If the cold bothered Hale, in his silk dressing gown and slippers, he gave no sign. He led them through another side door in the courtyard wall, down three sets of stone steps and into a semicircular basement chamber with five curtained alcoves along its curving wall. Janesh the doorman was already there, the grin still plastered across his face—apparently he’d been enjoying his work. Bandlight spilled in from small barred windows near the roof, but most of the illumination came from two lanterns set down in the center of the room. There were Majak rugs on the floor, lewd murals etched into the curving wall—though rather prim of content compared with Grace-of-Heaven’s ceiling—and a vast black iron candelabra hanging from the vaulted roof.
Terip Hale turned to face them.
“Allow me to present,” he said gravely. “The joyous longshank girls.”
The curtains whisked aside in their alcoves. Armed men stood there grinning. Short-swords and hatchets, maces and clubs. Two men to an alcove, at least. Ringil saw at least one crossbow, raised and cocked.
The doorman caught his eye and winked.
“Now,” said Hale. “Perhaps, Laraninthal of Shenshenath, you’d like to tell me who exactly the fuck you
Egar rode out a couple of hours before sunset.
He didn’t really need the extra time; the Skaranak buried their dead relatively close to wherever they happened to be camped at the time, and their migrations across the steppe were roughly seasonal. As the anniversary of his father’s death swung around each year, so did the proximity of the grave Erkan was laid in. Egar could track it by the changes in the sky and the few windswept landmarks that marked the steppe, could feel it circling beyond the horizon as the seasons turned, curving slowly inward as the warmth ebbed from each year and winter crept in, closing on him like the anniversary itself.
He didn’t need the extra time.
But Sula was driving him up a fucking guy rope right now with her youth and her breezy nomad matter-of-factness; she was blunt and clumsy around his feelings, would not give him space, thought sucking him off was the solution to pretty much everything.
So he told her lies as he dressed.
“I’ll do the last league on foot,” he said. “For respect.”
“But that’s stupid!”
He held down his temper with an effort. “It’s a tradition, Sula.”
“Yeah.” A throaty snort. “Not since my fucking
“Well, that wasn’t all that long ago, was it?”
She stared at him, stricken. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” he muttered. “Doesn’t mean anything. But traditions are, uhm, important things, Sula. They’re what holds the clan together.”
“You think I’m too young for you,” she wailed. “You’re going to pack me in, just like you did that Voronak bitch.”
“I’m not going to pack you in.”
“Yes, you are!”
And she dissolved in tears.
So then of course he had to go to her, had to hold her. He had to nuzzle at her neck and murmur in her ear as if she were a horse he hadn’t quite broken yet, had to tip back her chin with one hand and wipe away her tears with the other. Had to shelve the chilly, swelling sadness under his own ribs, had to force a grin as she stopped crying, had to tickle her and grope her through the red felt overshirt she’d appropriated from his clothing chest. Had, in fact, taken to wearing around the camp like a blazing fucking declaration of what she spent her time doing in the clanmaster’s yurt.
Have to talk to her about that.
At some point.
“Look,” he said finally. “It’s fucking freezing out there, right? Riding doesn’t keep you warm. That’s the real point. If I walk, I warm up. Chances are, that’s where the tradition comes from in the first place, right?”
She nodded doubtfully, sniffed, knuckled at one eye. He mashed his tongue hard into the back of his grin and wished she didn’t look so much like a fucking child when she did that.
