tits.”
He moved so fast, and he was so quiet, that despite the straight line, she was surprised to feel his warm hands on her breasts.
But the surprise was a pleasant one. She turned and raised her mouth to his, slid a hand down into his braes with the expertise that comes of knowing another person’s body as intimately as you know your own.
Not that the earl’s body was particularly challenging…
She made him work for her pleasure and then returned the favour-an hour that left her pleasantly tired and filled with unworked potentia. She drank hot wine and stared out into the first blue sky she’d seen in many weeks.
“Penny for your thoughts?” murmured her husband, his hand running over her stomach.
“Stop that,” she said. “Be gentle or be firm.”
He hated it when she told him how to touch her-had hated it for thirty years. He swung his bare feet off her bed and cursed the cold floor.
“I’m thinking of the King,” she said pensively.
“Your brother,” he said.
She shrugged. “Do you have any news?”
“Beyond that he’s gone mad, let the fucking Galles into his court and attacked his own nobles?” The earl shook his head. “Galles in the south and this sorcerer as a neighbour. How bad is this summer going to be, wife?”
She stretched. “Bad,” she said.
“This sorcerer…” he began.
She shook her head slightly.
“You think he’ll come for us,” the earl said. He was getting into his braes.
“I do. And Gabriel does.”
“That milksop. I don’t care what you claim he’s done-he’s hiding behind Gavin. He could no more lead an army than fight with a poleaxe.”
She smiled. “You are seldom a fool, husband. But in this-I saw him fight with a poleaxe.”
“Huh,” he muttered. “He’s late to it, then,” the earl said.
She shrugged.
“Anyway, what does he know of the summer?”
Ghause sank back onto the goose feather bed. “I told you. All of them wanted him to be captain of the north.”
The earl shook his head in ill-tempered wonder. “In place of me. In my God-damned place.”
“Sweet, it is a compliment to have your firstborn appointed to a high command.” She rolled to face him. Many fifty-year-old women might have hesitated to discuss high politics while naked. Ghause was not one of them. “Don’t be a child.”
He laughed. “Me? You want him as your captain because he’ll do your bidding. But when the Wild comes over the border, I’ll not be following the orders of your effeminate son.”
She smiled. “Mine. Not yours?”
The earl shook his head. “My seed, perhaps, but none of my blood, I swear. That one is all eldritch potions and cobwebs.”
“Parthenogenesis,” she said quietly.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“An Archaic word for a maiden making a child all by herself,” Ghause said. “What do you think my brother is doing with his Queen?”
“Christ only knows,” the earl said. He had his shirt on and his hose, and was buckling his garters. He didn’t have access to her sorcerous arts and he was five years older than she, but he still carried himself like a king, had solid muscles front and back, and when he buckled the garters below his knees, his calves were as good as any young gallant’s. “I had a messenger bird from a friend in Harndon who says he’s going to try her for adultery.”
Just for a moment, despite all her plans and all her vows and her desire for revenge, she felt for the Queen in Harndon. She felt something like kinship with her.
Not that her feeling of kinship would keep her from killing the Queen and her unborn child. Merely that she knew what he was, and that he was now, in a more elaborate way, doing to his young Queen what he had once done to his sister.
“Weak fool,” she said. “Weak, stupid, vicious and indecisive.”
The earl nodded. “But a damned fine jouster,” he said. “You hate him. You always have.” He narrowed his eyes for a moment. “We could have him killed.”
Ghause leapt from the bed and kissed him. “Sometimes, I actually love you. But no. By all the dark powers, husband-do you know what would happen if he were to die now?”
The earl shrugged. “War? Chaos? Nothing to us. In fact, it would be a better environment to build our own kingdom. If Gabriel is to be trusted.” His tone suggested that he was unlikely to trust the younger man with anything.
She frowned.
“Just because it doesn’t fit with your fiendish plots doesn’t mean that we can’t use it,” he said. “Listen, my lady. All our lives together, we’ve gone hand in hand-and kept our own secrets. I am content with that. In this instance, he’s a fool, and he’s threatening me with war. If he were dead-”
“The Galles would take his place. They’d use the girl-Queen as their pawn, and suddenly we’d be crawling with them.” She pulled a heavy wool-velvet robe over her naked body and rang for more wine.
“The Galles, my spies tell me, have troubles of their own,” he said. “Let’s just kill him.”
Ghause grew annoyed. “No,” she said.
“Because you have some plot already in motion,” her husband said.
“Yes!” she spat.
He laughed. “And all I get to do is fight the fucking sorcerer,” he said.
She shrugged. “Not even that, I fear,” she said. “His sorcery is too much for your army. And now he has an army of his own. Bide. Hold the castle and he will have other problems. He’s made two great enemies, and his time is running out fast.”