Amid the Winter Snow

  “Why ever should you be sorry?” Radimar’s eyes held a glint of knowing. “Justice is sometimes ruthless.”

  How did he do it? Clarify the chaos of her thoughts without coddling her? Even when he questioned the soundness of her timing, it sprang only from concern for her welfare, never from doubt in her judgment. He had been a well of heuristic wisdom for both her and Sodrin these past three years, and he was leaving. The unwelcome thought made her want to weep.

  “Thank you,” she said in a shuddering voice.

  His ginger eyebrows crashed down in a scowl. He guided her toward the door of her father’s suite, and slipped inside on silent feet. The tiny antechamber was empty and dark, the only source of illumination slats of moonlight that managed to slice through the sliver-thin gaps between the shutters. Beyond the closed doors leading to a sitting room and two bedrooms, Sodrin snored down the rafters in solitary inebriation.

  Radimar loomed in front of her, the shadowy expanse of his shoulders a living wall between her and the entry door, as if he automatically sought to protect her from some future, unknown intruder. “Thank me for what, Jahna?”

  His voice wound around her body like a silk ribbon. She wished she could see his face.

  “For making me brave. If you hadn’t taught me how to fight, I would have run or hidden again. I don’t think I would have fought back. You did as you said you would, taught me how to save myself.”

  He shook his head. “I taught you a few skills. I didn’t teach you courage. You’ve possessed that all along. It just needed to be coaxed out of the shadows. A few years of growing up and lessons from me just brought it to the forefront.” A smile crept into his voice, along with an unmistakable note of satisfaction. “You should be proud of yourself. That was one impressive strike. You remembered everything I taught you.”

  The guilt that hadn’t reared its head earlier surfaced now. “It might have been better if I could use what I learned in the arena instead of against another woman.”

  He paused for so long before answering, she began to wonder if he heard her. “How long have…”

  “Evaline.”

  “The whelp and her lickspittles tormented you?”

  Sometimes it seemed like forever. “Years,” she said.

  “That corridor was its own arena tonight. Sometimes you take your stand in unlikely spots against your adversaries.”

  “Could you love me?” she wanted to ask but instead said “Are you proud of me?”

  The darkness obscured his expression, but his low sigh caressed the crown of her head. “Does it matter so much to you, Jahna?”

  “Yes. Yes it does.”

  She leaned into his palm where it cupped her elbow. “How could I not be proud? And if your brother and father knew, they’d be proud as well. Bravery often rises when you’re most frightened.”

  The last of her righteous fury over Evaline’s unwarranted persecution burned itself out, and reaction over her response set in fully, along with the melancholy that had threatened to drown her earlier over Radimar’s news. Her throat closed, making it difficult to talk. Radimar’s black silhouette blurred at the edges as tears filled her eyes. “I like being brave,” she warbled. “I just wish I wasn’t ugly.”

  The mournful admission shamed her, but she couldn’t help it. Her birthmark had been the source of numerous miseries once she was old enough to understand the ridicule it generated. How different would her life have been had she been born without it or even with it in a less visible spot?

  Radimar swooped closer, and his hands rested heavy on her shoulders. This close, and she could make out the angles of his hard face and the glitter of his eyes. “Stop,” he ordered in a soft voice, no less stern for its quietness. “Don’t give that shallow bitch’s words a weight they aren’t worth.”

  Jahna scrubbed away her tears and sniffled. They stubbornly trickled down her face. “She isn’t the only one to say it. People can whisper loudly. I wish I could make this go away.” She touched the blemish spread across her cheek. “Evaline is a bitch, but she’s pretty, and she has friends. I don’t have to be pretty, but I would have liked to have friends.”

  He shook her gently, as if to snap her out of a bad dream. “Are we not friends, you and I? And Lacramor’s spoiled brat is a friend to no one, nor are they to her. They cling together because they’re too weak to stand alone. Trust me when I tell you they’d stab each other in the back at the smallest provocation and turn on each other like dogs at the first opportunity. That isn’t friendship, Jahna. Far from it.”

  He was right. Her reason argued he was right, and she’d seen with her own eyes how those “friends” had done nothing to help Evaline.

  Every thought fled her mind when his hands cupped her face, thumbs smearing the tears that still dripped down her cheeks. The fingers resting against her blemish fluttered across her cheekbone like a moth’s wings. “This is part of who you are, Jahna,” he whispered. “What makes you strong and resilient, gives you purpose beyond the arm ornament of some nobleman. You’re beautiful. Let no one make you believe otherwise.”

  She leaned into his touch, savoring the feel of his hands on her skin, and closed her eyes. “You’ve always been so kind to me. Never looked at me as if I’m lesser.” More tears seeped under her closed lids. “I think I will mourn forever when you return to Ilinfan.”

  “Shhh, Jahna,” he murmured against her temple. “Shhh.”

  His mouth drifted from her temple to the corner of her eye, the kiss as ephemeral as a snowflake but not at all cold. Jahna forgot her sorrow, entranced by the touch of his hands and lips on her face. He kissed every curve and angle of her face: forehead and damp eyelids, the bridge of her nose and fullness of her cheeks. She shuddered under his hands when he paused for several moments to map her birthmark, his clasp gentle and reassuring.

  At some point during Radimar’s exploration of her features, Jahna’s hands found their way to his torso, her fingers pressing into his heavy winter tunic to grip his sides. She tilted her chin up, instinctively seeking his mouth with hers. Her sigh when his lower lip touched hers unfurled between them, and the kiss transformed.

  No longer a delicate touch that coaxed and teased and encouraged, Radimar’s kiss consumed her. Jahna sank into it, not caring if her response was a clumsy effort of eagerness, wonder and inexperience. Radimar didn’t seem to care either. His mouth played along hers with the skill of an adept, the sweep of his tongue edging the underside of her upper lip, making her startle at first and then moan against his mouth at the sensations that sizzled from her face to her feet.

  His hands slid from her face to her shoulders and down her back to gather her close. Even with layers of clothing between them, Jahna still felt the muscular contours of his chest pressed to her breasts, the way his broad shoulders flexed under her massaging fingers.

  And that kiss. The first she’d ever received that wasn’t a peck on the cheek from her father or Sodrin. There was no comparison between those casual displays of familial affection and this wonder of sensuality that sent the blood rushing under her skin like fire and burned ever hotter when he coaxed her mouth open a little wider and slid his tongue inside.

  She shivered but didn’t pull away, enjoying the taste and feel of him inside her, the scent of him in her nostrils, and most of all the telling groan that traveled deep from within his chest to flow from his mouth to hers. Magic, Jahna thought. This was magic no sorcerer could create with potions or invocations.

  The spell Radimar wove around them shattered when Sodrin’s steady snores broke into a series of explosive snorts and a round of coughing. Radimar backed away from Jahna. Caught by surprise at both her brother’s porcine racket and Radimar’s abrupt withdrawal, she stumbled toward the swordmaster who restored her balance with a hand on her elbow.

  She still couldn’t clearly see his face in the dark room, but she didn’t have to. The horror in his voice clanged like a discordant bell in her ears.

  “Gods,”
he uttered on a hard exhale. “What am I doing?” He let her go as if she’d suddenly been set ablaze and might burn him as well. “I’m sorry, Jahna,” he said, and pivoted away on a rush of cold air and the snap of his cloak. Before she could call out to him to wait, he was gone, the door closing behind him with a quiet click.

  Shock nailed Jahna’s feet to the floor but only for a moment. She raced after him, yanking the door open to skid into the corridor. Its emptiness mocked her. The man who wove sorcery with a kiss had disappeared like smoke.

  “Come back.” Jahna’s soft plea spilled into the silence. No one replied.

  She spent the rest of the night in her bed, staring at the ceiling and reliving those moments in Radimar’s arms. It might have been an exercise of euphoric wonder were it not tainted by his appalled apology. She touched her stained cheek. In the dark, it was no different from her other cheek. Same smooth skin, same shape. Had a stray beam of moonlight shone on her birthmark? Reminded Radimar that he kissed a woman whose face once frightened a small child so much, he cried into his mother’s skirts?

  Jahna swallowed down a knot of tears. She’d done more than enough weeping for the night, nor would she torture herself any longer with questions only the swordmaster could answer. In the morning, at first light, she’d seek him out, demand to know why he had fled, for that’s exactly what he had done. The reasons for his flight remained a mystery to her, but the sick feeling in the pit of her belly warned her none of them were good.

  Her resolve to catch Radimar early proved futile. Jahna had no idea where he disappeared to after he left Uhlfrida’s suite, but she assumed he would return for no other reason than to haul an ailing Sodrin out of bed for more training.

  Sodrin huddled in his bed with a wash basin tucked against his side. He clutched it like a lover and glared at Jahna with bleary eyes. “I haven’t seen him, brat, and thank the gods for it this morning. Now go away.”

  She searched for Radimar throughout the palace grounds to no avail. He might as well have been a ghost. Her father had also vanished, and Jahna didn’t find him until the torches had been lit and the crowds packed every nook and cranny of the palace and its grounds in preparation for the Firehound spectacle and the closing of the Delyalda festival.

  Uhlfrida stood on one of the upper loggias among a gathering of other nobles. Jahna raced into the palace and up a flight of stairs to reach him, ignoring the gasps that followed her from visitors who hadn’t met or seen her before. Her father’s wide-eyed surprise when she yanked him around to face her might have been laughable if she wasn’t desperate.

  “Jahna!” His hearty smile welcomed her, but there was a sadness in his eyes that made her stomach roil with dread. “Glad you’re here. You can watch the Firehound with me. Your brother is still in no shape to crawl out of his bed.”

  “Where is Sir Radimar?” she said without preamble.

  Her father’s voice adopted a more guarded tone. “Gone, Jahna. Back to Ilinfan. I thought he told you about the letter he received from the Brotherhood.”

  Gone. The word repeated in her head, becoming a monosyllabic dirge that reached deep into her spirit to suffocate her. She stared at her father so long without replying that he frowned and pressed a hand to her arm.

  “Jahna?”

  “I knew about the letter and that he would be returning to Ilinfan,” she said, congratulating herself on the steadiness of her voice. “I just thought he’d wait until we all returned to Hollowfell before he left.”

  He hadn’t told her goodbye. Not a word or a note or even a message delivered by another party. Nothing except the memory of his mouth on hers, his hands on her back, and the dismay in his voice when he beseeched the gods and left her in the darkness.

  Uhlfrida gave her a puzzled look. “Why would he do that? He’d have to double back. Ilinfan is closer to the capital than to Hollowfell.”

  Because I hoped he’d delay or change his mind. He’d done neither, and Jahna clenched her teeth to keep from sobbing.

  “He didn’t tell you or Sodrin goodbye?”

  “He came to me this morning and said he could wait no longer in his leavetaking if he was to have any chance of seeing the Brotherhood’s leader before he died. He asked that I deliver his farewells to you and Sodrin for him. It worked out for the best I think. The king was so impressed with Sodrin’s performance in the Exhibition yesterday that he has requested Sodrin join his royal guard.” Uhlfrida beamed, the expression dimming at Jahna’s weak smile. “Radimar also bid me to tell you he wishes you good fortune in your apprenticeship as a chronicler.”

  That first sharp swell of pain had subsided, leaving behind a distant numbness. Jahna nodded. “Thank you for telling me, Father.”

  Uhlfrida patted her shoulder. “Radimar was a good man and an unparalleled swordsman and teacher. Worth every coin I paid him and then some. I made sure he took with him a hefty bonus. I’m ready for home, especially since we’ll be back here in the spring to deliver Sodrin to the royal guard and you to the Archives.”

  She left him to his socializing with the promise she’d be ready to leave the following day for Hollowfell. That night she watched the Firehound spectacle from the forgotten garden, alone among the brambles and scatter of silver-gilt roses.

  The king’s sorcerers outdid themselves this year, fashioning spectacular creatures of smoke and flame to tell the story of how the Firehound chased the Darkness across the rim of the world, until it caught it by the hem of its cloak and tore away a remnant in its teeth. The rip exposed the sky and all the stars, the moon and the sun, which gave life to the once desolate earth.

  While the Hound had defeated the Darkness, it hadn’t destroyed it completely, and every year its tenebrous power stretched over the land, attempting to enrobe the world in its cloak of cold and never-ending night. Its power reached its zenith on the last day of winter, when the day was shortest and night held its grip longest—the Darkest Midnight—before yielding to the Firehound’s triumph and the heralding of spring.

  The crowds screamed their delight as the magicians told the story with dramatic flourishes of arcing fire in the shape of a colossal dog that lit the evening in a sunburst of sparks. The palace, its subordinate buildings, and the revelers stood under an invisible ward, protecting all from the danger of immolation.

  When all the torches, lamps and candles were snuffed and the palace plunged into temporary darkness, the spectators went silent, the expectant hush a living, breathing thing as real as the Darkest Midnight itself. The silence stretched for a span of moments before the sky exploded in a blaze of light, with the monstrous Firehound at the center of numerous starbursts that mimicked the sun and celebrated the triumph of life over eternal night.

  In the garden, Jahna watched it all and wept.

  ~ 7 ~

  Eight years later

  The Maiden undaunted, Year 3848

  Jahna read the note a palace servant just delivered and leapt from her stool with a triumphant cry. Amaris, her friend and fellow chronicler jumped, splattering ink across the parchment she had been writing on for the past hour.

  “For gods’ sake, Jahna, look what you made me do!”

  Jahna winced. “I’m so sorry. I’ll make it up to you. Finish up that page with notes on the side, and I’ll make a clean copy for you tonight.” She waved the missive under Amaris’s nose. “Remember when I told you Dame Stalt said the margrave of High Salure would be here for Sodrin’s wedding and was willing to sit with a chronicler to recount the galla war?” Amaris nodded. “Well, he arrived about an hour ago and wants to meet.”

  Jahna did a quick, celebratory jig before grabbing a satchel into which she dropped her supplies.

  “I can’t believe he’s here,” she exclaimed. “It feels like I’ve been waiting for this meeting forever!”

  Amaris laughed. “I think you’re more excited about it than you are about your brother’s wedding. Then again, this is the Beladine Stallion we’re talking about. His reputation p
recedes him. I hear he has looks, charm, and…stamina.”

  The two women laughed and Amaris wished her good luck before extracting a promise from Jahna that she’d share all the details when she returned.

  Jahna raced through the palace corridors and up two flights of stairs to the floor that housed King Rodan’s most important guests. As the king’s niece, Sodrin’s future bride occupied one of the suites here, and Jahna had trekked this hallway more times than she cared to number in the past fortnight. Dame Stalt’s patience with the constant disruption of Jahna’s work as a chronicler to appease the nervous bride had worn thin, and more than once she had voiced her eagerness for the wedding to come and go so they could all get back to work. Jahna couldn’t agree with her more.

  This trip at least was at the behest of the dame and not Jahna’s soon-to-be sister-in-law. She paused at one of the doors near the end of the hall and knocked. There was a short wait before the door swung open, revealing the biggest man she’d ever seen.

  Serovek Pangion of High Salure stared at her with eyes the color of deep, deep water—so dark a blue they appeared almost black. The rumors of his attractiveness were accurate. The shoulder-length black hair and neatly trimmed beard emphasized a handsome face guaranteed to garner more than a few admiring gazes. His height and impressive musculature only enhanced his presence. No one would miss seeing this man in a crowd.

  He eyed her and the satchel she held for a moment, a flicker of dread in his gaze. “Tell me you’re one of the king’s chroniclers and not another lady wanting to welcome me personally to the capital.”

  Jahna grinned. He hadn’t flinched when he saw her or looked away when he spoke, as if he couldn’t bear the sight of her birthmark. She liked him already. “I am a lady here to welcome you to Timsiora, my lord, but I’m also a king’s chronicler. Dame Stalt sent me. I’m Jahna Uhlfrida.”