“When Reed was fourteen, his mother was to market and I was somewhere doing the gods know what, likely shirking my chores. When I came home I—” He cut himself off andwinced. “When I came home, I found Reed on the ground outside the house. He was not awake, and his head was covered in so much blood, I thought he must have been dead.”
My throat was so tight, I could not draw breath. “No,” I protested, even if I knew the outcome.
Keir grimaced. “I do not know what precipitated their fight, but my father was almost as big as Dermid. And Reed has always been strong, but at fourteen, he did not stand a chance. The removal of that eye was a jeer at everything Reed loved. I’m sure my father made some speech about the blind archpriest of Tintar’s air temple. I’m sure he ridiculed Reed as he gouged him. I did my best by my brother. I tried to clean the wound and dress it. I tried to rouse him, keep him awake. I feared if he truly slept, he would never wake.”
“What did his mother do?” I asked, blinking away my tears.
“She came home. She looked at her son. She looked at her husband. And she never spoke of it. And nor did my father. When Reed was able to speak, when his wound stopped pouring out blood, I asked him what had happened, and do you know what he said to me?”
I could not speak. I could not think. I was sickened and aggrieved by this story. I wanted to cover my ears and turn away.
“He said, ‘It does not matter and I do not care.’ Then he quoted some old Tintarian sage’s words about ‘the desires of my life are not the whole of it.’ I think this old practice of air magic is a decent idea. But in the hands of a heartbroken boy? He twisted it. He bent it to serve him. And he has never let himself care about anything in life except the three of us. Even then, when the three of us express our love openly, he will put his hand on our shoulders, nod his head, smile. But he has to be deep in his cups to tell us he loves us.”
“Why do you tell me this?” I asked, more tears sliding down my cheek.
“Because I have never seen him this way around a woman.”
I was afraid to ask anything else in that regard. The answers to what Keir might see when he observed Reed’s feelings for me werenot truths I was ready to handle. So I asked the question I had wanted to ask all along.
“Keir, what are a Helmsman, a Tintarian woman, a Vyggian, and a half-Tintarian, half-Vyggian man doing on a religious pilgrimage to Perpatane to get folkawayfrom Tintar?”
He shook his head and stared down at the ground. “I was hoping you knew.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean he left the forest wardens after winters of service without notice. He just left his post, left Nyossa, returned to Pikestully, and said he was going to return to Vyggia to reclaim his mother’s house, that he didn’t want any part of some war. And then, after he had visited the Shark’s Keep, where the Shark King and his armies are marshaled, after he had submitted his last report on the activity of the borders he patrolled, he changed his mind. He returned to the quarters the four of us kept together and announced he was traveling to a settlement of the low country called Sheridan and he was going to try to find work on the caravan.”
“And gave no other explanation?”
Keir grinned, but his face was sorrowful. “He wouldn’t say a word. Wouldn’t give us a breath of reason. And keep in mind, I had dropped out of the army when he did. I was back to work as a guard with Dermid and Evangeline. We had no real dedication for our work. So we decided if he was going, so were we.”
“Just like that?”
“The way Jade tells it, you and yours are the same.”
“We are. Still, I have wondered all this time. Why do you think?—”
“It has something to do with you,” Keir spoke over me. “That is all I know. I tell you all of this to say, have a care with his heart, madam.”
82
NOW: SKOW
The approach to the eternal wall of Skow was a long one. The wall and the tower just behind it were gargantuan. The City of the Tower disappeared into the clouds above. The tower was visible to all before we ever saw the wall in the distance. Tessa had been right. Skow was built into a gradual depression in the earth, and we did not notice it until we looked behind us to see the rise of the public dust road and the timber forests that lined the south side of the road.
This was where our wagon with the false bottom was hidden.
The Gates of Sound were twin doors made of iron bars, each the width and height of a large house. The hundreds of penitent wagons were made to sit and wait for hours in the sparkle of a winter sun. It was as if the truth of winter had settled in overnight, making our last day on the road cold and somber.
To me, it was an omen, an unknowable portent, a cipher I could not read.
Then, the yawn of those open gates swallowed the marching and riding units of Perpatanian infantry and cavalry as they allfiled in, leaving the wagons of the low-country people they had traveled alongside for nearly four moons.
Tessa, bored and bold, took Zara down to the front. On her ride back, Thane having asked her to please fall in line, she reported that Torm, Bertram, Starling, and Gerard were all speaking to a unit of Perpatanian guards at the gates.
“Well, you made it to Skow without them killing you,” Ilsit muttered, elbowing me.
“Thanks to you,” I replied, checking to see if Jade had heard.
