ways when she was young, grieved more than I ever did for Mistress Quine. Whenever her eyes took on that sadness, I knew I’d wake to find her bags gone and Drypp wandering the highway looking for her.
Escape. That’s what I saw in Lenore’s eyes. And it’s what I see now in Shyne’s.
He’s looking for a way out.
I try to step back, to disappear into the crowd, but my knees buckle.
“Sylvi?” Kyn takes my hand and wraps it around the walking stick. “You OK?”
I find my legs but by the time I’ve pulled myself upright, Shyne has turned back to the elder. “I may have another way, Great Father.”
He’s speaking in the common tongue now. The Majority tongue. The room doesn’t like it, but I can’t tell if it’s because the Shiv understand what he’s saying or if it’s because they don’t.
“And if I have?” Shyne is asking. “If I found a way to send Winter from the island forever, would you set aside this foolish endeavor? Would you meet Begynd with joy on your face?”
A hacking cough erupts from the elder—he’s laughing.
“What’s he saying now?” I ask Kyn.
“It seems Shyne has been threatening to send Winter away since he was a boy. Shaking a stick at the falling snow and the ice hanging like knives from the rocks. The elder says not even the Kerce wield that kind of power.”
“The Kerce,” Shyne spits, again in the common tongue. It feels like rebellion, his choice of language. Like when I ran off with Mystra Dyfan’s cane simply because there was no way she could catch me. “Their power is watered down. Diluted through the generations. Whatever authority they retain, they use only for gain.”
More Shiv words from the elder. More anger. I can’t stop staring at his eyes. I’ve never seen another pair that glowed like mine. Not once in seventeen Rymes.
Shyne explodes. “You’ve done nothing but think these three hundred years. White winter after white winter. Each one more terrible than the last. The answer cannot be found here in our caves or with our kin along the river. Sit him up,” Shyne demands.
Crysel jerks in surprise. “Father?”
“Do it. Sit him up.”
The women tending to the elder rush forward and together, with the girl, they pull him upright, adjusting the pelts, rolling furs and stacking them behind him. He protests, but all his power is in his voice. He’s weak, frail. Eventually, he’s propped into place, his head lolling on emaciated neck muscles.
The crowd is restless now, divided. Even in the circle of flesh and stone pressing against me, I hear divided loyalties whispered and I don’t need to understand their language to understand their debate.
Is the elder to be heeded? Or is it Shyne?
“Hear me,” Shyne says, spinning, facing his kin. “All of you, hear me. Remember the stories your mother told you at the evening meal, the histories your father made you recite as you sharpened your shivs. Remember, please, the devastation wrought by the Kerce when our people rushed to their aid. When we pulled their kol-addled bodies from the sea and led them to the healing waters of Begynd. Remember, please, that their queen had two children. The Prince and another child—”
“Buried,” the elder growls. He’s switched to the common tongue now. To force Shyne to hear him, maybe. Whatever his reason, he’s shocked the cave into silence. “I saw the babe go under myself, in the arms of a Shiv woman—a compassionate heart who’d forsaken her own safety to tend the laboring queen. Dead because of kindness. Dead because of compassion. Dead because she ministered to a queen poisoned by Winter.”
LIES! I NEVER KNEW THEIR QUEEN! Winter’s voice is loud. So loud I look around to see if the Shiv nearby hear her protest. But they’re held captive by the scene playing out before them. Even Kyn, his brow furrowed, his mouth slightly open.
“The babe did go under, yes!” Shyne argues. “Like so many of our own. But just hours before, the child had been born in the waters of Begynd. Like you, Great Father. That alone would give her length of days.”
“She’s buried,” the elder snarls. “The least of all the living souls beneath the ice.”
Shyne’s dark eyes flash. “What if she’s not? What if the Desolation gave her up?”
The elder falls silent as the crowd begins to murmur.
“What if she’s here?” Shyne continues, his body opening up, turning toward me. “What if she could send Winter away?”
“Sessa?” Crysel says, her mouth dropping