“I didn’t realize there’d be so much snow this low in the cradle,” he admitted.
“We’re practically in the Kettalist,” she informed him. They reached the top of the stairs.
Niel looked around, his face knotted in either distaste or skepticism. She couldn’t tell.
“This isn’t the Kettalist,” he told her.
“It’s as good as.” She could see the mountains directly to their north, so large they took up the whole sky.
“It’snextto the Kettalist,” he said, his tone final.
“Then what do you call these slopes?” she gestured to the terrain beyond the warcamp, the rolling forests that comprised fief Blackfell.
“Hills. I call them hills,” he told her dismissively.
“As you say, then,” she said with a laugh. The soldiers had cleared the walk, but left a foot of snow topping the decorative stone railing. She paused to scoop a handful of it into her mittens, then compacted it as they walked. “We get plenty enough snow here for me.”
“You don’t like it either?” Niel asked.
“Oh, no,” Ayla said, looking at him with surprise, her snowball cupped between both hands. It radiated cold through her mittens. “I used tolovethe snow.”
Before it meant being trapped inside with Ditmar, anyways.
“Truly?Why?” Niel asked, eyebrows raised. She shrugged, tossed her snowball over the ledge, and kept walking. Ayla brushed the bits of snow that remained on her mittens loose. She didn’t want to dwell on the horrors of the last few years. Her husband had taken enough of her life from her.
“It’s beautiful,” she admitted. “The whole world turns to black and white, like a blanket laid over the land.” She trailed a hand down an icicle hanging off an overhang of the balustrade, her voice dreamy. “There’s a quiet to it, too. And with the roads closed, my papa would be home instead of traveling. Those were my happiest times, as a child.”
“He traveled a lot?”
“Merchants tend to.” Her throat didn't close up as much as usual at the mention of her family. “But don’tyoulike the snow? You’re such a northerner in every other way.”
“Mercy, no,” Niel grumbled. “Fighting in it is a bitch. It’s cold, it’s wet, it slows you down. And where I’m from, in therealKettalist mountains—” he gave her a look. Ayla pursed her lips at him. “Heavy snow meant we couldn’t go outside at all. Nothing to do but combat training, and nurse broken bones until we could fight some more.”
“How grim. Surely you played snow-games as a child.” She studied a long icicle hanging off the balustrade, glittering in the sunlight like a dagger made of stars.
“I haven’t a clue what that means,” Niel said. He paused to snap off the icicle Ayla had been admiring and tossed it over the wall with workmanlike purpose. She opened her lips to complain, to tell him it had been beautiful, then shook her head with a wry smile.
“Come, now. Didn’t you ever build snow-castles?” she asked him.
Niel frowned and reached for another icicle. It cracked off the balustrade. The inner wall was short, hugging the keep on one side and looking out over the courtyard on the other, with a long staircase down on either end. They’d nearly reached the far stair, where they could choose to descend to the courtyard, or to turn back and pace the wall again.
“My father taught me how to make a fort that could keep me alive in a blizzard. Or provide cover from an enemy. I suppose that’s the same thing.” He snapped the icicle in half with his hands.
“Not…quite, I think,” Ayla said, stopping beside him. “Tobogganing, then?”
Surely in the mountains, the children had sleds. If she had made sport from the gentle hills around Carinth, she could only imagine what grand adventures were had by the children of the mighty Kettalist.
“I watched the village children sledding from the window,” Niel told her stiffly. He didn’t meet her eyes, and he folded his arms over his breastplate.
“Snow fights, then. That seems like something you’d be good at,” Ayla tried again, determined to find some happy memory buried under the debris of his upbringing.
“Of course,” Niel said too easily. “But you aren’t telling me that’s somethingyoudid.” His eyes met hers, suddenly curious and more lively than before.
“Whyever not? It’s good fun.” She poked at a pile of snow on the balustrade with her thumb, drawing a circle.
“I didn’t expect a merchant daughter would be trained in combat. With what weapons?”
Ayla blinked at him rapidly, then snorted, fighting back a laugh.
