Winter, White and Wicked - Shannon Dittemore Page 0,43
and I can find no peace.”
“The Paradyians have never been conquered,” Kyn says. “Have never been forced off their own land. Suffering is not something they understand.”
Hyla colors, temper purpling her face, but it’s Mars who speaks, turning to face Kyn as he does so. “Are you suddenly so sympathetic to the plight of your kinsmen? It’s almost worth the cost of losing a day to see you so impassioned.”
“It’s almost hard to believe you had nothing to do with it,” Kyn says, his knee pushing into my back as he fights to get comfortable.
“What is it you’re accusing me of, friend? Enlisting the Shiv to abduct one of their own? They hardly need incentive.”
“But I do, don’t I? I need motivation. You’ve always said so. And now that I’ve seen their suffering—”
“You’ve had a long night,” Mars says, turning around. “Rest.”
Kyn grabs the shoulder of Mars’s coat, pulling him half out of his seat.
“Stop!” I yell, reaching out with my right arm, trying to get between them. “Kyn, stop! Stop!”
But Hyla has things under control. She pulls Kyn away, slamming him hard into the back of the cab, pinning him there with Drypp’s shotgun.
Kyn’s laugh is a brittle, jagged thing. “You looking for a fight, warrior woman?”
“I am not,” Hyla says. “But I believe you are. I suggest saving it for the challenges ahead. A fight with Mars is not one you can win.”
“Who says I want to win?”
But the fight’s gone out of him and Hyla sees it too. She releases him and relinquishes the shotgun.
Mars shrugs his coat back into place, pulls the square of cloth from his pocket, and dabs at a scrape on his neck. “Sleep, Kyn. The Shiv at High Pass aren’t the last who’ll need saving.”
For a minute I think Kyn’s going to argue—his eyes hot, his chin fisted with all the words he wants to say—but then he’s shoving Hyla out of the way and climbing into the sleeper. He jerks the curtain shut behind him.
The tension is thick, but the cab’s gone quiet.
“We’re going to start descending soon,” I say. “With the rocks rising above us, it’s as good a place as any for the Shiv to mount another attack. We could use a lookout as we make the turn onto the Desolation stretch.”
Mars reaches up and flips the bolt on the roof hatch.
“I’ll go,” Hyla says. “I would like to check the turret for damage.”
She’s standing, already shoving at the hatch, but I grab her arm.
“You absolutely cannot use that turret gun, Hy. Not in the pass. Winter will bury us alive.”
“I have my handguns,” she says, flipping up her hood, zipping her coat.
“And where’s Kyn’s rifle?” I ask. “You may as well—”
“Taken,” Mars says. “The Shiv brats are probably passing it around, wondering what that little trigger does.”
My stomach drops as I consider Crysel with a rifle.
Hyla opens the hatch and Winter trades places with her as she climbs up and onto the cab.
“She’s intense,” I say, while Hyla’s boots clatter overhead. A moment later she drops into the turret.
“Wait till you meet her husband,” Mars says.
But I’ve no desire to step foot on the shores of the golden kingdom. Lenore’s always been fascinated. She pored over Mystra Dyfan’s maps as a child, copied them in her own hand.
“Of all the islands in the Wethyrd Seas,” she’d said, “Paradyia is the brightest.”
I’d look at her newly inked map and disagree. I preferred the clean, pure shine of Layce’s snow-white wings. But Lenore would hear none of it. She dreamed aloud of boarding a ship and sailing away from Layce to a land where the skies were always blue and the unveiled sun turned faces warm and brown.
I wonder, now, what she’d say to Hyla. To the Paradyian idea that some good can come from her suffering. I try to picture the conversation, how Hyla would respond, the arguments Lenore would make about her own dead mother. I’ve had my share of fights with Lenore, but I can’t imagine how this one would play out. And I wonder if Mars is right.
I wonder if I know my friend at all.
CHAPTER 11
It’s been hours and Kyn hasn’t emerged from the sleeper.
Despite the awkwardness, I wish he would. Open hostility is highly preferable to the speech Mars launches into. With great passion, he enumerates all the reasons one should hate Winter. He’s methodic in his reasoning, single-minded as he lists the merits of other winter spirits throughout the Wethyrd Seas.