Dev’s pace slowed as the angle of the cliff increased. He shifted only a single hand or foot at a time, with precise, unhurried control. Kiran still couldn’t understand how Dev could cling to such a sheer surface, let alone ascend it. But Dev twisted, and reached, and stepped, all with that same sinuous grace. Kiran began to relax as Dev neared the red seam.
For the first time, Dev hesitated. He leaned back, the muscles standing out like ropes under the brown skin of his back and arms. Reached a hand out, then withdrew it. Stretched upward, and slid his fingers over the rock, as if searching for a hold.
Kiran clenched a sweaty hand around a piton. He remembered the fiery ache in his forearms and hands after mere minutes of ascent. How long could Dev cling to such tiny imperfections in the cliff face? How long before even the most well-trained muscles must give way?
Dev held still for an agonizing interval. At last he straightened his arms and sank down into a twisted crouch. He rocked once, twice...and sprang upward, his body fully extended in the air. Kiran’s breath froze in his chest. Clearly he’d been right, before. Dev was
insane.
At the apex of his jump, Dev’s reaching fingertips locked with unerring accuracy on the crystalline lip of the red layer. His arms flexed, taking his weight—and one hand lost its grip. Dev’s body jerked. He swung from his remaining hand, clawing at the rock with his feet.
Kiran’s heart leapt into his throat. He scrambled to his knees. He had only to release his barriers... He raised a hand; then dropped it, and sank back. Sick certainty cramped his gut. He couldn’t face the unceasing hell that awaited, should Ruslan reclaim him. Kiran covered his face with his hands. Alisa would never have condoned a man’s death, for any reason. Yet another way in which he’d failed her, though not the worst.
He’d dreaded the sound of Dev’s scream, but the loudest sound remained that of his own thudding heart. Kiran peeked through his fingers.
Dev hung from the edge of the red seam in a contortion of limbs. One foot was wedged high over his head, the other leg doubled up beneath the hand he’d jammed between the rock layers. With his free hand, he was busily working a piton into the crack.
Kiran sagged against the cliff. The relief that swept over him did nothing to erase the shame that still seared his heart.
Dev grabbed the slender hammer hanging from its knotted sling around his waist. The high-pitched ring of metal on metal shivered through the air. Another agonizing pause followed as Dev snatched up a second sling tied to his harness, threaded the free end through the piton ring, and tied a one-handed knot. Sweat sheened his back as he worked. Kiran dug his nails into his palms, and willed Dev’s grip to hold.
Dev swung one foot down, then the other. The sling drew taut as his weight settled onto the piton. The piton held.
Dev threw his head back and laughed. The sheer joy in the sound made Kiran’s breath catch. He dropped his head to his knees, heat pricking his eyes.
Our nature is the same
, Ruslan had shouted. Kiran had spat at his feet and denied it. And yet in the moment of truth, he’d proved Ruslan right.
***
(Dev)
I climbed back down to Kiran with my blood still buzzing like I’d drunk an entire cask of firewine. I felt light on my feet as a full-fledged Tainter. Almost, I believed I could step off the cliff and float free in the air the way I’d used to. Gods, I hadn’t felt this good in years.
“Got us a decent stone,” I announced. Kinslayer hadn’t disappointed. Several thumb-sized lumps of red crystal waited in my belt pouch. One to peek Pello’s wards, and the rest I could sell for a tidy little sum once back in Ninavel. The more coin I had before trying to slip Melly from Red Dal’s grasp, the better.
“You nearly died.” Kiran’s voice was flat. The tight curl of his body reminded me of the way he’d huddled during the storm, but his eyes were narrowed, rather than wide with fear.
“Aw, did that little slip scare you? Trust me, I’ve come closer to Shaikar’s hells than that.” Not much closer, in truth. I inhaled and stretched, remembering the cold shock of my hand breaking loose. Every fleck of mica on the granite had blazed into knife-edged clarity, every beat of my heart loud as thunder. I’d never felt more alive.
Kiran’s eyes narrowed further. “It wouldn’t have mattered what I said beforehand, would it? You wanted to do that climb.”
“Of course I wanted to do the climb.” What outrider wouldn’t? I surveyed my route up the gleaming arc of cliff, and sighed in satisfaction. Sun winked off my single piton, still jammed in the fingers-width crack beneath the carcabon layer. Every outrider who traveled this canyon would know someone had conquered Kinslayer.
“So it’s all right for
you
to endanger everything,” Kiran snapped.
I took in his clenched fists and the sweat drying on his temples. Well, I was no stranger to fear-fueled anger. I shrugged back into my shirt. “Difference is, I didn’t take a risk for no reason. Now we can take care of Pello’s charm. You’ll feel better then, you’ll see.”
Kiran twitched and turned his face away. I blinked, puzzled. Anger I could understand, but now he had the shifty-eyed look of a Tainter who’d screwed up an important job. Was he so touchy over his panic after the storm?
“How do we get down?” he asked. He still wouldn’t look at me.
I started shaking out the rope. “I’ll lower you, and then I’ll climb down after you. Just face in to the rock, push your body away from it with your feet, and walk down as I let out the rope.”
Kiran glanced over the edge and swallowed.
“Don’t worry, it’ll be a lot easier than the climb up.” I made sure the rope ran properly through the system of pitons and around my waist, ready for the belay. “When you were, uh,
exploring
the catsclaw yesterday, did you notice anything unusual?”
“Like what?” His shoulders hunched up even higher.
I waved a hand at the silver-green mass of catsclaw far below. “See those black patches?” I’d confirmed early this morning while getting water that my eyes hadn’t been tricked by the fading light of evening. Whole groups of bushes had died, their leaves withered and blackened as if burned. “None of us have seen anything like it before, not even Jerik.”
“Could it be from...lightning strikes, perhaps?” Kiran wore a frown, but the guilty expression had faded. His twitchiness wasn’t over last night’s disappearing act, then.
“Maybe. But I heard Harken telling Cara this morning that some of the drovers are worried about their mules. Seems they’re off their feed, like they’re sick. And from up here, looks to me like the sick mules are from wagons closest to those burned patches.”
Now he looked upset. “Will they be all right? The mules?”
“Who knows?”
Kiran leaned over to peer down at the convoy, biting his lip. “Will this delay us in reaching Kost?”
His worry was so evident that I relented. “Nah. From what Harken said, the mules are still able to pull. Just seems odd. You sure you didn’t see anything in the catsclaw?”
His shoulders relaxed a little. “No,” he said softly. “I didn’t notice anything. I was...a little distracted, at the time.” He glanced at me. “By the way, Cara’s coming up the talus.”
I leaned over, and made a face. She sure was. Stomping up the boulders like she meant to grind them into powder, in fact. No doubt she’d prefer to crush me instead. “Brace yourself. Soon as we’re down, she’s gonna flay me raw.”
“She cares about you.” He said it low, but I still heard the bitter undertone. Yeah, somebody had burned him, and recently, too. The lover he’d denied? Or the father he’d choked over? Regardless, I didn’t bother to correct him. He’d learn soon enough that Cara’s fury wasn’t over my personal well-being. I’d broken the main unwritten rule of outriding—no risky climbs while on a job unless absolutely necessary—and as head outrider, she had to make me regret it.
I cast another fond glance at Kinslayer. Ah well. A climb like that was worth an ass kicking, even without the carcabon stones.
“You ready?” I asked Kiran.
He nodded. I helped him ease himself around to face the rock. He took a deep breath, and his face settled into the grim concentration I remembered from when he’d first crawled onto the ledge. I suppressed a grin. I’d seen that same determination on Sethan once, as he struggled with ice-coated holds on a difficult route.
The rope inched through my hands, and Kiran disappeared over the edge. The sharp focus I’d needed for Kinslayer hadn’t yet faded, and in that cold, clear light, my half-formed suspicions about him solidified into certainty.
Kiran had an enemy back in Ninavel. Not just some faceless opposing merchant house, but someone specific he’d crossed. Someone Kiran believed didn’t yet know of this little venture—but rich enough that if he found out, he could hire a mage to target Kiran. Maybe a relative, maybe a rival in love...either way, someone Kiran both feared and couldn’t avoid within the city. Kiran hadn’t wanted to leave Ninavel, that much was plain. No, he’d signed on for this trip out of desperation strong as mine.
I knew why, too. Once Kiran reached Alathia, not even a Ninavel mage could touch him—the Alathian border wards were rumored to be impenetrable, an invisible barrier surrounding the entire country that no spell and no foreigner could breach. Gods knew Bren had spent years trying to figure out a direct way through, without success. He was stuck using couriers like me to smuggle a trickle of goods past the Alathian guards at the few border gates. And within the border, all Alathia’s cities lay smothered under a blanket of detection spells meant to alert their Council the instant anyone tried any magic more powerful than simple household charms.
But until Alathia, Kiran would be fair game. No wonder he was jumpy as a scalded polecat, and trying so hard to hide it. I ought to be mad as hell. Only thing was, I had a powerful hunch Kiran’s enemy didn’t need a mage. Bren’s covert instructions made plenty of sense, if he and Gerran had worked a side deal with someone who wanted to both profit from Kiran’s venture and ensure he never returned from Alathia. Now I understood why Bren had been so insistent on my silence. He’d likely known I’d figure out this much. And he’d made it clear that if I warned Kiran, I’d forfeit all my pay.
Gods all damn him, anyway. If it came down to Kiran’s safety against Melly’s, I knew which one I’d choose. But I sure didn’t like it.
The rope went slack in my hands. Kiran had reached the ground. An indistinct murmur of voices drifted up. Then Cara’s yell came, loud enough to shatter stone.
“Dev! Get your ass down here!”
She sounded ready to rip my limbs off. Well, I’d stalled long enough. Time to face the minder.
CHAPTER FIVE
(Dev)
C
ara lit into me before I’d even gotten both feet on the ground.
“What the hell was that?” She stalked past Kiran, who flinched back like a man faced with a scorpion. I didn’t blame him. The scowl on Cara’s face could have melted lead.
“A climbing lesson?” I said. No good starting with an apology right off; that’d only rouse Cara’s suspicions. If she realized I’d made a deliberate plan to climb Kinslayer for my own profit, she’d fire me on the spot.
Her fists clenched, and I hurriedly dropped my pack. I had to play it brash, but not so cocky that she fired me out of sheer annoyance.
“I know, I shouldn’t have made the climb. But I was training Kellan, and I happened to spy a route, and I couldn’t resist...” I tried to look contrite, but a grin pulled at the corners of my mouth. I threw my arms wide. “A first ascent of Kinslayer, Cara! Come on, you know you would have climbed it in my place.”
Cara’s gimlet-eyed glare only intensified. “Shaikar take you, Dev! If I’d realized you hadn’t outgrown this kind of shit, I’d never have signed off on hiring you. You’re not on some solo jaunt—you’ve got a responsibility to this convoy! You think because we’re friends, I’ll overlook whatever brainless stunts you pull? You can gods-damned well think again!”
“I got stupid, okay? I admit it. But, Cara...” She was a climber, same as me. Surely underneath her anger, a hint of sympathy lurked. I let the memory of the climb swallow me. Mind and body and stone, locked in perfect unity... “It was
glorious.
”
I had one instant to realize it was Kiran who showed a glimmer of wistful recognition, not Cara. Then Cara’s fist slammed into my jaw.
I staggered sideways into the cliff. One hand darted to the boneshatter charm hidden in my belt, before I caught myself. “What the fuck?”
She advanced on me with a murderous look in her eye. “Glorious? I saw that slip of yours. It’s only by Khalmet’s choice you’re standing here at all! You think I want to scrape your bloodsoaked carcass off the rocks, the way you did with Sethan? Did you forget how glorious that was?”
Blood pouring black from Sethan’s mouth, gleam of bones poking through his side, and I didn’t want to look lower, oh mother of maidens, how could he still be alive?
I clenched my jaw, and welcomed the white-hot stab of pain where Cara’s fist had landed.
“Leave it, Cara.” She hadn’t watched Sethan die. What the fuck would she know about it?
Cara jabbed a finger at my chest. “The hell I will. Accidents are one thing; we all feel Khalmet’s touch in the end. But this! You’d be dead through your own gods-damned stupidity. At least Sethan’s death wasn’t his fault!”
“No, it was your father’s,” I snarled.
Cara’s head rocked back. Hurt flared in her eyes, before they went hard as granite.
My anger died to ashes. Shit. Clearly I hadn’t learned a thing from my fight with Jylla. I scrubbed a hand over my face, praying I hadn’t just destroyed a years-long friendship.
“Cara...I didn’t mean that. Truly. Denion made the best call he could. Nobody could’ve predicted a rockfall that big, after such a brief storm.” My buoyant energy from Kinslayer leaked away, leaving me weary and a little sick. I knew how bad it had burned Cara when no convoy would hire her father again, despite his forty years of experience. How she’d flinched when tavern gossips proclaimed Denion’s incompetence had killed all those men, as if they knew anything about weighing risks in the mountains. Gods damn me, why couldn’t I rule my tongue? Jylla had deserved every harsh word, but Cara was only doing her job.