The Whitefire Crossing - By Courtney Schafer Page 0,38
much-needed sleep.
Kiran collapsed beside me with a groan. “Now can we talk?” he panted.
I turned to check on Cara and Jerik. High above on the slope, two dark forms squatted on the outflung arm of a snowfield. Sun winked off metal as they swung their ice axes. I had to admit, this apprentice thing had its benefits. Without Kiran, I’d be up there chopping a pit deep enough to check layers in snow still frozen from the cold of night. But Kiran couldn’t match our pace on talus, even when he wasn’t dragging from lack of sleep, and Cara had given me leave to hang back and watch out for him. Of course, I’d had to promise that I’d do all the heavy work on the next snow pit, when the sun would be high enough I’d be sweating like a rock bear on a sand flat.
“Yeah, we can talk,” I told Kiran. “So long as you keep your voice down. Sound carries more than you’d think up here.”
Kiran didn’t waste another second. He blurted, “Pello was angry with you—did you search his wagon? If so, why would you do that? You can’t have found his wards without the carcabon stone. Now he’ll be suspicious of you, so how can you get to his charm? If he tells the Alathians about us—”
“Whoa, hold on! Take a breath before you pass out.”
He sucked in a huge draught of air, and promptly doubled over in a coughing fit. I thumped him on the back and handed him a waterskin.
“Yeah, I searched Pello’s wagon while he was working the rockfall. For two reasons. First, imagine you’re Pello, and you come back and realize someone’s pawed through the very place where you’ve hidden a warded charm stash. What’s your first move?”
Kiran blinked at me, still red-faced. “I’d...make sure the wards remained intact and none of the charms had been taken.”
“So, Pello checks his charms, finds them all still there, and then reactivates his wards. Which means they’re nice and fresh and fully powered.”
Kiran’s mouth rounded into an “oh” of understanding. “A recently activated ward should react more strongly to the look-away charm.”
“Exactly.” Even with the carcabon to boost it, the look-away was such a minor charm that I wasn’t entirely sure it could flash the ward. I wanted all the advantage I could get.
“What was your second reason, then?”
“Insurance, in case the carcabon’s not enough to find his stash. A man’s reaction to a threat can tell you a lot about what he’s protecting. You saw how he tried to twist my tail after I poked him about the Alathians. If he only carried personal charms, he would’ve been a hell of a lot more subtle about his warning. Nope, he’s carrying contraband meant for profit. Good news: it means he’s got to keep clear of the Alathians, same as us. Better yet, now he knows that if he sells me out to the border guards, I’ll happily return the favor the instant they put me under truth spell.”
Kiran pulled off his woolen cap. He turned it over in his hands, thoughtfully. A tiny, dry smile pulled at his mouth. “What did he learn from your reaction?”
I snorted. “Nothing he didn’t know already.” Hell, Pello’d even done me a good turn. Now that Cara thought I’d climbed Kinslayer out of some misguided desire to lift my mood after Jylla, she might thaw a bit. Much as I hated the prospect of her lecturing me all the way to Kost, that had to be better than frozen, awkward silence.
The only part that bothered me was how Pello knew a bit too much about me and Jylla for a man who hailed from Gitailan district, not Acaltar. He must’ve checked up on me before the convoy left Ninavel. Maybe he’d only done it out of a shadow man’s natural caution, since he knew I worked the route as Bren’s courier. Or maybe it was a clue he really had signed on to sniff out our plans. All the more reason to take care of that damn message charm.
As if reading my thoughts, Kiran said, “But what about the message charm? Won’t he be even more careful, now?”
“Probably.” Too bad Pello wasn’t the sort of man who’d assume himself safe after an apparent failure on my part to cross his wards. “But he’s on repair crew again day after tomorrow. Past Broken Hand Pass, the trail will need a lot of work; and Goranant House’s lead stonemason