Warmth

I’m very good at my job. It should not have been a bitter thought, but Pride had fallen behind in the mud somewhere and Rane was done scrabbling for it.

So instead she sat at the base of the tree, gnawing on trail rations and regarding the winding path eastwards through the copse. She’d smelled the coming rain and sought shelter, and now it painted a shine on plants and trees to match the creep of gold across leaf and stem. On the one hand, if she’d pushed through, she might have followed the trail before rain washed away any tracks.

On the other, she didn’t have much clue how to track at the best of times.

I’m very good at my job. Obviously she wasn’t a tracker. But Inquisitor inferred a certain amount of seeking and finding, of going the places others wouldn’t and bringing secrets or people squirming out into the light. And now it was all she had, she couldn’t even do that for those closest to her.

A petulant raisin was hurled at a nearby squirrel. It scampered away before realising this to be no sustained assault, then hurried back to snatch up the new prize and squatted in damp leaves, nibbling away.

‘You show that squirrel who’s in charge.’

Rane closed her eyes and tried to force out tension with the next breath. She was only four hours out of Rundhal, neither her enquiries nor her heading any secret. She should not have been surprised there might be assistance when she’d shaken both angry finger and entreating coin purse, bribed and nudged and leaned hard on loyalties from old friends. She’d expected someone to come along.

Just not him.

‘It’s important,’ she said after a moment, ‘to establish dominance in the wilderness, or something. I’m sure you told me that once, Sjurd.’

When she stood and turned she found him lounging by a nearby tree with an artless pose he’d likely spent minutes perfecting. He had to have travelled in the open rain while she sought shelter and still he looked less damp in his hunter’s leathers and hard-wearing clothes. They’d been much younger when last she’d let herself take a good look at him, but edges had crept in with the years to leave him with a rangy build, a weatherworn face under a beard that could stand a little grooming, hints of silver in his brown hair.

‘I didn’t know you listened to me,’ said Sjurd, strolling to join her under the tree as if the rain didn’t bother him. ‘Did you pick up that wisdom while you were gone, Stormcrow Rane?’ He squinted at her. ‘That’s such a stupid hat.’

‘Fuck off,’ said Rane, master of witty retaliation.

‘Can’t, you asked for help in these woods. And they’re my woods, so here I am, mighty Stormcrow. Why are we here? Some missing madwoman?’

She looked away, back to the trail east. This was important, Sjurd was a good tracker who knew the area better than her, and despite it all, it was good to see him. He had always been comfortable, familiar, even after all these years. ‘A friend. Heavily pregnant, wandered from her home with no sign of packing supplies, food. Last seen heading this way east.’

Sjurd winced. ‘Sorry.’

‘We’ll find her.’ It couldn’t be optional.

‘I meant for calling your friend mad.’

‘Oh.’ Rane frowned. ‘No, she’s definitely mad.’

He looked to the clouds, then the path. ‘Won’t find her waiting here,’ he said decisively, then stepped into the open.

She followed. The stupid hat was good in all elements, at least. ‘You’ll find her in this rain?’

‘This ain’t nothing but a spit; I’ve tracked deer in a storm, darling,’ said Sjurd, then had the good grace to wince at the over-familiarity.

Rane didn’t mind, but she certainly didn’t know how to respond to it, so they spent the next twenty minutes in cautious silence as Sjurd picked his way down the path, checking the ground where it was soft and the tracks were fresh, speaking only for questions that might affect their work.

‘I never looked at how big her feet are, Sjurd.’

‘Thought Crows were meant to be wise,’ he sniffed.

She ground her teeth. I’m very good at my job. ‘So how’ve you been?’ Pressing inquiries were better than the silence.

He tensed at that, eyes on the path as he led. ‘Oh, you know. Still here, where you left me.’

‘I didn’t leave you. Well. I didn’t leave just you. Not everything’s about you, Sjurd.’

‘Oh, that much were clear.’ But his lips twisted with quiet wryness. ‘I’d say it’s done you some favours, Stormcrow Rane, except you look like you head-butted a pike.’

The scar throbbed. ‘Spiral,’ she said, all the explanation most people ever needed or asked for.

‘You shouldn’t head-butt spirals, neither.’

‘You know, shit like this is why my mother never liked you.’

‘Your mother never liked anything that didn’t match her tidy little vision of your life. How’s Urizen wars and big Synod jobs matched with that?’

‘About as well as expected.’ The rain was letting off, but drops still struck from trees, thudding off the helm and sinking into her mantle. Astrid had voiced her surprise in winter how Stormcrows weren’t left completely bedraggled messes in the rain, and she was grateful for it now. The last thing she needed was looking an utter state in front of Sjurd.

As if that’s what’s important.

‘She was disappointed enough I became a Crow,’ Rane found herself saying, because to talk about her mother with anyone else in her life would have required explaining her mother. ‘Then angry I became an Inquisitor. I think she’d been hoping until then that I’d come back to the business. And I didn’t tell her I was heading for Urizen until I was on the trods.’

‘Sure she loved that.’

She had to stop herself from scratching the scar. ‘Winterfolk should worry about our own wars, she said. The usual shite.’

‘Is it?’ Sjurd said with that easy, conversational air. ‘Green Shield in Kallavesa, I expected. Fist? Bloodcloaks? There’s a fight in Sermersuaq and we’re walking away from it.’

‘Oh, don’t give me that “I can’t see more than ten feet in front of me so I’m going to be angry at hard choices” rubbish, Sjurd, I get that enough in Anvil. We’re going to lose Sermersuaq, so let’s not throw away our armies. We’ll be back.’

‘Sure. But it’s no time to be in Urizen, is it?’

Rane had thought for a long time she understood rage. She never pretended to be calm by nature and had always been more than prepared to harness that kick from her summer blood to fuel a little righteousness. But since Solen’s Doubt there had been a burn to every flash of anger, a blazing light at the bottom of a dark pit she could let herself tumble into. It threatened to turn a snap into a shout, a shout into a strike, a strike into rending, furious violence, and her hand twitched at the thought of her knife in Sjurd’s back –

- then her mind sheered away with a dancer’s practiced smoothness, and in the place of rage was a comfortable Nothing. ‘This was before the Jotun arrived,’ was all she said.

Sjurd had to realise at least some misstep, as quickly he said, ‘So who’s this friend and why’s she wandered the fuck off?’

‘Someone we have to find.’ At least the tightness in her throat was on behalf of someone else. She could have gone to Veikko, given him the support and strength he’d offered her, but she wasn’t sure she was in a fit state to listen and sympathise. She wasn’t sure she’d stand if leaned on. So obviously it was much more helpful to go wandering through the woods as a half-trained tracker and inadvertently lure out a former lover to help.

But the alternative was to stay at the wayhouse, and that would have left her with nothing to do save brood. She’d written her garbled, desperate, lovelorn explanation to Veikko on the road home, trying to purge heartbreak through writing. The fact that it had come out like a mission statement of denial and desperation was not lost on her.

If circumstances were different –

- if I had not become so intrigued by Sir Kay –

The mind couldn’t sheer away quite so well from this. ‘Look, Sjurd, there’s a lot going on right now and if I can’t do this one thing for my closest friends then…’ Then tumbled away, and that dark pit again loomed.

He turned, hunter’s gaze moving from path to her face, more vigilant than she was comfortable with. ‘Bloody hell, Rane, I thought you went off to become a priest to help people? And now you come back like you’ve been punched in the gut repeatedly. Great big Inquisitor of Pride, ‘cept you used to walk a lot taller –’

‘Things happen.’

‘Like Spiral?’

‘I’m dealing with that,’ she lied. ‘I’m talking to people I trust, to friends, I’m trying to move my life along –’

‘Looks like that’s going well.’

‘It’s nothing,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘One woman who prefers another.’

Sjurd looked sceptical. ‘Things like that didn’t used to bend you double. I never got you looking like that.’

‘It’s not about her,’ she said, and this one was a half-lie. ‘It’s just bad news at the wrong time. I wanted one thing, she wanted another.’ I wanted something that’s not the Black fucking Plateau. ‘And now I’m going to move the hell on with my life.’

‘You really look like that’s what you’re doing,’ he said dryly. ‘Not at all like you’re carrying a beacon instead of a torch and going nuts in the woods over it.’

‘Look, obviously it would be stupid to remain in love with someone who’s rejected you for another, even if that other is apparently some damned monster in a den of vipers; obviously it’d be stupid to want to save her, and obviously it’d make me a damned liar if I tried,’ Rane pointed out, and found only Sjurd’s blank and yet somehow pointed gaze still locked on her. She sighed. ‘You should be looking at the path.’

‘I’ve looked,’ Sjurd said, shoulders squaring. ‘No sign nobody left this path, and you know what’s next? Trods.’

‘Then we go down the trods –’

‘You were eating berries under a tree when I found you and I’ve nowt for more than a day’s ranging. This is where we go back and you send word to your friend –’

Her throat didn’t tighten so much as bubble, threatening not to choke so much as drown. ‘My friend is the Cardinal of Loyalty and his wife is –’

‘I don’t care if he’s Emperor Guntherm; fact is we’ll do better to tell him to take the trods east while we go back to Rundhal. Then with more supplies you can catch him up or go home or whatever you bloody want.’

‘I can find her.’

His hand caught her elbow when she went to pass him, quicker and stronger. ‘Can’t let you go roaming like this, or someone will need to come saving you.’

‘Don’t touch me –’ In a heartbeat she’d rounded on him, knife in hand, embers burning somewhere deep within.

‘Fucking hell.’ Sjurd jumped back at that, hands raised. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

‘I became a priest to help people,’ she hissed, world narrowing in that familiar, darkening way, the knife’s hilt a comforting weight. ‘And this is how I can do my job; I can find Ylmisckha. You think I have anything else right now, Sjurd?’

He’d never been much one for bullshit, and even with a knife under his chin he straightened. ‘It’s been a few years. So, really, I don’t know. But you’re definitely finished with my help.’ He took a step back, cautious, like the hunter he was knowing to be careful with a cornered animal. ‘East, down the trods. Good luck finding her. You were always a lousy tracker.’

She watched him slip into the rain-soaked trees, knife now a burden in her grasp, tension now a quiver in her arms, legs; a quiver in bone and blood. And only when she was sure he was long gone did she force her breathing to come easier, did she prise her fingers off the hilt to slip the blade back in scabbard, did she pull off the accursed hat and tilt her face to the sky to welcome the rain.

It came with wind and chill, but she barely felt it. After all. She’d left warmth in Spiral.