Which had given me an idea.
I gestured to the men Kaen had dispatched as my escort. I knew their leader, Hedrogha, from previous escort runs out to the clans. “Captain, pull them from the cells and follow me.”
“Where are we going?” Hedrogha seemed wary. I wondered what his orders were if I refused to kill the prisoners.
“The kennel,” I answered.
The soldier’s eyes widened.
The prisoners barely made a fuss as they were pulled from their cells. They looked weak and beaten. If they’d been fed, it hadn’t been enough.
I kept my expression blank as we made our way back up to the main level, to the kennels.
Of course, what the Yorans called the kennels would have been called the stable anywhere else. Even though most travel to and from the Ice Demesne happened via Gatestone, a main road did lead up to the pyramid’s base. Any conventional travel happened by way of animals more adapted to the cold than horses—namely, snow hyenas and ice bears. Neither animal was ridden, but teams of hyenas or bears often pulled sleds or wagons across the snowy countryside.
This was Suless’s (or rather Wyrga’s) domain. She trained and took care of the duke’s animals. No matter how she was despised, everyone admitted she excelled at her job.
The large hall was constructed from the palace’s normal black stone, but here a dark musk scent mixed with blood, offal, and ice filled the air. Hyena laughter and bear growls mixed with creaking leather and the sharp retort of snapping jaws.
I motioned to a handler. “Harness a wagon with bears.”
“You’re supposed to kill the prisoners,” the same soldier reminded me.
I turned to him. “Yorans may tolerate cold, but you have your limits. I’m going to leave them outside to freeze. Or won’t that be dead enough for you?”
The soldier gave concerned glances to the large entrance. They didn’t want to go outside either—exactly as I’d planned.
The prisoners heard our exchange, so panic set in. They were tied, but several began openly begging for their lives. Others started crying.
“Just kill them here,” someone snapped.
I stared at the man. “Are you questioning me?”
“No, just—” He gave Captain Hedrogha a pleading look. “We’ll need to change into our winter furs.”
I was about to tell them to go get them (which would give me time to take the prisoners out myself) when Wyrga stepped in.
“Or you can let her go alone,” Wyrga suggested as she walked over. “What’s she going to do, hmm? Help them escape into the mountains? Travel somewhere warm? I’d like to see her try.” The old woman had tied a cloth over one side of her head to hide her missing eye. I didn’t know what she’d done with the eye itself, which I felt was for the best.
Captain Hedrogha started to protest, but Wyrga locked her eye with him. That eye’s color flashed, just briefly, to ice blue.
Hedrogha paused. “You make a good point.”
Wyrga smiled sharp teeth and malice. “I always do, dearie.”
I suppressed a chill. I’d seen the ice eye flash before: Wyrga had just used magic on the guard. Duke Kaen had forbidden his captive goddess from doing a great many things—harming his family, for example—but she was useless to him if he forbid her from ever using magic at all.
But what could I say? What she had done worked in my favor.
“I’ll be back soon,” I reassured Captain Hedrogha. “This won’t take long.”
He didn’t even look at me. Wyrga’s ice-blue stare still trapped his gaze. His men didn’t seem to notice.
The animal handlers readied two of the great bears for me, who I preferred to the hyenas. The bears were terrifying in their own way—they were more than capable of killing someone accidentally—but they liked that I was warm and good at scratching behind their ears. It wasn’t at all the same as riding a horse, but since I secretly went riding with Arasgon almost every night in the Afterlife, I didn’t resent the difference.
Once all the prisoners had been loaded into the wagon, we set out. I tried my best to ignore their screams.
For me, the difficult part of traveling in the Yoran winter landscape wasn’t the cold. I’d long since learned to heat myself up enough to prevent frostbite. No, the difficulty was keeping that heat inside. If I allowed myself to radiate heat, I’d find myself wading through ice water, defrosting equipment designed to work best while frozen, or falling right through snowbanks and ice sheets rendered unstable. I’d found that out the hard way.
I rode out, unescorted, down the main road, not a proper road so much as a line of tall poles staked into the ground meant to rise above the worst winter snowbanks. Then I turned south, traveled several miles off the road, and stopped.
I enchanted coins as we rode. I’d have preferred to use rocks, but finding bare ground in winter was unlikely, so coins would have to do. Fortunately, the Hon hadn’t been stingy with his metal, and to my surprise, I had a spending allowance.
And thanks to Suless, I had a few other tricks up my sleeves as well.
I stopped the wagon, opened the door, then backed away and drew my sword.
“Come out,” I said, “and I’ll explain how this will work.”
They looked at me with undisguised fear.
“I don’t want to kill you,” I said. “You may either come out and I’ll explain what you need to do to survive, or stay where you are and give me no choice but to follow through on the Hon’s orders. I leave the choice to you.”
They all stepped onto the snow and looked confused as I handed each of them a coin. More confused as they felt the warmth emanating from that metal.
“Keep those on you. Those tokens will keep you from freezing to death.” I pointed south. “Aim between those two mountains. The pass between them will lead you south. You’ll end up in Tolamer. Once you’re there, I’ll have people waiting for you. Ask for a woman named Ninavis. Understand?”
A tall, thickly built man with dark blue hair shook his head. “It’ll be weeks to make it that far. Even if we don’t freeze, what are we supposed to eat?”
I nodded. I’d prepared for this part too, although it galled me that I had Suless to thank for the method. I whistled, then made a barking, laughter-like noise.
The hyenas responded immediately. These weren’t the snow hyenas Suless had back at the palace. These were wild. I heard their barking response in the distance.
Hyenas are very hierarchical. Every animal in a clan knows exactly where they fall within that hierarchy—who is above them and who is below.
Really, not so different from Jorat.
In any event, it meant I only had to dominate their queen to rule the whole clan. I could only give the animals simple commands, but I thought it enough to ensure the former prisoners safely escaped Yor.
“The hyenas will escort you out and bring you food. Don’t attack them. Don’t even try to touch them, but they’ll keep you safe.”
I suppose I couldn’t blame the prisoners for looking scared and nervous. Between the hot coins and the hyena escort, enough of them remembered stories told at grandmother’s knee to suspect me of being a witch-mother. I was in no position to correct them.
I closed up the wagon doors and pulled myself back up behind the bears, grown restless with the proximity of that hyena clan. “It’s the best I can do,” I told them. “Good luck.” I nudged the bears to head back to the palace.