Feir looked over his shoulder. The sa’ceurai were a bare hundred paces back now. If it came to a fight, the schlusses would doom him. He stumbled, caught an edge, and threw his foot to the side to catch himself. He staggered—and slid forward.

The joy was as great as he’d felt when he’d been named a Maker in the Brotherhood. He turned each schluss outward and pushed forward.

It worked until he got to the edge and started moving downhill faster than he could step. Each schluss went the way he had pointed it: out. His legs stretched until they could stretch no more and he pitched forward on his face.

The mountain was steep and the snow mercifully deep. Air was scarce as Feir flipped over and over through the powder. He was dimly aware that he needed to point the schlusses downhill. After six or seven rolls, it happened.

Suddenly Feir burst out of the omnipresent snow. The snow was at least three feet deep, but he was on top of it.

His heart was a thunder in his chest. He was headed straight downhill at incredible speed. In moments he was going faster than the fastest horse, and then faster and faster still. Controlling the two schlusses independently was almost impossible, so he quickly lashed them together with magic, both front and back, giving each a little leeway.

There were more crashes, and sometimes the snow wasn’t as forgiving. Finally, Feir learned how to steer. He steered around a rocky death and looked downhill for the first time, squinting against the white. He blinked. What is that line in the snow?

He shot over the precipice. For two seconds, there was no schluss of sleds on snow. The world was silent except for the blast of wind in his ears.

Then he landed. He crashed through a world of white powder, flipping, arms and legs pulled every which way. Then the miracle happened again and he popped out of the snow to fly downhill once more. His heart hammered. He laughed.

He had Curoch. He was safe. The Ceurans wouldn’t follow him down the mountain. Doing so would put them in Cenaria. He’d escaped!

“Incredible,” Lantano Garuwashi said. He was a big man for a Ceuran. His red hair hung thick and long with dozens of narrow sections of differently colored hair bound in. In Ceura, it was said that you could read a man’s life in his hair. At a boy’s clan initiation, his head was shaved bald except for one forelock. When the forelock had grown the length of three fingers, it was bound with a tiny ring and the boy declared a man. When he killed his first warrior, the forelock was bound again at the scalp and he became sa’ceurai. The shorter the span between the two rings on their forelocks, the better. Thereafter, when the sa’ceurai killed an enemy, he bound the slain man’s forelock to his own hair.

At first, a few warriors had thought Lantano only had one ring, because his first two were right on top of each other. He killed his first opponent at thirteen. In the seventeen years since, he’d added fifty-nine locks to his own hair. Had he been born a little higher, all of Ceura would have followed him. But a sa’ceurai’s soul was his sword, and nothing could change that Lantano had been born with an iron sword, a peasant sword. Lantano was a warlord because Ceuran tradition allowed any man of excellence to lead armies, but for Lantano it had become a trap. As soon as he stopped fighting, his power ended. He’d begun fighting for Ceura’s regent, Hideo Watanabe. Then, when the regent ordered him to disband, he became a mercenary instead. Desperate men flocked to his banners for one reason: he never lost.

The giant was becoming a speck in the distance.

“War Master, do you wish us follow?” a stump of a man with a score of locks tied in his balding hair asked.

“We’ll try the caves,” Lantano said.

“Into Cenaria?”

“Just a hundred sa’ceurai. It’ll be a cold winter. Killing this giant will give us a tale to keep us warm.”

57

Momma K wanted Agon and his army to take Logan to the rebel camp. If he were to be king, he needed an army. Kylar refused to leave his friend, at least until Logan was conscious. When Kylar fainted, Agon asked Momma K if they should load Logan into the wagon. Momma K cursed and railed but said no.

They never asked Vi’s opinion. She was content. She wanted to atone for what she’d done, but she didn’t want to think.

Even as she sat with Kylar and Momma K and Agon, a part of her urged her to kill them. The Godking rewarded those who served him well. She could wipe out all the greatest threats to the Godking’s rule in one minute.

She didn’t obey that thought. She’d been judged innocent. She’d come completely clean.

Almost. She’d realized only lately that perhaps the most damaging thing she’d done to Kylar was something that had seemed trivial at the time, a small gesture of contempt. She’d pocketed the note and pair of earrings Kylar had left for Elene.

It was only today that she’d learned they were wedding rings. Drissa and Tevor had explained the custom at length. Between taking those and the note, Vi had left Elene with nothing.

She hadn’t been brave enough to tell Kylar about that, had she?

It was just too much truth. She could have accepted Kylar killing her, but she didn’t know what to do if Kylar despised her. If he knew her, he would despise her. There was no way love could overcome so much.

Love? What am I thinking? Limit yourself to fighting and fucking, Vi. You’re good at those.

The door to a patient room opened and Kylar came in. Logan stepped in from another.

For the first time, Vi saw Kylar smile. It did something strange inside her when he smiled like that—and he wasn’t even looking at her. He bowed deeply. “Your Majesty,” Kylar said.

“My friend,” Logan said. He was achingly thin, his bones poking at his skin. Despite that, he had an unmistakable aura of rallying health. Dressed richly once more, he was handsome despite his ordeal. He crossed the distance quickly and hugged Kylar.

“I’m sorry,” Kylar said. “I came too late that night. I found blood and I thought …I’m so sorry.”

Logan squeezed Kylar silently, heaving great breaths until the emotions died down. Finally, he stepped back and held onto Kylar’s shoulders.

“You’ve done so well, my friend. I’m the one who’s sorry. I’m sorry I ever doubted you. Someday soon we will have to talk. You—you did some things down there that …” Logan looked around, aware of the others. “That I’m really curious about. And I seem to have some holes in my memory, like how I got this.”

He pulled back his sleeve and Vi and Momma K gasped. Sunken into his arm was something like a glowing silvery-green tattoo. He didn’t show the whole thing, but to Vi the lines looked stylized and abstract, not random.

“Your Majesty,” Drissa Nile said. “I would be …very cautious about showing that.”

“I’m sorry to press you,” Momma K said, “but we have to make some decisions.”

“You mean I have to make some decisions,” Logan said, his tone whimsical.

“Yes, Your Majesty, pardon me.”

Logan addressed Kylar first. “You have done us greater service than we could demand or hope for. I won’t order you, but we deem it most mete for …” He got a faraway look and let the sentence trail off.

“Sire?” Kylar asked.

Logan snapped back into the present. “Odd. I’ve been cursing with the worst of the Holers for months, and now I’m back to ‘deeming’ and judging what is ‘mete.’ ” He shook his head and smirked ruefully. “Kylar, it comes down to this. If you can kill the Godking before our armies close for battle, we might avert battle altogether. I ask you to do this, but I won’t order it. You’ve already made enormous sacrifices to save me. And I know that you don’t trust this woman, but if she can help, use her help. Her surrender when she could have killed us is proof enough of her good intentions for me. Vi is as much a weapon as you are, and I can let none of the weapons in my small arsenal lie idle.”