Tales of Downfall and Rebirth (8 page)

After the games, she and he crossed the lake so she could examine the glaze on the totems. The stacked hats rose up fifty feet or more, and had facets beaten into them: a honeycomb pattern, invisible at a distance, that caught the light and reflected it at different angles. Bits of fool's gold on the bands of the hat brims brightened the effect.

“This is Lester's work?”

“The people of Haida Gwai have claimed Raven for their own,” he said. “Magpie, Lester says, is that trickster's poor cousin. An illusionist: you should see him do card tricks.”

He was saying something important, but before she could puzzle its meaning, he stepped close and kissed her.

She kissed back as a summer storm of feelings gusted up within her. Her arms came round him, barely reaching because of the bulk of their heavy coats.

He tastes like Bright.

She remembered his opposition to the Pack's sending the Eyes of Explorer Troop as far as Montival. What would he think if he knew where she was now, how far away?

She had wanted to go.

She pushed on Raki's chest, lightly, and he stepped back right away. “I shouldn't tangle with—I'm returning to the South.”

“I wouldn't hold you,” Raki replied, tracing the line of her jaw with his thumb.

She caught his hand, feeling her whole body sing with desire.

What had Lester said? Winter demands unanimity of purpose. A Scout should be certain: mind and body in accord. “May I think about it?”

He nodded, and took her to see another totem, a great metallic riding animal, on a balance, with a big scoop for a head. Liquid black covered it, as though it had just been dipped in thick glossy paint. It had a saddle, and a ladder leading up to it.

“Petroleum pumpjack,” Raki said. “The ancients used them to drink the blood of the earth.”

Though the thing was more machine than monster, its red eyes had that same lifelike quality; they burned with madness, a need to devour. The whole totem seemed to strain to come to life, to spring to the hunt. She was happy to flee its gaze.

That night, Huon said to Finch. “What do you make of the Cree?”

“The chiefs speak of a Council, but they look to our guide when we talk of the baker.”

“Lester pretends to be an itinerant old sculptor, but his voice carries weight here,” Huon agreed.

“Are you—” Finch thought better of the question.

“Yes?”

She shook her head.

“It's all right, Finch.”

“Your mother betrayed Artos.”

He nodded.

“Lady d'Ath wants this man Charlie. To show lenience, even if he was compelled . . .”

“Am I afraid to return home having forgiven a traitor? Given my history?”

“It isn't my place to ask.”

“No,” he agreed, a little sharply. Then, more softly, “It's a fair question. But the real issue is whether he can harm them.”

They let that sit for a moment, before she said: “They seem an honorable people. Worthy of badges.”

“The Drumheller folk underestimate them,” he agreed.

“That's their design.”
Illusions,
she thought.

“We could trade here. They have an eye to all the northern borders. The Night's Watch monitors the west—those troublesome Haida—closely.”

“It would be good to have them as allies,” she agreed.

“Is Charlie a CUT magus? If not, was he truly victimized by them?” He paced the small wigwam. “To leave him here, if he wasn't an innocent target of opportunity . . . he's placed himself in the heart of their elite squad of warriors.”

“I would remain as hostage,” Finch said in a rush. “If it would get him away.”

“You're in my care,” Huon said.

She stood as tall as she could—which wasn't very—and trying not to look all the things she was: young, fine-boned, vulnerable.

“I have duties, too. There are things here for the Eyes to study.”

Like Raki. Which was foolish, a thought of the body. There was no guarantee, if she stayed, that she would ride with the Doubledoubles.

“It's a generous offer,” he said, and the mask he wore among the Cree was entirely gone: she could see the gratitude, the respect for her and all his vassals that made him such a good leader. “Let's hope it doesn't come to that.”

Next day, at dawn, the Kip Kelly Rodeo arrived.

They were a band of fifty, riding light and armed with whips, lassos, and tomahawks. They came over the eastern fringe of the lake, backlit by bloodred sun, yowling like a wolf pack as they galloped out of the brightness. They wore fringed leather pants and jackets, and their hats were wide-brimmed. Their boots had hard pointed toes and were stitched in intricate patterns that rose to midcalf.

The princess rode at their head. Her skin was the gold-tinged red of cedar and her hair was caught in a hundred small braids, each a finger's length and tipped by turquoise beads. She wore a crown of curved ram's horns and the cuffs of her sleeves were wound with vicious spikes of rusted wire, but the show wasn't necessary; merely the look on her face was enough to show she was spoiling for a fight.

Among her wranglers were six warriors with their faces painted white—the clowns Lester had mentioned—capable-looking warriors, dangerous men. The baker was in their midst, under guard. He looked beaten down, unhappy, trapped.

The clowns and the Baron's men-at-arms exchanged glances pregnant with professional implications, weighing one another.

The princess rode to the Twelvestepper wigwam—everyone, from every camp, had found a reason to be out and watching, and when Lester opened his mouth in greeting, she said, “Do not greet me, Uncle.”

He spread his arms, shook out his black-and-white cloak, and stood his ground. “I have sponsored these people. They are my guests.”

She said, “I'll never give Charlie up, do you understand? Would you waste the Council's time trying to change the length of the day, or the angle of the sun? Return to your easy summer home and forget him.”

Huon faced her steadily. “If your baker is a magus of the CUT, he will poison all you love, in time.”

She leaped from her mount, giving up the advantage of height, and stepped in close. She was smaller than Huon, and the furs hid her body; she might have been soft as an overfed puppy in there.

Finch doubted she was soft. It took an effort to keep her hand from her own knife. Huon's hand flickered out, reassuring his party: all is well.

The trick of seeming fearless; another skill that was hard to capture in a badge.

Her words carried across the camp. “Charlie has ridden our mean bull, roped a calf, and trained a pony. He's one of us.”

“One of you now. What about his past? Guards, loyal to the Queen, died in the attack.”

To the rear, surrounded by clowns, the subject of this discussion slumped lower in his saddle.

“Your war dead are nothing to me,” Allie said. “I would not let him go if he'd gutted that baby himself.”

A hiss and crackling of ice punctuated this, a rattle from the frozen surface of the lake that penetrated the still beating drums. Cawing rose from the trees, then silenced.

What would it be like,
Finch wondered,
to love someone that much?

“Has this Council meeting already started?” Huon said.

Allie's eyes narrowed. “You think twelve hours will change my mind?”

“I will make my petition to your people,” Huon said. “It's your law, and Montival respects it.”

She hissed before remounting, then galloped west, leading her troop to a bare patch of ground. Throwing down her hat, she marked the place where they would camp. The rodeo dismounted, their show of threat dissolving into the dull work of building shelters from the weather. Few approached them.

Finch went back into the wigwam herself, while the encounter was fresh in her mind, drawing Allie's portrait, the image of her nose to nose with Huon. She drew the traitor, Charles Frayne, attempting to capture his misery.

He feels the wrong he has done,
she thought.

Huon put his head inside. “Where's Lester?”

“I didn't see him leave,” she said. “What will you do?”

“Ask the Council for Charlie,” he said.

“They'll refuse.”

“I can hope to get close enough to . . . measure him.”

To assess whether he was under CUT influence, Huon meant.

“And if he is?”

“I don't know.” A strained edge of a smile. “At worst, send someone next year.”

“Allie would ask, I think, if we believed another year would change her mind.”

“Yes, she would. What would you say to that?”

She pondered. “That a diplomat is patient?”

“Just so. A lot can change in a year, Finch.”

She tried to conceive of the Rodeo Princess' white-hot love for the baker burning down to embers.

I'll never feel that much for Bright,
she realized. Was it wrong that failing to feel caused a sort of heartbreak, too?

“In any case,” the Baron said, drawing her back to the question at hand, “there's worth in knowing these people.”

The day, for all that it was short, passed slowly. She made an attempt to capture Lester on paper, but he was quicksilver: draw his age, and she lost the vitality. She spent an hour working to sketch the sharpness in his eyes, and came away with mere calculation.

The sky clouded to a low gray and ice gritted down, filling the grooves in the lake surface, dulling the colors of the flags and totems, dusting the horses into charcoal shadows.

Near sunset, the drums intensified. There must have been over a hundred of them now, pounding as if to shatter the lake's icy floor. Raki appeared at the wigwam entrance and said to Huon, “My mother asks, Baron, if you will go with her to the Grand Winter Council of Fort Solitude.”

Huon looked surprised; Lester hadn't returned.

“Just you,” Raki amplified.

Huon gathered his cloak, took a breath, and headed out, leaving the two of them together.

“They'll talk half the night away,” Raki said, as she packed away her sketches.

Mind and body in agreement: she smoothed a cowhide that had rucked up on the wigwam floor, running a hand over the place beside her. Raki slipped inside the shelter, bringing one last gust of cold air with him.

He was young and strong, beautiful too, and he wanted only one thing. He would not try to hold her.

“You miss your tribe?”

“My pack,” she agreed, kissing his tattooed brow and then sliding her hand into his shirt, where the skin was smooth and warm as the limestone walls of her favorite hot spring.

*   *   *

Well before morning, the drums stopped.

“They're done,” Raki said, shifting within the nest they'd made—the dog had come to sleep between them, a belated chaperone. “I've got to go help Ma and the other Doubledoubles—we cater the farewell breakfast.”

“Now?”

“No, but soon.”

She shoved the dog aside, then kept him so long he had to bolt—vanishing into another gust of cold when his people began shouting for him.

After he went, Finch washed and dressed, listening to the sounds of the camp: purposeful calls, the occasional sound of a hatchet working to break the ice on ropes or other shelters. She packed her belongings. Her touch lingered on the snow snake.

When the Change came, she would tell her people, the world had become smaller. Now, in peace, it was growing again. So, by necessity, must the Morrowland Pack.

They had been children, lost in the forest, but wanting changed nothing. There would be need for diplomacy badges, for espionage, for masks.

She wondered if the Baron, too, had reached a decision.

Just then he appeared, as promptly as if she'd sought him. “Pack up. We haven't quite outstayed our welcome, but we're getting there.”

“It didn't go well?”

“There was never much chance, was there?” he said.

“Did you get near him?”

“No.” He didn't know if Charlie was safe, then, or a danger to the tribes.

Cries—alarms, from the sentries—brought them outside:

There was a new party at the entrance to the lakeside camp, a great gathering of horses and riders, shrouded against the weather, and heavily armored.

The Cree were moving, suddenly, as one. Some of the braves melted into the wood; others stepped up to defend the camp—spearmen ahead, archers behind. The rodeo clowns rode to form a front line. Teens too young to fight drew the children toward the Fortress.

“My King,” Huon said in obvious surprise.

He was right: as the curtain of snow parted she saw it was Artos himself. Standing at the head of the party, cloak whipping, he raised the Sword of the Lady.

Had he followed the Baron? Was that possible? She supposed that, when someone tried to kill your cub . . .

Could it be he didn't trust Huon to bring Charlie back?

A gust threw ice into her eyes. When her vision cleared, she saw the baker.

He had bolted past his guard of rodeo clowns, and was running toward Artos, hands outstretched, feet kicking as he waded through deep snow.

“Charlie,” the Rodeo princess, Allie, shouted. She started forward.

Suddenly Lester was there, catching at her horse's reins. She raised an arm, as if to strike the old man.

“You believe in your man or don't you?” he demanded.

Bending, she raised Lester up and tossed him away, on his backside, so he fell harmlessly into the snow.

Finch blinked. Were those feathers, black-and-white ones, falling from the hand that had grabbed him?

By now the baker, Charlie, was almost to Artos. As he ran he was stooping, stumbling, showing his neck. He still had his hands out.

One of the Baron's men had an arrow drawn. “He rushes the King,” he murmured. “We'd be justified.”