“Good.” It wasn’t—you could trust Grela about as far as you could herd campfire smoke. But Poltar knew she had little enough love for Egar. “Then let’s keep it that way. We’ll talk again, after the ceremonies. But for now, let all three of us be servants of the Sky Home with our silence.”
LATER, WHEN THE CHILDREN HAD FACED DOWN YNPRPRAL WITH THEIR grinning, freshly greased firelit faces and their pummeling barrages of half-delighted, half-terrified shouting and their running about at their parents’ urging, when they’d chased the ice demon from his flapping, haunting circuits of the great bonfire and back out into the cold dark he belonged to, when all that was done and the Skaranak had settled to their customary drinking and singing and tale telling and staring owlishly into the spit-crackle warmth of the flames . . .
. . . then Poltar crouched out in the windswept chill of the steppe, staying later away from the camp than he could remember himself doing for a dozen or more years, biting back his shivers and hugging himself beneath his father’s wolf-skin cloak, muttering under his steaming breath and waiting . . .
Out of the darkness and bending grasses and the wind and the cold, she came walking. Bandlight broke through cloud and touched her.
Grinning, tongue lolling, all sharp white puncturing fangs and eyes, balancing back on legs never made for walking upright, wrapped head-to-foot in wolf the way she had in Ishlin-ichan wrapped herself in whore.
She did not speak. The wind howled on her behalf.
He rose, the chill in his bones and on his face forgotten, and he went to her like a man to the marriage bed.
Gingren was installed in the western lounge when Ringil got in, pacing noisily up and down and barking at someone whose responses were much softer. They’d left the door ajar, which seemed invitation enough to eavesdrop. Ringil hovered for a moment in the corridor outside, listening to his father’s gruff tones and a low, diffident voice that he made as that of his oldest brother, Gingren Junior. A cold memory gusted through him at the sound.
He was about to slip away when Gingren, showing a quite remarkable sixth sense, looked up and caught him there.
“Ringil!” he bellowed. “Just the man. Get in here, will you!”
Ringil sighed. He took a couple of steps inside the room and stood there, barely over the threshold.
“Yes, Father.”
Gingren and Gingren Junior exchanged a glance. Ringil’s brother was sprawled on a couch by the window, rigged for the street in boots and court sword, clearly on a visit from his own family home over in Linardin. It was the first time Ringil had seen him in nearly seven years, and changes weren’t flattering. He’d put on weight and grown a beard that didn’t really suit him.
“We were just talking about you.”
“That’s nice.”
His father cleared his throat. “Yes, well, Ging’s been saying, we can probably nip this idiocy in the bud. Kaad doesn’t want it any more than we do, looks like Iscon just went overboard on his own account. It’s not the right time for the notable families of Trelayne to be squabbling over trivia like this.”
“The Kaads are a notable family now, are they?”
Gingren Junior chortled, then shut up abruptly as his father glared at him.
“You know what I mean.”
“Not really, no.” Ringil looked at his elder brother, and Gingren Junior looked away. “You come to offer yourself as a second, Ging?”
An awkward silence.
“I didn’t think so.”
His brother flushed. “Gil, it’s not like that.”
“No?”
“What your brother is trying to say is that there is no need for seconds, or any other element of this ridiculous charade. Iscon Kaad will not fight, and neither will you. We will resolve this with intelligence.”
“Yeah? What if I don’t want to?”
Gingren made a noise in his throat. “I’m getting tired of this attitude, Ringil. Why would you
Ringil shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s your family name he insulted coming here the way he did. Threatening steel on the premises.”
Gingren Junior bristled forward in his seat. “It’s your family, too.”
“Good. We’re agreed then.”
“No, we are
Ringil examined his nails. “Well, I’ve been away.”
“Yeah.” His father clenched a fist at his hip. “Maybe you should have fucking stayed away.”
“Hey—blame your gracious lady wife.”
Ging came to his feet. “Don’t you dare talk about Mother like that!”
“Oh,
