Winter, White and Wicked - Shannon Dittemore Page 0,23

all that shattered glass.

That’s what I’m thinking as I watch the mountain come down. Someone’s yelling my name but I can’t breathe, I can’t move. All I can think is that after this fight there will be no one left standing to clean up the mess.

CHAPTER 7

The scene is so clear.

Drypp’s swinging his pickaxe again. It’s the one Lenore and I bought for his eighty-second Ryme. The wood handle is wrapped in leather cord and we’d paid the local smithy a child’s fortune to work the axe head to perfection. Leni and I must’ve scrubbed hundreds of windshields to pay for it, treating them with weather repellent for a bit of extra coin.

And now Drypp swings the axe, breaking up the frozen earth, churning the ground behind the tavern for the vegetable garden ten-year-old Lenore insists on trying. She stands there with her hands full of seeds, though I know that’s not how it was. Lenore would never be so careless with her seeds.

But this isn’t a memory. This is a dream. And in the dream Lenore’s hands are full, seeds squeezing through the cracks between her fingers and her face desperate for a place to plant them. She bounces on the balls of her feet, waiting, waiting for Drypp to clear away the snow and ice. And though I’ve only ever wanted Drypp’s granddaughter to like me, to love me like her own sister, I hate the glee on her face when Drypp breaks through to soil. I hate the victory in the set of Drypp’s shoulders when he’s done it.

Lenore dumps the seeds into my hands. “Plant them, Sylvi,” she says. “Plant them!”

But in my hands they’re no longer seeds. They’re words. Kerce words chalked in Mystra’s hasty scrawl. They inch up my arms, these words I never want to speak. I fling them as far as I can.

The disappointment on Lenore’s face is painful but it’s short-lived. The words fall on hard ice and before Lenore can gather them back up, they eat through the sludge, spitting as they fight their way into the soil below. The ice melts and the mud sprouts grasses and reeds and flowers all green and yellow and bright.

“You did it!” Lenore says. “Now the flowers can grow.”

Tears prick my eyes. “I thought you wanted vegetables,” I say.

Or maybe I just think I say it because there’s a pain growing in my chest and I can’t imagine speaking anything ever again. Agony spreads, pushes. I fight for air but with every breath, the pain expands and my ribs threaten to crack.

“Breathe small, Sessa,” a quiet voice says. “Breathe small or the stone will win.”

The dream fades and my eyes open. Hanging over me is the girl. The girl Winter saved.

“No, don’t move,” she says. “Shyne had a stone placed on your chest. To keep you still.”

I try to lift my arms, but they’re pinned as well, rocks weighing my palms. And my legs, I think. I can’t see past the remarkably dense stone sitting on my chest.

“Shyne’s very good with stones,” the girl says. “With their weight. He chooses the rocks carefully. This one, yes. That one, no.” She leans closer. “If you lay still, they will not break your bones.”

Half the girl’s face is cast in shadow, flames flickering across the other half, the stone half. They’re burning twyl nearby—I can smell it, the flames warming my right side, turning the rock weighing down my chest luminous. Still, my fingers are numb. Winter’s touch or lack of circulation, I can’t tell—probably both.

I wriggle my fingers, my knuckles scraping against the cave floor. That’s where I am, certainly. One of the Shiv caves. The ceiling is dark, firelight climbing the walls, jagged outcroppings everywhere, stones of all colors piled by size. Water trickles, splats, and echoes off the frozen walls. A stack of metal barrels catches my attention and I understand something I didn’t before.

I’d like to crack one open, look inside. But every shift, every breath feels like it could be my last. The ground beneath my hand is giving way, yielding as I grind my knuckles harder into the thawing mud. The girl squats, her knobby knees bare, her amber eyes almost liquid as she watches me work.

“You shouldn’t,” she says. “Shyne will be back soon.”

“I’m not afraid of Shyne,” I lie. But the words cost me and my lungs burn as the rock sinks deeper into my chest.

The girl presses her face even closer to my arm. “You should