We'd stopped in a hollow between two mountains, sheltered from the wind, and I could see the sky above, still dark, the stars sharp and cold the way they only got this far north. I tried to read our direction from them and got partial information, enough to know we'd moved northeast, which was farther from the group and closer to nothing.
That was good. Or at least survivable. Northeast was the terrain I'd heard about before. Toward the jagged rocks that made landing a ship on the coast of Crystallese impossible.
Vorn was watching me, studying me, while I pretended he didn’t exist.
“You're memorizing the route,” he said flatly.
“Trailfinder,” I said with a cockiness I wasn’t feeling. “It's what I do.”
He looked amused, and I didn’t like the look of appreciation he gave me. “Sit,” he said.
I sat. Not because he told me to, but because my legs were tired and the snow was packed enough that sitting didn’t mean I’d be immediately wet.
A water skin appeared in front of me. I looked at it, then at the man holding it, young, dark-eyed, watching me with the cautious wariness of someone who had been told to be careful.
“It's water,” Vorn said.
“I know.” I took it and drank. The water was cold and tasted of metal, and I drank it gratefully. “Where are we going?”
“North.”
“You want to go to Iskaeld?”
“No.”
“Then where? There’s nothing north of here.”
“You keep saying that.” He crouched in front of me, bringing his face level with mine. His pale eyes were steady in the dark. “Yet here we are, heading north of Iskaeld.”
“You know where you’re going,” I realized as I looked at him for a long moment. “What do you need a trailfinder for?”
“There's a pass,” he said like he hadn’t just kidnapped me and we were two friends having a conversation. “Two days further north. We've lost two people trying to find it in the last season.”
“A pass to where?”
He didn't answer that.
“Vorn.” I held his gaze. “A pass to where?”
“Does it matter?”
“It matters if you want me to find it.” I shifted my bound hands in my lap, making the restraint visible, deliberate. “I findtrails. That's the transaction I promise people. I can't do that if I don't know what I'm navigating toward.”
He studied me for a long moment. The wind moved overhead, above the hollow, carrying the sound of open tundraat night. It was a low, directionless moan that wasn't quite music and wasn't quite nothing.
“There's a community,” he said finally. “Beyond the pass. People who have been there for generations. People who want no contact with the south.”
“A community?” Gods, there were more of them. “Like yours?”
“More so.” He tilted his head slightly when he saw my reaction to that. “They’re a bit…wilder.” He grinned when my eyes widened. “We trade with the south, occasionally. They don't. Haven't for a very long time.”
“Then why do you need to reach them?”
“Because they might know something,” he said. And his voice, for the first time since I'd known him, carried something that wasn't controlled. Something that had weight to it. “There are things wrong in the rest of Crystallese — the creatures are coming down, and whatever it is — it started from beyond Iskaeld. Or in that direction.” He held my gaze. “I need to know if they're still alive.”
I sat with that for a moment.
The creatures coming down was worrying. But was it really Vorn’s concern?
