Page 67

WELL, SHE WAS COMMITTED NOW.

Kissen didn’t miss the stink of an army. Nor the foolishness of a fine-blooded, saltless ‘gods commander’ who had barely scratched out a few little shrines before being handed the title. At least she could make herself useful.

‘Ah, Elo, petal,’ she said softly to her friend, in the quiet spot they had set up a fire together. ‘I could see it in your face.’

It had been days of organisation since they had arrived, moving forces across plains and roads, setting up their plans, and waiting. Waiting for Talicia to come close enough to fight.

They weren’t far from this valley of death that they were about to consign themselves to, and the Middrenite armies were arrayed across fields that till recently would have been filled with sheep regrowing their wools for winter.

Over three leagues away, as the crow flies, the scouts had finally passed back word that the Talicians had been spotted.

‘I’m so sorry, Kissen,’ said Elo.

Legs. Elo had spun her a story of an arrow and a swift end.

And, though she could sense a delicate whispering from the god of white lies, Kissen had let herself be lied to.

The night before battle was not for weeping and lamenting.

Kissen didn’t need an imagination to suspect the depth of pain behind Elo’s tales.

That Benjen lad, Gefyrton, Legs. Elo had about him the determined and unfettered air of a man who had gone beyond the edge of himself and returned.

Inara was crying quietly, rubbing the backs of her hands across her face.

Later, Kissen would find a proper way to mourn her most loyal friend.

Tears would come when she needed them. But now, she took a long draught of bad ale from a worse mug as Elo made oval rounds of bread and put them on a hot stone in the fire.

‘And what of you and the king?’ Kissen said.

Elo paused. ‘What of it?’ he said.

Kissen snorted. ‘I knew it.’

‘Knew what?’ said Inara sniffing and stirring the edges of the stew pot to stop it burning. Her face was puffy and raw, and she looked at Elo. ‘Knew what?’

‘They’ve been – ah – together,’ said Kissen, before remembering how close Inara had come to ripping out the king’s heart. Elo closed his eyes, looking ready to disappear into the fire itself.

Inara almost dropped the spoon. ‘He tried to kill you,’ she said. ‘Elo, how could you still like him?’

‘He’s telling himself lies,’ said Skedi confidently.

‘Don’t we all, for a bit of a tumble?’ smirked Kissen.

Elo cast her a vicious look. ‘It’s …’

‘If you say “complicated” I’m going to throw the spoon at you,’ said Inara.

It was the first time the four of them had been around a fire since they had been together in Blenraden. It felt strangely familiar, even though that journey had been so brief, and had ended so badly. It had bound them together irrevocably.

‘I know there is no future,’ said Elo. ‘I know this is stupid. But … I was just …’ He looked at the fire, a tremor in his hand as he put it to his chest. ‘I was so tired,’ he said.

Inara looked baffled, horrified. Skedi turned towards her, and presumably said something soothing, because she cursed under her breath and went back to stirring. ‘He doesn’t deserve you,’ she muttered at last. ‘He deserves a long walk off a short plank.’

‘Ina!’ said Elo, surprised. ‘Honestly, Kissen, what are you teaching her? She’s thirteen.’

‘Blame her mother, not me.’

‘Oh, so it’s never your fault?’

‘No. And your bread is burning.’

‘Shit.’

They had cooked a fresh red stew with ginger root, zither, and fragrant seeds that Kissen didn’t know the names for, made in a pot with a stock that Elo had requested from the king’s cooks, still swimming in chicken bones.

On top, he had broken eggs which were starting to poach in the bubbles from below.

A true feast. Apart from the bread, he was baking a long, doughy fruit with yellow skin, wrapped in thick leaves that Inara had brought from the lower decks of the Silverswift . A gift to Elo from his mother.

Kissen held out a cloth in her hands for Elo to put the slightly charred breads on, and they began to deflate as the steam escaped. Inara smirked; Elo must be really troubled to forget about his bread.

As last meals went, Kissen thought it would be a good one.

She was equal to death. She had faced it many times, accepted it almost as many.

But, looking at Inara, she really hoped this time she would escape it.

She wanted to see the girl grow up. She wanted to see Telle and Yatho’s ambitions and family grow out of all shape and reason.

She wanted to grow delightfully fat and old beside the hearth of her loved ones.

Elo would visit, hopefully find someone other than Arren to warm his bed.

Someone who loved him gently. Inara would come, and even Skedi, and tell them of their adventures.

Kissen had never thought she would grow old, but she was starting to think she might like to.

‘Here.’

Elo was holding out a bowl of the broth dotted with a slice of sheep’s cheese and laid with round slices of the yellow fruit, without its peel.

Well, maybe she would warm his bed if he kept making her food like this. But then … Lessa’s face poured into her mind like wine from a cracked cup.

She blinked and took the bowl, glad that the evening covered the reddening of her cheeks.

Elo filled another bowl for Inara, then offered a small helping to Skedi.

‘I don’t need to eat,’ said the god, looking down at the ceramic dish the baker-knight had placed beside him, complete with its very own crust of bread.

‘It’s more so you can share,’ said Elo, serving himself. ‘Think of it as an offering.’

Inara pulled out a spoon of the stew, still looking cross, and—

‘It’s hot!’ warned Elo as Skedi’s ears flattened.

It was too late; Inara had put the whole steaming spoonful onto her tongue and then squeaked as Kissen started laughing. Elo passed her a gourd of water, and she took it without protest, gulping it down. Skedi looked at the stew as if it had burned him instead.

‘It’s … it is delicious,’ said Inara with streaming eyes. ‘Sorry.’ She swallowed, laughed at herself, then said more seriously. ‘Sorry.’

‘So am I,’ said Elo.

Kissen took a more considered approach, using her bread to dip in the stew first and then the egg second, then blowing on it to cool. The red, thick sauce tasted spicy in her mouth, a welcome change after so long on ship’s bait and boiled-down peas.

‘The hearth god,’ she said after a minute. ‘Whose side is she really on?’

‘Her own,’ said Elo, without pause.

‘No surprises there,’ muttered Skedi. He was sitting by his bowl and had even leaned down to nibble on some bread. Kissen wondered if he had taken it as an offering, or if he was just trying to be polite.

‘Arren is her best hope at survival. Together their power is …’ Elo shook his head.

‘People treat him like a god. People ask him to touch them, bless them, warm them. And Hestra brightens with it.’ He swallowed.

‘People sacrifice animals to him, bury bones beneath their campfires before they light them. That cleric woman has been composing songs, and people sing them as they march.’ He broke his bread in one hand, throwing its burned edges into the fire, while Kissen ate hers.

‘And you’re still fucking him?’ she asked.

‘Kissen!’ said Inara, shocked.

‘What?’ said Kissen. ‘I know you know what it is.’

‘He feels different when we’re together,’ said Elo. ‘He feels like himself. Like a human.’

Kissen kept any further crude jokes she might have made behind her tongue. The look on his face was pained, dark.

‘You can’t save him, you know,’ said Skedi. ‘You can’t undo the things he’s done. To Inara. To you.

‘I know,’ Elo said. ‘Some people can’t be saved.’ He paused, then looked at Inara. ‘And you’ll be holding to that thought in the morning, won’t you, Ina?’

Elo said Arren had asked about her, he was not stupid, but that he had convinced him her gifts were not strong enough to be worth alienating Lessa.

Inara sucked her tongue and took another grumpy bite of stew. ‘I still think I could help,’ she said. ‘I could stay on the cliffs with the archers. I could call gods.’

‘And offer them what?’ said Skedi, in a tone that sounded as if he had had this fight with her many times already.

‘I don’t know,’ grumbled Inara.

Kissen and Skedi exchanged a look, and she lowered her guard enough for his will to sneak in and speak to her. She will do everything in her power to fight, he said.

I know, she replied. They had another plan. One that only she and Lessa knew, for they were the only ones who could hide it from her.

‘Maybe you would look good bald,’ Kissen said out loud, keeping her tone light, her sadness buried down deep inside her.

Inara looked at her with round eyes, considering it. Then she burst out laughing. They all did.

‘Imagine,’ Inara said, spluttering. ‘Sitting on the edge of a battlefield trying not to cut myself with a razor.’ Elo snorted, and Skedi’s wings hunched up around his shoulders in confusion.

‘Honestly, Ina, if I’d seen you the first time, I’d have thought you cracked,’ grinned Kissen. ‘Sitting on a horse, hacking off your hair in the street.’

‘Why are you all laughing?’ said Skedi, looking around at all of them. ‘It’s not funny.’

This only served to make them laugh harder. Elo was wiping tears from his eyes, and Inara was cackling into her broth. Skedi had one ear cocked and was standing on all fours as if he was about to bolt.

‘Humans are so strange,’ he said.

He did not yet understand that a laugh could be a lie too.

Because Kissen didn’t want to say goodbye to Inara knowing that she might not live.

Knowing she wouldn’t be able to teach her to throw knives, or how to skin a deer she had shot, or what fungi tasted good.

She would have to learn all of it by herself.