Winter, White and Wicked - Shannon Dittemore Page 0,66

tin can.”

Kyn snorts. He dumps a sip of water into Hyla’s mouth and then caps the canteen, tossing it over his shoulder and into the sleeper cab. He’s in a remarkably good mood for a man who was mauled by wolves.

Hyla swallows and uses her good arm to swipe at the water dripping off her chin. “Have I missed the Abaki, Sessa? You and Mars were talking about Winter’s monsters, were you not? Did you see one?”

Mars catches my gaze in the mirror and I look away.

“My lady?”

“No, Hy,” Kyn says, kindly. “You haven’t missed the monsters.”

“Good,” she says. “That would be most disappointing.”

In the hours since Mars mentioned the coastal stretch, there have been plenty of things to focus on, plenty of things to keep my mind from drifting too near that memory. But with talk of the Abaki so near and the kol softening my resolve, images from that day barrel in.

Drypp and I fishing a kidney-shaped pond the Blys before he died. My calves burning from the hike. The snow hadn’t fully melted and it took us time to find a suitable fishing hole. White bricks bobbed in the shallow pool, but we could see life flitting below the surface of the black water. We’d settled in, both of us using our fishing buckets as stools, our lines nothing but sylver threads disappearing into the chill darkness.

Lenore hadn’t wanted to come. She ventures out more in Blys than she does in Ryme, mostly for the sake of her garden and her hens, but when the outdoor chores are done, she keeps to the tavern.

Back then, she was taking on more of Drypp’s workload. His mind had started to slow, hands shaking with age, eyes squinting at the barrels as he struggled to distinguish ale from lager.

The Kerce lessons had been abandoned the Ryme before when Drypp no longer had the energy to force me to go, and I’d already added my name to the Dragon and started taking her for short runs around town.

On this particular day, we were all precisely where we wanted to be. I needed nothing more than to be sitting on my bucket, listening to Drypp tell stilted tales about his childhood, about stealing skates when the smithy had his back turned and busting his lip taking his first go on the ice. I loved when he talked about his eight brothers and the snow caves they built, the month-long trapping excursions they took through the tightly knit trees of the northern woods.

I was just about to ask Drypp where his brothers had gone off to when a lone Abaki crawled over the rise.

My grip on the wheel tightens. “Unless we are extremely lucky, Hy, you’ll see more than your share of monsters before this trip is over.”

“I would like that very much,” she says. “My father had a Kerce advisor who wrote out the Shiv and Kerce accounts for us. So we could shelve them next to the Paradyian histories in our library. So we could share them with our children.”

“Why would Paradyian children care about our old myths and legends?”

“We collect them, Sessa. Paradyians value history. My father especially. Begynd, creator of the Shiv, was Sola’s son, was he not? Together they created the islands scattered across the Wethyrd Seas. Begynd’s work is Sola’s work then. And we honor Sola above all.”

“So you believe the stories?” I ask. “The accounts of Begynd and the Shiv. The Kerce exiles and Winter’s vengeance.”

Hyla shrugs, the action sending a shiver of pain through her body. “I do not know what I believe, Sessa. Your own people do not seem convinced. Mars tells me that the monsters are real, but the Majority—”

“You can’t trust the Majority, Hy,” Kyn says. “Not about the Shiv. Not about the Kerce.”

Hyla groans and nods, sweat glistening on her lip as she rotates her injured shoulder.

“They’re real,” I say, the memory a flurry of snow and kol climbing, spinning, moving toward Drypp and me. “Whatever else they are, the Abaki are real and they’re dangerous.”

“Like the rest of Winter’s atrocities,” Mars says.

“Maybe,” I counter, keeping my eyes firmly on the road. My mind has cleared and I find I do have something to say about the monsters. “Maybe not.”

“Even you, Winter’s great defender, would not deny the destruction the Abaki have wrought.”

“No,” I say, blinking at the headless monster climbing through the years. “I wouldn’t.”

I’ve seen an Abaki. Felt his dead hands bloated with damp, fought them as they closed