Above the last river orchards of Oran, the road turned from packed yellow clay to pale grey limestone that held the winter cold like cooled iron. Every switchback climbed higher into the teeth of the northern wind. There, the shelter of the valley walls fell away and the mountain gales came down off the high peaks without a tree to slow them. Seyun walked half a stride behind Ilyra’s left heel. That kept his linen-wrapped hands tucked inside the opposite cuffs of his wool coat so the frost wouldn’t stiffen the reed-ash paste Mina had spread over his blisters. Beneath his ribs, the shallow sword cut from Daro Kesh’s fifth breath pulled tightly whenever the incline steepened, a thin level reminder of the hundred breaths beneath the wrestling lodge rafters.
Ahead of him, Ilyra moved with the long, economical stride of a student returning to the steps where her calves had first learned to bear weight. Her marsh-iron spear rode across her sound left shoulder, the ash shaft newly oiled and wrapped in plain rawhide where Halen’s caravan ambush had scarred the wood. Every twenty paces, a wind-funnel cut through the limestone low roof wall beside the trail, rattling the bamboo sword sheaths of the two outer-road patrolmen who walked thirty yards ahead of them. Neither guard had spoken to Seyun since leaving the river tollhouse at dawn. To them, he was an expelled Ash Reed base student entering a chartered mountain house on the narrow sufferance of a single…
