“Yes. Inardle, I can—”
“You coming to rescue me.”
“Yes.”
“Lister was my lover, you knew that?”
“Yes.” Very soft, now.
“I didn”t love him, Axis, but I liked and respected him immensely. I lived with him for
years. We were friends as well as lovers, or so I thought.”
“Inardle—”
“When I heard that you”d returned from the dead, I was consumed almost with hatred.
We all hated you, Axis. The great arrogant StarMan. The magnificent war leader. Your elevation
to god. Your hatred of the Skraelings.”
That last was almost whispered.
“How could you be anything but a cruel, self-absorbed man?” she continued. “You would
regard us with nothing but contempt.”
She looked at him then, with the barest hint of a smile. “And regard us with contempt you
have done, but perhaps we have deserved it. But for everything else we were wrong. Axis, you
thought to rescue me when Lister couldn”t be bothered, when he”d decided I got in the way of his ambitions. I know enough that you risked everything to do that—you risked your own life. You
could have made an easy escape with Georgdi and Zeboath, but you did not choose that. Instead,
you came for me.”
She freed his hand, and reached up her own to touch his cheek briefly. “Thank you for
rescuing me—you will never understand what I felt that instant I knew you were in the tent—and
thank you for your offer of a Song of Forgetting.
“I will decline it, I think. Of everything that was agonizing and humiliating in Armat”s
camp, there was one shining moment I want to remember the rest of my life—that moment when
I realized you”d come for me.”
As she had done to him, now Axis reached out his fingers and softly touched her cheek.
A line of frost trailed where he ran his fingers, and he lifted his hand.
“I hurt you,” he said. “I”m sorry.”
“That wasn”t pain, Axis,” she said, very softly.
Axis remembered what she had told him while he was stitching her wound. Pain, delight,
and physical joy. Arousal.
He tore his eyes away from hers, looking down at her body under its covering blanket
( Damn that blanket! Her prudishness wasn’t Icarii. It must be her Skraeling blood). He thought
how good it would feel to lower his mouth to her breast. What would it be like, then, to taste that
frost under his tongue?
He realized he was staring too long, and that his thoughts must be written all over his
face.
He stood up, a little too quickly. “I”ll send Garth or Zeboath over. You need to eat and
drink.”
Then Axis vaulted over the side of the wagon and walked away, forcing himself not to
look back and cursing himself for such a stupid display. He found Zeboath and sent him to
Inardle, telling him that she was awake and hungry.
Then he sought out Clements and told him that he wanted his (once Risdon”s) horse
saddled and ready at dawn the next day, together with two or three guardsmen.
Inardle didn”t see Axis again that day. She”d recognized what he was thinking and feeling
in that moment before he”d jumped out of the wagon and walked away, and knew that Eleanon
would have crowed with delight if he had known of it.
She knew that she, too, should be pleased at Axis” feelings, but instead she felt confused.
She could not keep her distance from this man, nor pretend to herself that she was
indifferent to him.
She”d had no idea that when he touched her, she would respond as she had.
Lister”s touch had never caused her frost to rise.
She could hardly believe that Axis had risked so much for her in rescuing her from
Risdon.
She could hardly believe how glad she had felt when he had come for her.
Inardle shifted a little on her makeshift bed in the wagon, wincing with the pain. What
was she thinking? Axis would only ever cause her sorrow.
It was what he specialized in.
Her task was only to fall into his bed, and use him.
Not to fall in love with him.
The next morning, when she woke, Inardle resented the bitter pang of disappointment
that Zeboath was by her side, and not Axis.
“Where is Axis?” she asked.
“He rode out an hour ago,” said Zeboath. “He”s gone to Maximilian. I”m sorry, Inardle,
we”ll catch up with him in a week or so.”
“It is of no matter to me,” Inardle said.
It was a long ride to catch up with Maximilian, and Axis spent it not talking to his three
companions. Instead his thoughts were exclusively on one person.
His wife, Azhure.
CHAPTER FOUR
Isembaard
Eleanon walked forward, his feet crunching over the coarse sand and grit of the northern
Isembaardian plains. To his left rose Hairekeep; to his right the desolate plains undulated
westward toward the River Lhyl. Before him stood Bingaleal, with the twenty-five thousand
Lealfast fighters he”d brought with him into Isembaard ranged behind him in ordered ranks.
They were all different. Their eyes as they watched him approach were sharper, their
posture more still, their demeanor more confident than Eleanon had seen previously in any
Lealfast.
They were stronger.
They were assured.
They were whole. No longer half-breeds of any manner, but whole.
Bingaleal took a few steps forward to meet Eleanon. They stopped a pace or two apart,
Eleanon somewhat awkward, Bingaleal poised and confident.
“What do you here, Eleanon?” Bingaleal said.
“Come to see what has become of my brother,” Eleanon replied. He hesitated, hating
himself for it in the face of Bingaleal”s self-possession. “I come on behalf of the Lealfast Nation,
Bingaleal. Come to see what path it is you have chosen.”
Bingaleal nodded, then swept a hand out behind and to one side of him. “Sit down,
brother, and we shall talk.”
As they sat cross-legged, the ranks of the Lealfast behind Bingaleal faded from view.
They were still there, Eleanon could sense them, but to those only of ordinary vision it would
have appeared that the two birdmen sat alone in the deserted plain outside Hairekeep.
“I have become Elcho Falling”s enemy,” Bingaleal said.
That shocked Eleanon. Not so much what Bingaleal had expressed, but the stark manner
in which he had done so.
“Tell me,” Eleanon said. “What has become of you, Bingaleal, and all our comrades?”
Bingaleal did not immediately reply. He drew in a deep breath, raising his eyes and
focusing them in the far distance.
“I have entered into the One,” he said eventually, softly. His eyes suddenly refocused,
very sharply, on Eleanon.
“And where did that lead you?” Eleanon said, equally as soft.
“It led me into a promise,” Bingaleal said. “It showed me a path toward a world of power
and fulfilment. It showed me a clear path, Eleanon, step by step, toward what we have always
lusted after. Our own future. Beholden to no one. Despised by no one.”
“And the price?” Eleanon said.
“There is no price.”
“There is always a price, brother.” Eleanon sighed. “Bingaleal, I come before you today
because I, as all our brothers and sisters, felt the change in you and those who came into
Isembaard with you.” He put his hand on his chest. “We feel it here. We felt it, and we yearn for
it, and it was all I could do to stop the entire Nation following me down here…but there is still a
little bit of me, Bingaleal, which remains cautious. What has the One offered you, what has he
shown you, and what is the price he demands?”
“He has shown us a future free of our Skraeling blood, a future in which the Icarii kneel
before us in humility, a future in which we no longer inhabit frozen wastes. The price? Only one
price. The destruction of Elcho Falling and of its master.”
“But Elcho Falling and its master is what we have dreamed of for millennia, Bingaleal.”
Bingaleal smiled in genuine compassion. “Yet look to what the Lord of Elcho Falling has
become, Eleanon. He cannot give us what we need. Not anymore. Now, brother, tell me. What
do you here? Does Axis know where you are?”
Eleanon told Bingaleal what had happened—the slaughter at the hands of Armat, Axis”
subsequent contemptuous dismissal of Eleanon, and the StarMan”s belief that Eleanon and the
remaining Lealfast fighters were sulking within the Sky Peaks, licking their wounds.
“Bingaleal, you have no idea what it cost me, to watch Lealfast fall from the sky, but—”
“But it has won for you Axis” disregard. I understand that and, while I grieve also for
those Lealfast lost, I applaud your decision.” A small smile curved about Bingaleal”s face. “And
so will the One, once he knows. You shall be our key into Elcho Falling, Eleanon. The One has
constructed a curse with which to distract Isaiah, and shortly Maximilian and Ishbel, but it is