The Whitefire Crossing - By Courtney Schafer Page 0,40

sigh. I hadn’t realized how much I’d miss Cara’s cheerful mockery until none of it was directed at me. Even if Pello’s tale-telling had spared me any more icy glares, the laughter still died out of her eyes whenever she glanced my way.

For once, Kiran didn’t stiffen or blush at her teasing. He probably hadn’t heard a word she’d said. He was gaping with eyes wide as kenet coins at the frozen sea of sharp peaks that stretched to the horizon. Immediately in front of us, the rock slabs dropped away in a thousand-foot cliff to another barren high basin full of boulders and snow. Once we crossed Broken Hand Pass, we’d have several days travel over an alpine plateau full of sharp ridges, subpeaks, and cirques before the trail plunged into the deep trench of Garnet Canyon and then made the long climb up the canyon’s western wall to Arathel Pass. Beyond Arathel Pass waited the heavily forested western slopes of the Whitefires, and eventually, the Alathian border.

“How’d the snow layers look?” I asked Jerik. I might be the fastest climber, but Jerik’s years of experience made him the uncontested expert in avalanche behavior.

“Nice and bonded,” Jerik said. “Only one layer I didn’t like. Must’ve had a warm spell after that snowfall. But the layer’s well packed, and deep. It won’t slide easy. Though if it did, we’d get a devil’s lash.”

Kiran turned. “A what?”

“A monster avalanche,” I said. “Most avalanches happen when the top layer of snow breaks. The slide’s maybe a few hundred feet wide. Enough to take out plenty of wagons. But if a deep layer breaks, the force can set the whole slope moving, maybe even all the way to bare ground. Avalanches that large can wipe out entire convoys.”

“They’re rare,” Jerik added. “Last one was before my time.”

Kiran’s expression hovered somewhere between worried and fascinated. “But if you saw a dangerous snow layer...how do you know it won’t slide?”

Cara laughed, not happily. “No guarantees in the mountains, kid. But don’t you worry, we don’t leave it entirely up to Khalmet. Layer bonding is only one of the telltales we check. Speaking of...” She slid her spyglass out of her pack and handed it to Jerik. “Let’s take a look at those chutes, boys.”

Jerik held the glass up to one dark eye and scanned slowly across the rugged terrain. “Shaikar’s Tongue slid maybe a few days ago,” he said.

I squinted at the chute he meant, a wide couloir dropping down from the upper slopes of a mountain with a distinctive double summit. Avalanche debris lay scattered at the bottom, but the slide hadn’t reached as far as the trail.

Jerik lowered the glass. “Nothing more recent, and the Gate of Amaris looks good.” He handed the spyglass to me, and I repeated the survey. I paused as I passed over a peak whose upper ridges were marked with streaks of darker rock.

“More snow on Iblanis than usual,” I said.

“Didn’t spot any big cornices, though,” Jerik said. I studied the peak through the glass, carefully following the ridgelines above the chutes.

“Me neither.” I finished my survey and handed the glass back to Cara. While she took her turn, I moved to Kiran’s side. I nudged him and pointed down at a steep-walled semicircular bowl of rock just north of the pass. “Ice Lake’s there, at the bottom of that cirque.”

The lake in question was small and still choked with ice, but the pale green of melted water showed in patches near the edges. The convoy would have plenty of water without needing to melt snow. When the drovers all rushed off to fill their barrels before dark, I’d have the perfect opportunity to revisit Pello’s wagon unobserved by any of his neighbors.

Perfect, so long as Pello didn’t rattle Kiran into talking. If he did, the time for veiled warnings would be over. I’d have to confront Pello straight on. And if direct threats didn’t work, I’d need to swallow my scruples and play a darker game, no matter the cost to others. Not a pleasant thought.

“The high mountains seem so...so stark. There’s no life up here,” Kiran said. His gaze tracked across the basin, a frown appearing on his face.

“You’d be surprised,” I told him. “Birds, hopmice, all kinds of creatures live here. Later in the season after the snow melts, there’ll even be flowers everywhere.” A wistful pang shot through me as I remembered summer afternoons spent lazing beside cliffs amidst a riot of wildflowers. If