after a last glance up and down the canyon. The sooner we finished the rappels and got back under cover in the trees, the happier I’d be.
***
Sunlight flooded the canyon by the time we made it down the final cliff. Kiran handled the rappels far better than I’d feared, though his exhaustion was plain in the cautious slowness of his rope handling and the shadows under his eyes.
No telling if anybody had spotted us. The instant we stowed the climbing gear, I set out over the canyon floor toward the river. The forest here was easy terrain, the last we’d have for a long while. The trees were all bristlebark pines, ancient and stately, with trunks too broad for one man to reach around. The lowest of their branches soared twenty feet over our heads. On a job once as a kid I’d snuck into the Temple of the Burning Moon, high in the airy sweep of Kahori Tower. The echoing marble chamber with its rows of massive columns had made me feel no bigger than a sandflea; my first sight of bristlebark forest had brought much the same sense of awe. Almost, I wished I could’ve seen Kiran’s reaction to it at a time untainted by our fear of pursuit.
As it was, Kiran hurried along after me with his head down. Occasionally he trailed a hand across a shaggy bristlebark trunk, as if to assure himself its girth was real. Otherwise he hardly seemed to notice his surroundings—until we reached Garnet River. That stopped him dead in his tracks, his eyes wide with a mixture of wonder and dismay.
“How do we get across?” he asked.
Garnet River was only a baby compared to the great waterways of Alathia, but it made the white roar of the stream back in Silverlode Canyon look like a mere trickle. Ten wagonlengths wide and deeper than a man was tall, the river swept along in a deceptively smooth flow that could knock a man off his feet in seconds. The water was clear as daylight; I could see speckled fish hovering in the pebbled shallows. The steep-sided banks were already green with knotweed and fiddlenecks. In a few weeks when the wildflowers blossomed, they’d blaze with color.
“We gotta find a place where we can rock hop, since I’m guessing you can’t swim.”
He gave me a quizzical look. “Can you?”
“Yeah. Not well, though, so don’t count on a quick rescue if you fall in.” I led him through the pines above the riverbank, hunting for a spot where enough scattered boulders poked through the water’s surface to allow a crossing.
“How did you—”
“Another outrider taught me, in mountain lakes.” Which explained why I wasn’t that good. Even in high summer, the lakes that dotted the Whitefires’ cirques could freeze a man’s blood in moments. Sethan had insisted swimming was an important skill for an outrider, but I hadn’t wanted to spend one heartbeat longer in icy lakewater than absolutely necessary.
I hopped down the bank onto a glossy, rounded boulder that overhung the river. Beyond, the water swirled and foamed past the exposed tips of a ragged field of rocks.
“We’ll cross here,” I told Kiran. “I’ll go first, and carry your pack. Once I make the far bank, I’ll let you know if any of the rocks are unstable. The rocks will be slippery, so step slow and make sure each foot is solid. If you slip and fall in, try not to panic. Turn on your back and keep your feet pointed downstream—better for your feet to hit a rock than your head. The river will eventually sweep you into an eddy, and then I can reach you.”
“Can’t we use a rope?” Kiran eyed the river with a distinctly nervous expression.
“If you were tied to a rope and you fell, the force of the water would hold you under, and the rope might get tangled in the rocks. You’d likely drown before I could pull you to shore. I can’t set a handline, either, because the path across zigzags too widely, and the water’s too deep and fast to use a branch as a pole.”
His knuckles were white on his pack straps. Time to play the confident minder. “Look, you’ve done fine on talus and cliffs, and this is easier. No question about where to put your feet. Just take it slow, and you’ll be safe on the riverbank before you know it.”
I made short work of the crossing. Only one rock was dangerously slick, coated