Ice Forged (The Ascendant Kingdoms Saga) (70 page)
Read Ice Forged (The Ascendant Kingdoms Saga) Online
Authors: Gail Z. Martin
Tags: #Fiction / Action & Adventure, #Fiction / Fantasy - Historical, #Fiction / Fantasy - Epic
“Forgive me,” he said. “I’m… I’m in trouble. And I was hoping you might help me.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed to slits. She lowered her stance like a hunting cat preparing for battle. It occurred to him that it might have been wiser to discover if she spoke his language before he’d approached her.
“I’ve come from the mountains,” he said, hearing the desperation in his own voice. And hearing something else besides. The inaudible thrumming of his blood. The gift of the spider goddess commanding the woman to believe him.
“We don’t trade with Firstbloods,” the Yemmu woman growled. “Not from those twice-shat mountains anyway. Get away from here, and take your men with you.”
“I don’t have any men,” he said. The things in his blood roused themselves, excited to be used. The woman shifted her head as
his stolen magic convinced her. “I’m alone. And unarmed. I’ve been walking for… weeks. I can work if you’d like. For a little food and a warm place to sleep. Just for the night.”
“Alone and unarmed. Through the mountains?”
“Yes.”
She snorted, and he had the sense he was being evaluated. Judged.
“You’re an idiot,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “I am. Friendly, though. Harmless.”
It was a very long moment before she laughed.
She set him to hauling river water to her cistern while she finished her gardening. The bucket was fashioned for Yemmu hands, and he could only fill it half full before it became too heavy to lift. But he struggled manfully from the little house to the rough wooden platform and then back again. He was careful not to scrape himself, or at least not so badly as to draw blood. His welcome was uncertain enough without the spiders to explain.
At sunset, she made a place for him at her table. The fire in the pit seemed extravagant, and he had to remind himself that the things that had been his brothers weren’t here, scanning for signs of him. She scooped a bowl of stew from the pot above the fire. It had the rich, deep, complex flavor of a constant pot; the stewpot never leaving the fire, and new hanks of meat and vegetables thrown in as they came to hand. Some of the bits of dark flesh swimming in the greasy broth might have been cooking since before he’d left the temple. It was the best meal he’d ever had.
“My man’s at the caravanserai,” she said. “One of the princes s’posed to be coming in, and they’ll be hungry. Took all the pigs with. Sell ’em all if we’re lucky. Get enough silver to see us through storm season.”
He listened to her voice and also the stirring in his blood. The last part had been a lie. She
didn’t
believe that the silver would last. He wondered if it worried her, and if there was some way he could see she had what she needed. He would try, at least. Before he left.
“What about you, you poor shit?” she asked, her voice soft and warm. “Whose sheep did you fuck that you’re begging work from me?”
The apostate chuckled. The warm food in his belly, the fire at his side, and the knowledge that a pallet of straw and a thin wool blanket were waiting for him outside conspired to relax his shoulders and his belly. The Yemmu woman’s huge gold-flecked eyes stayed on him. He shrugged.
“I discovered that believing something doesn’t make it true,” he said carefully. “There were things I’d accepted, that I believed to my bones, and I was… wrong.”
“Misled?” she asked.
“Misled,” he agreed, and then paused. “Or perhaps not. Not intentionally. No matter how wrong you are, it’s not a lie if you believe it.”
The Yemmu woman whistled—an impressive feat, considering her tusks—and flapped her hands in mock admiration.
“High philosophy from the water grunt,” she said. “Next you’ll be preaching and asking tithes.”
“Not me,” he said, laughing with her.
She took a long slurp from her own bowl. The fire crackled. Something—rats, perhaps, or insects—rattled in the thatch overhead.
“Fell out with a woman, did you?” she asked.
“A goddess,” he said.
“Yeah. Always seems like that, dunit?” she said, staring into the fire. “Some new love comes on like there’s something different
about ’em. Like God himself talks whenever their lips flap. And then…”
She snorted again, part amusement, part bitterness.
“And what all went wrong with your goddess?” she asked.
The apostate lifted a scrap of something that might have been a potato to his mouth, chewed the soft flesh, the gritty skin. He struggled to put words to thoughts that had never been spoken aloud. His voice trembled.
“She is going to eat the world.”
OOKS BY
G
AIL
Z. M
ARTIN
The Chronicles of the Necromancer
The Summoner
The Blood King
Dark Haven
Dark Lady’s Chosen
The Sworn
The Dread
Ice Forged
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Copyright
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2013 by Gail Z. Martin
Excerpt from
The Dragon’s Path
copyright © 2011 by Daniel Abraham
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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First e-book edition: January 2013
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ISBN 978-0-316-21539-8
