The sun hid behind Thermopos. Traces of orange rays bent around its peak, but the air stayed frigid. At least the snow stopped. All the venison that would keep from their last night’s dinner had been packed away. That was Astera’s catch, and a good one, too. A shame so much would have to go to waste. The rest was eaten for breakfast or thrown to the dog.
Pyraz wolfed deer down like the Archon at a winter feast. He would have kept eating until his stomach burst had Rook not pulled him away. But he didn’t snap, growl, or bite. His tail wagged; he licked his lips; he jumped in a circle; then he was back at Rook’s heel. Sometimes he got carried away, but he was always obedient. Shockingly so. Rook had never known such good company.
That was the funny thing about being a leader. Some soldiers were loyal no matter what, even when done wrong. Others needed incentives for good behavior. And some were born bad.
“Are you ready?” Astera said.
Pyraz barked. Rook heard, but he wasn’t listening. They were approaching Vandens now. The top of the Spire peaked out through the white-coated canopy, and he was thinking. Quiet mornings were always the worst time for self-conscience. When dawn was breaking, when he donned his armored jacket, he traded one set of weights for another.
This dawn was worse than most others.
Pyraz rubbed against his knee.
Some soldiers were born bad. The cut of turncoats and traitors. Rook had experience with both. No doubt some such soldiers were women, and some such women had names that began with E…
There was a hitch in his thinking, a sluicegate closed, a barrier that he preferred to leave up, lest melancholy be his damnation. But as he stared at the Spire, the gate let slip his thoughts, and he became a very different man:
He could have showered her with diamonds and she still would have left. That was the truth, wasn’t it? There was no converting a crow to a dove. Her nature was as unchanging as any animal’s. Pyraz was loyal for the allocation of meat, like Aletheia was loyal for protection, like Astera was loyal for a share in their takes. But they were dogs, all, just like him. Eris was different. Eris was a cat, and cats were capricious creatures. He could feed a cat every day; it might still reward him with a bite on the wrist, a scratch on the arm, a kiss one day and a hiss the next—so it was pointless to dwell, to worry, to think on it any longer, because there was nothing else to be done. A stray that wanted to run had to be let go.
He dwelt anyway, because he was hopelessly infatuated with her. Even her petty malevolence, her aura of antagonism, her disinterest in others and her overinterst in herself—it all had a kind of charisma to it that he found irresistible. Maybe that was because the cat’s affection, once earned, was so much more delicious than the dog’s. It was tasted in such small quantities that it never left one fully sated. Or maybe it was just because of what she looked like; he couldn’t deny that he wanted nothing more than to take her far away from their companions, to slip her cloak down around her shoulders, to—
“Rook?” This was Aletheia. She caught him so off-guard that he jumped. “Are you okay?”
He noticed the dumb expression on his face, but he couldn’t bring himself to smile. “The sun is up, isn’t it?”
“Not really,” she said. She tightened her cloak about herself.
“It will be soon,” he said, but he wondered. “I’m okay. And I’m ready.”
Astera stepped in front of him. “Your pensive look gives away your thoughts, Rook. Are you too distracted to focus on the road ahead?”
“Very distracted, the cold bites my skin and my breath clouds my vision. But I’ll warm presently once we away.”
“You made the right choice. Your mind should be clear.”
They started off through the silent woods. One day left on the road.
“Plus you shouldn’t walk into trees anymore, since you don’t have Eris to stare at,” Aletheia said.
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He sighed. He wasn’t in the mood for Astera’s moralizing, although Aletheia’s teasing was more good-natured. “I didn’t stare. Did I?”
“I thought it was a spell,” she said.
“Did she try to cast a spell on you before she left?” Astera said seriously.
“No, there was no spell,” Rook said. The elf in their company had virtue to spare, but for all her immortality she received less wit than most schoolchildren. Rook would never admit it, but while he was grateful for her abilities, he didn’t much like her. But Aletheia was different. He added with a smile, “Or staring.”
“Yes there was! You always let her go first,” Aletheia said.
“That wasn’t to stare, but for fear she might stab me in the back,” Rook said.
“Fear well-founded,” Astera said.
They came to a path, mostly buried beneath snow, that led back to the highway. Rook stopped and turned to his companions. “Friends, let me be serious. I met Eris a year ago. She was one of many adventurers. Now she’s gone, and I don’t expect her to be back. I’d ask that you don’t linger on her anymore than we lingered on Zydnus and Guinevere. Once they’re laid to rest…it’s best to move on. So let’s not talk about her anymore.”
He thought of a few lines of verse:
“The swineherd wrangles pens of hogs // The catcher catches rats // The kennelmaster keeps his dogs // But what man captures cats?”
He sighed. “Let’s get moving.”
Everything he said was true, and he hoped they would listen. There was only one thing he didn’t mention then, however, which was that he was completely incapable of following his own advice—and truth be told, he didn’t much intend to try.
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Two hundred miles north, Eris’ arm oozed. Even the faintest twitch in her wrist and fingers brought down slicing agony. She fashioned a sling as best she could from her cloak, to hold the appendage stationary as she walked, but it made little difference past the second day. As she weathered miserable cold and a poorly paved road she felt every gust of breeze and the jolt of every step.
The pain was a small price to pay for her life.
She counted herself lucky to have escaped with any arms at all. The sight of her injury and each shock to her skin was a vital reminder that she made the right decision. She would be better off without Rook. Her destiny was in her hands now, and hers alone; no one else could be trusted with it.
That was why she traveled north even as the worst days of winter approached. The weather of Esenia was unpredictable at its best and correlated little with longitude, but in the borderlands between Rytus and Nanos the natural patterns of climate still held. She found herself shivering long, painful nights away at the side of the road, watching large flakes of snow fall from the heavens and sizzle themselves out on her fire.
Even when there was nothing to burn it did not require much mana to sustain a small flame sufficient for her own warmth. The loss of her arm for the time being was not so terrible, if only for the use of her magic in compensation. She had come to rely on it much more than when she first left Pyrthos one year prior. Now she could hardly imagine a life without connection to the Aether. The ability to cast spells came and went, but always she felt the magic around her. It was impossible to describe to the mundane. Like the air she noticed only when she exhaled against her own hand. An invisible liquid that surrounded everything. It had felt thin when she first met Rook, but now it was so much thicker, so much easier to breathe in.
One year. Her birthday had passed without notice. Now she was seventeen, and at seventeen a very different woman than at sixteen. The life on the road proved not to be an easy one. She didn’t anticipate it would be. Now she knew no other way of life. The thought of pursuing some different avenue, one less likely to result in scarring and nights of brutal cold, was distant from her mind. This was how she would get what she wanted. And what she wanted was…
Swep-Nos. The small town of Zydnus’ demise. A wall surrounded a handful of buildings, with a few more buried beneath fields of frost in the miles on approach. Within a guardpost at its gate burned the welcoming light of a lantern.
Swep-Nos meant ‘sleep’ in Dwarfish. Yes. That was what Eris wanted. She was very tired.
For as long as snow fell, she stayed at the town’s eponymous inn, and she stayed in utter isolation. Lodging was cheap in the dead of winter, but even that cost her everything she had left, even her little jewelry—her earrings and her mirror. The nights were long, cold, and lonely, and sometimes she wondered what she might do with Rook in the room with her, how they might pass the time, what conversations they might have—
And then she would see the scar on her arm. She would remember the sight of the Ancient Cheeseman aflame. She would think upon how that idiot man chose a child over her. Those thoughts were enough to banish any nostalgia for the last year from her mind, and in her anger that still lingered, even as weeks turned to months and the cold began to thaw, she found conviction thus:
Eris would never be reduced to a follower. She was the captain of any group henceforth. Not only was she capable of taking caring of herself, but others, clearly, were a vast liability. They could be manipulated for her own purposes—men especially—but she should give nothing in return. All these things she knew already, but her year with Rook made her see them so much more clearly.
As for Rook…she would never see him again. So be it. Her designs were so much grander than one teenage warrior, and she was only getting started. She did not need him nearly so much as he needed her. Of that she was certain. So she would let him go. But once Spring came, she would be back to the life of the adventurer.