Arodus 18 (Kalsgard, Evening)

T

oday we confirmed that Kimandatsu killed Silverskorr. Qatana used a spell to speak with the dead, and the ogre mage’s eyes opened and stared blankly into the distance. The whole thing was a macabre puppet show. Her eyes and mouth twitched as she spoke, and we saw unnatural flashes of her tongue as she answered Qatana’s questions in a rasping, lifeless voice.

This is what our lives have become.

I sent word to Lute in case it would help. Not that it was proof he could use, but at least he could make the claim with confidence.

On the way over, I also stopped to send a letter home, and to hire a solicitor to deliver a small package to Helva. I am sure she’ll appreciate the contents. I have had enough of Kimandatsu, Snorri Stone-Eye, and the Rimerunners Guild, and right now I just want to watch it all burn. Part of me wishes we could witness the fallout from Lute’s little meeting with the Crown, but of course it would be foolish to stay here too long. It is just a matter of time before the Five Storms figure out what happened and come looking for answers. We need to disappear long before that.

The Five Storms. Who comes up with these names? That is what Ameiko, and by extension, we, are up against. Apparently the divine right to rule is taken fairly literally over there. From what we could piece together from Kimandatsu’s answers and Suishen, they were responsible for a widespread, and highly successful, assassination campaign against the five royal families of Minkai. Ameiko’s grandfather had the foresight to see what was unfolding around him, and got his family out before the oni caught up to them.

Whatever puppet government rules there now is apparently unpopular, and more importantly, suspected to be illegitimate. The return of an Amatatsu, someone with that divine right to rule, could serve as a catalyst for a genuine uprising. We just need to get her there.

We’re going to make the crossing now, at the worst possible time. The idea is, if we wait until the right season, we’ll probably not live to see it. If we leave now, on what looks like a suicide journey across the Crown in the dead of winter, and take our time getting there, it will look like we ran off in a panic and died in the attempt.

The trick will be surviving our own cleverness.

Arodus 21 (Kalsgard, Evening)

A

meiko joined me at the Shrine again today. She has been playing her samisen while I practice with Shiro. Which is actually kind of amazing. Dancing to her music is very inspiriting and also kind of nostalgic. It recaptures some of the feelings I had when we were growing up.

We had a long talk on the way back to the caravan.

“You know, I never thought I’d see the day when you swung a weapon. I mean, really swung one.”

“I prefer the dance. And I know. Please don’t remind me.”

She grinned at me. “Maybe I should have tried music back then.”

When the bullying turned violent—genuinely violent—Ameiko didn’t teach me to fight: she taught me to avoid fights. How to be alert for trouble; how to get away if I was cornered. It worked most of the time. When it didn’t, she was usually there with a potion lifted from her dad’s storeroom.

“I’m glad we did it the way that we did,” I said.

“Yeah. Me, too.”

We walked in silence for a bit and I could tell she had something on her mind. She gets this faraway look when she is deep in thought. I decided not to press her on it. She’d tell me, or not. You didn’t force things with Ameiko.

After a couple of blocks like this, she finally said, “When we left Riddleport, I was a nervous wreck. I didn’t know if I could do this.”

I smiled. “Tell me about it.”

“No, not the trip, Kali. The whole thing! The ‘ruler of my empire’ part. At first I didn’t even want to say the words.”

What do you say to that? There were no secrets like this in my family. No one was hiding their past from anyone. I had no idea what she was going through.

“But now…” She was quiet for a moment. “I don’t know. The closer we get, the less strange it feels.”

“Being empress?”

She made a face at the word, though not nearly as much of one as she used to. “All of it. Going back. Doing something about what happened. Maybe even…” She hesitated. “Maybe even ruling.”

This actually took me aback. The first time Olmas had a conversation with her about her role and importance, I thought she was going to lose it. Like, it might actually come to blows. Even Suishen had stopped baiting her on the topic, and baiting people is all Suishen seems to do.

“This is a long way from almost punching the last person who called you that,” I said.

“Yeah.” She was quiet again. “It won’t be like the old days, will it?”

“That’s an understatement if ever I have heard one.”

“Do you think they’d let me sneak off for an adventure, or a night of singing in a tavern?” She gave me a wry smile, but I knew she was only half-joking. I played along, anyway.

“Oh, Gods, can you imagine? You’d put the entire country in a panic! I don’t know what would be worse, you disappearing, or them finding their empress in a common tavern.”

We had a good laugh over this, imagining the possibilities. Then the laughter stopped as abruptly as it started. I looked over to her and saw that her face had gone completely pale. She looked nauseous.

“Ameiko? Are you OK?”

“I almost ruined everything.”

“Huh? What do you mean?” Genius that I am.

“I really screwed up, Kali,” she said, in a shaky, faint voice. There as a small park up ahead and I steered us over to a bench as she spoke. “I just wanted to get out to the Jade Quarter, you know? To learn some more about…” Her voice trailed off.

She sat down on the large, wooden bench.

“I even disguised myself, you know? I am still pretty good at that. And I thought I had done really well and could just…blend in. Not be noticed. Like I used to do. And instead…” Her voice broke then. “I am so sorry, Kali. You all are doing this for me, and I almost wrecked everything!”

She buried her face in her hands. I put an arm around her and she leaned into me. We sat there for I don’t know how long. A few minutes, I think. I knew better than to say “it’s OK” because, well, because it wasn’t OK, and she knew it, and patronizing her wasn’t going to help. But neither would lecturing her.

I finally worked up the courage to say something.

“Ameiko, when we raided Ravenscraeg, we went in there without any protection against poison. None. I mean, that very morning before we left, they put that arrow into the side of the wagon, and it was coated with the most expensive, most exotic, most deadly poison known to man. You would think we would have gotten the message.”

Ameiko looked up at me, her face red and a little puffy, and said, “This is not making me feel better, Kali.”

I ignored her and went on. “The point is, we all made mistakes. Mistakes that could have gotten us killed. Ours almost got Olmas killed. No one blames you. I don’t blame you. We all ended up in over our heads.”

She thought about this and I watched a tiny smile appear at the very corner of her lips. “That was pretty stupid of you all.”

“That’s the spirit,” I said. “Anyone who wants to give you a hard time over this needs to look in a mirror first. And, they’ll have to go through me, too.”

Her smile became a tiny snort. “Gods, Kali, I can go through you.”

“Me and Qatana, then.”

I got her to laugh, which was a good sign, I think.

Her voice was steadier now. “Let’s get back.”

Arodus 26, 4712 (Turvik, Night)

W

e had a going away party for Etayne tonight. Is that the right word? Party? It didn’t feel like a celebration. Or rather, it did until it didn’t. I guess it just really hit me, right then and there, that she was leaving. I got up to get another drink, but instead just kept walking out the door.

Qatana found me several minutes later, sitting out front.

“Is everything OK?” she asked.

“No,” was all I could muster for an answer.

She looked at me and then, in what I can only describe as classic Qatana fashion, asked, “Does this have something to do with your hair?”

I had given it the first of several growth spurts the day we left Kalsgard. I didn’t expect it to go unnoticed, of course, I just would have preferred better timing for that conversation.

“No, it’s not related to my hair. I am just growing it out. I am literally growing it out.”

This is not what I wanted to talk about, but it’s Qatana. You have to answer the question. Thoroughly.

“It’s just a spell I learned,” I added.

“Oh. So what’s wrong, then?”

“People keep leaving.”

I don’t know why it was affecting me like it did, but it was. I didn’t really expect Kelda to stay on with us, of course, but then Helgarval announced it was time for him to move on. Then Spivey was next. And finally Etayne, who had been with us since the beginning.

“I saw some mice in the building out back. Do you want to go try and catch them?”

And, believe it or not, that actually sounded comforting. “Yeah. Yeah, I’d like that.”

We returned to the party a while later with several in tow.

Rova 14 (The Path of Aganhei in the Middle of Fucking Nowhere, Noon)

T

he last few weeks have been a grind. The days are all running together, and the landscape has barely changed since crossing the mountains, just like the routine. Each day we get up, break our fast, travel 5 hours, stop for lunch, travel again, and then stop for the night and for dinner. (Well, the others eat. Thanks to the ring, I only nibble here and there for the tastes.)

My day doesn’t end there. I spend the next several hours enchanting one in a seemingly endless string of items for myself and the others: earrings that protect me from the elements, boots so Sparna can keep up with us, a huge extra-dimensional storage bag, beads to make campfires, even a halter for Kasimir. As I said: a grind.

The catch? I can’t really complain because we need all this stuff. You know, if we want to live. Gods, that sounds so trite. But it’s true.

I need a change in scenery. I am trying not to think of what it will be like on the ice.

Rova 20 (Path of Aganhei, Rimethirst Mountains, Evening)

S

kygni met up with us in the foothills of the Rimethirst Mountains. So far he seems content to simply shadow the caravan from a distance, disappearing from time to time to hunt. It’s only been a couple of days, but I have to admit I feel less trepidatious about his presence than I did back in Ravenscraeg. The few times he’s interacted with us, he’s actually been polite.

What does it say when the winter wolf has better manners than the sword?

Rova 23 (Path of Aganhei, Urjuk, Night)

Is this what our journey is going to be? One sad and depressing scene after another? The frost giant that attacked us wasn’t just old, he looked haggard. Worn down. One of the others, Sparna I think, inspected his axe and said it was so rusted and decrepit that it wasn’t worth repairing.
We tracked him back to the cave where he had been living with his winter wolf companions (what a tense moment that was: my fear was that Skygni was not going to take to us fighting others of his kind, but it was clearly not an issue). This was about what you would expect. Rags, bones, and not much else. He was living the dream.
Not too far from the cave entrance was a wrecked caravan wagon. Inside we found the remains of a man that, amazingly, Ulf recognized. Apparently he was another Crown guide. We asked Ulf if he would like to bury the body and he said yes, so we held a small ceremony and put him to rest.
Welcome to the Crown of the World.

Ramashan 6 (Path of Aganhei in the Hoarwell March, Evening)

W

e spotted a silver dragon today. At first I was scared to death, because it was a dragon, but then once we figured out it was silver instead of white, most everyone, including me, relaxed. It shadowed us for a while, doing lazy circles and loops in the sky above us.

Dragons are quite beautiful once you stop being terrified.

Ulf wants to visit a small village off the main path before hitting the ice. He has never traveled during the “off season” (as he calls it), so he wants to get some more information on the road ahead. Fair enough. We have a guide for a reason.