Scarlet and the White Wolf [01] - Scarlet and the White Wolf (24 page)

Her dark eyes narrowed. For a moment, she looked very much like Linhona in one of her moods. "This is about the Kasiri chieftain, isn't it?"

He looked away. "Don't be foolish, girl."

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"Don't you
girl
me! I have eyes. You'd have stayed in the camp with him, but he left and now you've given up living to spite him." She smoothed her skirt and folded her white hands in her lap. "In case you hadn't noticed, he's not here to see you pout."

"Annaya!" he cried, shocked. Scaja had known about the difference in him, and perhaps Linhona, but he was certain Annaya had not.

"It's true. He's left and you're sulking. Why don't you just follow him, you ninny?"

Scarlet sat up straight as if he would bolt out of his chair, and his mouth opened and closed like a gaping fish. After a long moment of panic, he sank back in his seat. "He didn't ask me," he said at last. His chest ached a little, as if a soft lump of pain were lodged under his breastbone. "He didn't want me to come with him. What he wanted me for would have lasted only a single night. Beyond that, I was nothing to him."

Annaya reached for his hand. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," he said, pulling away and standing. "At least he didn't lie to me. I couldn't have borne that." He could hear Shansi clearing his throat diplomatically in the next room.

Supper was ready, but the smith must have been unwilling to intrude on the argument between siblings.

"Won't you stay? Even for a little while?"

He sighed heavily. Annaya meant well, but she was not thinking ahead to a time when a brother would be a bother, when there were children in the bed that was supposed to be his and not enough soup in the pot to go around. Her house 212

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would never be his parent's house, and Annaya was starting her own family with Shansi. Nantua could not be his new Lysia. All that was dead.

Annaya made one last reproach before he left. It was in the form of a gift: a leather pedlar's satchel with a deep pouch and sturdy pockets. On the oil-polished flap was a word in curling letters, deeply embossed in red dye.

He ran his hand over it admiringly, the bitterness of their last argument forgotten. "It's beautiful, Annaya. Did you have this done? What does it say?"

"I did it myself. It's your name, Scarlet."

His brow wrinkled in puzzlement. His sister could not read or write any more than he could. As far as he knew, neither could Shansi. "But how? Who helped you?"

"Linhona taught me. It was the one thing I ever asked her to teach me of reading."

She did not wait for him to speak, but embraced him tightly, her little hands digging into his shoulders. "Goodbye, brother."

* * * *

So he left. It seemed that all he had done since meeting Liall was shed parts of his life that he had never intended to lose. He could not talk to Annaya about it, and it was more than not wanting to share how much pain he was in. He was not
able
to share it. Perhaps it was just the way the gods made him. He could not complain about that, but he regretted that he was parting with Annaya so badly.

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She did not understand. With Annaya, it was always damn the winds and too bad if it rained harder. She had never been a quiet girl, and true to form, she was not about to start now.

They spent the last night shouting at each other, and in the morning she had sent him off with a fierce hug and tears in her eyes. He crossed the river back into Byzantur at noon, and by the time he was too far down the road to Patra to turn back and apologize, he wanted to.

Sometimes the answer's right in front of us. We're just moving too fast to see it. They were Scaja's words, and he was shortly to discover how prophetic they were. If he had not been so lost in regret, he would have seen the faint smudges of color slipping through the edge of the woods alongside the path long before he drew near to them.

* * * *

"Well, well! It's the wolf cub. We heard the gypsies had gone east. Did they leave you behind?"

Scarlet's mouth was suddenly dry and he knew he had been vastly stupid. It was scar-faced Cadan and three Aralyrin soldiers blocking his way on the Iron Path. They had come up so sudden from the trees that he had seen only shadows slipping from behind tree trunks, silent as wraiths in the quiet day. They were as fearsome as wraiths, too; armed men with a look of bored villainy.

No sense asking what they wanted. Scarlet tried to bluff his way out. "Stand aside and let me pass."

"Bold orders from the bedmate of a thieving Kasiri," Cadan said, his palms resting on the hilts of his knives. His right leg 214

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was wrapped in some kind of leather splint below the knee and he stood with his heel up, not resting his full weight on it.

"I'm not-!" The denial was half out before he could stop it.

He shook his head. "Get out of my way!" Scarlet's voice was brave, but inside he had begun to shiver. This former Kasiri soldier had meant to murder him once, for no more reason than revenge on another man. His fingers inched toward the long-knives at his hips, but Cadan only stared at him, smiling coldly in silence. There were four against one. To draw a weapon now would mean his death, and Cadan knew it.

He did not know what he expected Cadan to say, some threat or promise of harm perhaps. After how talkative Cadan had been in the past, this new silence was more frightening than any threat.

Scarlet risked a quick look behind him, hoping to see another traveler in the distance, but it was hopeless. After the last raid, there would be none coming north from the Salt Road. None but he, and he had lingered too long in Nantua.

Cadan saw the direction of Scarlet's glance and signaled to his men. Lame he might have been, but he still had his authority. "Bring him."

"Wait!" Scarlet said desperately to the soldiers. "Your captain, he was a Kasiri once."

One of the soldiers spat in the dust, unconcerned at the news. "Listen to him. Whey-faced Hilurin is what he is. First Tribe scum. Next, he'll lecture us about our duty as soldiers of the vine."

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Another soldier gave a grunting laugh. "Soldiers of the vine! Do we look like country bumpkins to you, pedlar? All that is past."

"You still swore to uphold the law," Scarlet said, shamed to hear his voice shaking. "You obey the Flower Prince."

"I obey whoever pays me, and lately, it ain't been a shit-arsed prince in silk pants."

Scarlet backed up a little. He had thought to reveal Cadan's past crimes to them and appeal to their sense of honor, but when he searched their faces, he found them as hard and carved as the stone statue at the Fate Dealer's.

From then on, it was pride alone that held him silent.

Scarlet darted aside and tried to make a run for it, but as two of the soldiers stepped in opposite directions and expertly closed in on him, he froze in fear and hesitated for a moment.

The soldiers fell on him, pinning his arms and stripping him of his pack and bundle, jerking the knife-belt from his waist and letting it drop in the road. He was dragged and shoved in silence into the thick stand of junipers lining the road. The scent of evergreen and springtime roses was thick in the air, and his only thought was relief that, whatever happened, Scaja and Linhona could not be hurt any more. He did not know who Cadan's comrades were, only that they were probably as foul as Cadan himself, and that they hated all Hilurin.

They arrived very quickly at a rough camp the soldiers had made in the woods: a canvas tent, a few bedrolls on the ground, and a heap of stones that circled a campfire dwindled down to ash and embers.

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Cadan motioned to his men and they released Scarlet's arms. Scarlet had saved his strength and not struggled very much, and he stood glaring at them, his body trembling with stress and delayed fear. Still, Cadan did not speak, only kept staring with that even light in his eyes that did more to tear Scarlet down than any words could have.

"Where's your friend?"

Scarlet's mind went blank for a moment, still locked in dread. "Who..."

"The Wolf. Where is he?"

Scarlet shook his head. "I don't know. He left."

Cadan stepped forward and struck him hard across the face. "I know he
left,
hill-brat! Where did he go? He wasn't with the Longspur krait when they made it to Dorogi. When did he leave them and where was he bound?"

Liall's words came back to him:
It is Norl Udur, as has
been rumored, and I will get there by traveling to the port of
Volkovoi across the Channel.

A trickle of blood ran from Scarlet's nose. "He didn't tell me."

"Oh, did he not?" Cadan shifted a look from Scarlet to his men and back. "I figured you'd be in his yurt by now, playing cushion to the great chieftain's belly. He mustn't have been that interested in you, after all."

Scarlet kept his silence, refusing to take the bait.

"There's a price on his head, did you know? The word's spread to every port from here to Ankar and even in Khet. An envoy from Norl Udur came to the army garrison in Patra, 217

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carrying more silver than any soldier will see in a lifetime. It's all for the man who brings the White Wolf back in chains."

Scarlet fought to keep his mind clear, for Liall as much as for himself. "What do they want with him?"

Cadan hawked and spat into the dirt. "Doesn't matter. I can make you rich, pedlar. Rich enough to guarantee your safety anywhere. Then you'd be able to protect that pretty sister of yours." Cadan's grin was ugly with menace. "Nantua, is it? I wonder if that's far enough. I bet on a windy day, she can still smell the smoke from Lysia."

With a cry of rage, Scarlet bunched his fists and charged Cadan. The soldiers tackled him and knocked him to the ground. Cadan watched the struggling knot of them, smiling his pitiless smile. "There's plenty of time," he said. "If you won't tell me now, you'll tell me by tonight. Wait and see."

They dragged Scarlet up and two of the soldiers held his arms out straight as Cadan squared up to him. The last soldier sat down by the smoldering fire to watch.

"I told you, I don't know!"

Cadan drew back his arm and backhanded Scarlet. His head rocked back and his ears began ringing. He grunted in pain and focused on Cadan dizzily, just in time to see the soldier draw his fist back. Cadan punched him low in the gut.

The pain was worse than Scarlet could imagine. It felt like his stomach had been pushed back to his spine. His legs gave way and he retched, doubling over. Cadan's fist came down on the back of his neck.

He lost track of time. There was dirt against his face and the strong smell of earth and smoke. The soldiers hauled him 218

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back to his feet, and Cadan turned to nod to the man by the fire. The soldier slipped his knife from his belt and lodged the blade deep in the coals.

Cadan put his hands on Scarlet's shoulders. "Tell me where Liall is," he said almost pleasantly. "You owe him no loyalty.

Come," he coaxed, patting Scarlet's cheek. "Tell me what I want to know."

Scarlet glanced to the man by the fire, watching him turn his knife to heat the blade evenly. He knew with a deadly certainty that if he did not give Cadan the information he wanted, the soldiers would kill him right here. It would not be a quick death.

He looked at the sky, the weight of the awful decision filling him with anguish. His life or Liall's? The world took on a peculiar brightness as he looked up at the dark, jagged scrawls of evergreen branches cutting through the warm blue calm of the sky. Despite everything, the murder of his parents, his home, the strong sense of loss when Liall said goodbye, now that he had come to it, he realized that he wanted very much to live.

But he desperately wanted Liall to live as well.

A small redbird drifted in the sky behind Cadan, journeying across the great disk of the sun in the span of an instant, and Scarlet thought: That is my life there, all the time that I have left. In a very little while, I'll be dead, and no one but Annaya or Liall will ever mourn me.

Scarlet thought of Liall's face—handsome, strong, and inscrutable—and wondered if the atya would make it to his homeland, and if not, would they meet again in the 219

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Otherworld? Would Deva keep them apart, or would she understand? I love him, Scarlet thought in wonder, amazed that he was the one person who had not seen that.

Then, in that stilled moment, Scarlet finally faced the truth of the fate of his people in Byzantur. They were all going to die, just as surely as he was going to die, and very soon. The Hilurin were few and they were feared and they were unwanted, and they had dared to rule. The coming war would be swift and decisive, its inevitable outcome already determined. Their fate was as plain to him as if it were written across the sky.

He was suddenly profoundly sorry that he had never truly lived his life as he wanted to, that he had never reached out to another's body for pleasure or comfort or warmth, and that he had been too afraid of his nature to learn what it might have been like to be loved by a man like Liall.

Why didn't Liall ask me to go with him? he thought mournfully. I would do it all differently now. I never had the wilding. I was only running away from myself, and now ... I can't be the one to betray him, even if I die. Oh, Deva, help me, I can't, I can't...

A shadow dipped across the sun, and the lazy-looking redbird darted aside, missing the razor claws of the hawk by so narrow a margin that it seemed, in that moment, a miracle that the prey had escaped. The hawk flew harmlessly past, and Scarlet stared transfixed at the disappearing outline of the predator, not even realizing that his body had gone limp in the soldier's grasp. The soldiers, perhaps not wanting to exert further effort into struggling that would soon be put to 220