Chapter 24
Maya had never traveled into the Shattered Peak mountains, except for her brief foray to Deepfire, but from everything she’d heard she expected it to be a difficult and dangerous affair. They’d agreed that speed was of the essence, so she’d used the bulk of her travel funds to buy three swiftbirds in Grace, and stocked up on supplies and maps to supplement Marn’s mumbled directions. Unlike the crossing from Uqaris, once they were away from Grace, the land was sparsely populated, so she and Tanax could protect the party from plaguespawn without risking exposure as centarchs. When they’d ridden out through Grace’s considerably less busy northern gate, just skirting the unmetal hull of Grace in Execution, Maya had prepared herself for a rigorous trip.
Instead, if anything, the journey had become more pleasant as they went along. The foothills of the mountains rose rapidly north of Grace, and they left the stifling heat of the plains behind. Maya’s swiftbird was a friendly, biddable creature named Blackbar for the color of her tail feathers, and her long, loping pace devoured the distance and coped easily with the rocky ground. Contrary to their name, swiftbirds were slower than a warbird over short distances, but they had much greater endurance, and Blackbar seemed to be able to maintain her steady stride indefinitely.
With the maps and a little guesswork, Maya surmised it was a five-day ride to the place Marn had specified, the foot of a tiny nameless valley at the bottom of a jagged mountain called Cracktooth. Away from the main passes, the map grew vague, but according to Marn all they had to do was find the outlet of a certain stream and follow it as it wound its way upward. Finding the right stream, in a mountain range full of little creeks fed by snowmelt, might be a challenge, but Maya was determined to try.
In any event, that was for the fifth day. Until then, they rode quietly up wooded hillsides, following animal tracks or bare ridges where they could, and pushing through the forest when there was no other way. It never grew so dense that they were really troubled, nor steep enough that it bothered the birds, and if there were plaguespawn in the area they didn’t show themselves. The latter, in fact, became almost eerie—Maya had done most of her traveling in the Republic, but based on everything she’d read and heard, they should have encountered at least a few of the awful creatures. When she mentioned it to Tanax, he only shrugged.
“Maybe they all migrate down toward Grace,” he offered, “where there are more humans to eat? Or maybe someone came through and hunted them out recently.”
However safe the woods seemed, they still used Tanax’s watch charm whenever they camped, relying on the little device to give warning if their luck ran out. Maya cooked vulpi bacon and griddle cakes over a campfire while Beq and Tanax erected the tents. With mountains to the west, sunset came early, and they went to sleep as the first stars twinkled overhead.
Tanax went to sleep, in any event. Maya and Beq experimented, gently. The reality of it—skin against skin, soft gasps in the dark, the little whining noise Beq made in the back of her throat when she neared her peak—was different from Maya’s nocturnal fantasies, slower and more complicated but infinitely sweeter. Falling asleep with the warm weight of Beq in her arms made her wish, full of guilt, that the journey would never end.
We need to help Jaedia, Maya told herself firmly. We’ll bring her back to the Forge and tell everyone what happened. And then Beq and I can … go on together. She wasn’t sure exactly what form that would take, but she had never wanted any future more.
*
Blearily, Maya reached for her canteen, and swore very quietly when she found it empty.
It was well after dark, and Beq lay beside her, sound asleep. Maya extricated herself, carefully, and crawled to the tent flap. The moon was high, and she blinked in the silver light, skin pebbling in the cool mountain air.
They’d camped beside a stream, and Maya shuffled over to it, empty canteen in hand. She was surprised to find Tanax sitting cross-legged on a nearby rock, looking up at the stars wheeling over the darkened mountains. Maya cleared her throat.
“Is something wrong?” she said.
“Just having trouble sleeping,” Tanax said.
“Bad dreams?”
“More like … regrets.” Tanax leaned back and sighed. “I keep thinking I should have seen through Nicomidi long before this. If I’d only noticed …”
“You were obeying your master’s orders.” Maya knelt by the stream and let water glug into her canteen. “Nobody can fault you for that.”
“I was his agathios. I knew him as well as anyone did. I think back to things he did, things he said, and try to figure out … why, I suppose.”
“And?” Maya straightened up.
“And I still don’t understand,” Tanax said. “Nicomidi was … distant. Stern, maybe. Uncompromising. But what he taught me, to always act in accordance with the principles of the Order, he lived that himself. He thought the Pragmatics were wrong, but he never talked about them like the enemy.” Tanax did his best to mask it, but Maya could hear the pain in his voice. “If you’d asked me a month ago, I would have said there was no one less likely to betray the Order.”
“I’m sorry,” Maya said quietly.
“We’ll find him, if he’s with Jaedia,” Tanax said. “And when we do, he’s going to explain to me exactly what he was thinking. I have to … understand, at least. Or else …” He shrugged. “That’s why I had to come with you. It seemed like the best chance of getting an answer.”
“I think the Council would like some answers, too,” Maya said. “Personally, I’ll be happy as long as we get Jaedia back.”
“Of course,” Tanax said. “I won’t lose sight of that, I promise.”
He paused as Maya turned back to her tent, then spoke up again.
“You and Arcanist Bequaria, eh?”
“So?” Maya challenged. “Are you planning another lecture on Order propriety?”
“When did I lecture you on Order propriety?”
“In Deepfire, you accused us of sneaking out to a brothel.”
“I did, didn’t I?” Tanax shook his head. “I was …”
“Being an ass?” Maya suggested.
“I was going to say ‘unkind.’” He sighed. “Worse than that. I was acting exactly as my master had taught me to act: completely certain of my own moral superiority. He’d told me that you’d been sent by the Pragmatics to ruin the mission, and I was so sure …” He shook his head again. “I’m not sure of anything anymore.”
“If it helps, Jaedia told me the same thing about you. Nobody’s infallible.”
“I suppose not.” Tanax gave a dark chuckle and climbed to his feet, stretching. “I should try to sleep. We must be getting close.”
“Yes,” Maya acknowledged. “Almost there.”
*
“Are you sure this is it?” Tanax said.
Maya shaded her eyes and looked at the little stream, which descended from a cluster of rocks to join with a slightly larger creek and continue winding out of the mountains. The valley stretching up behind it, narrow and stony, looked like a hundred others they’d passed.