“OF COURSE I knew River was coming,” Lusha said. “He sets out for the North in two days. I’m going with him.”
I stared at my sister. She ignored me, calmly tapping the excess ink from her brush. She bowed her head again over the star chart, which was so long and wide it needed eight stones to pin it to the table. I glared at the side of Lusha’s head, contemplating grabbing one of the inksticks and grinding it into her careful drawings. Biter, one of Lusha’s ravens, gave me a warning crrrk from his perch on the windowsill.
“You’re going with him,” I repeated.
Lusha made no reply. The paper rustled as she shifted position.
“You didn’t say a word to me.” I kept my tone even through sheer force of will.
“There was no reason to.”
I shot Tem a look, but he only shook his head. He was hovering by the open door frame of the observatory, as if ready to dart away at a moment’s notice.
My sister glanced at me, her large eyes narrowing, as if she couldn’t comprehend what I was still doing here. Lusha wasn’t beautiful in the traditional sense, or even particularly pretty, with her thin face and ears that stuck out like the handles of a vase. But she was tall, with limbs like willow boughs, and eyes that flashed when she smiled. Her thick hair swirled to her shoulders like liquid night, appearing to be in motion even when there was no wind to stir it. Every week it seemed there was a new man falling tragically in love with her. Tragic for them—Lusha never seemed to take much notice of anything apart from astronomy. Plotting the courses of the moon and stars, tracking the constellations, and predicting future events based on their movements—it was a rare gift, more intuition than power. She had been even more obsessive about it recently, sometimes staying up all night and appearing late at the breakfast table with shadowed eyes and ink-stained hands. Whenever I remarked on her behavior, I was just met with a blank look, or, more commonly, a pointed comment about my own indulgent sleeping habits.
I wrapped my arms around my body, chilled even in my heavy chuba. The seer’s observatory, perched high above the village, beyond even the goatherds’ huts, was lined with windows with neither curtains nor shutters. There was a large square hole at the highest point in the roof, through which the wind whistled perpetually. The salt candleholders lining the table somehow only increased the feeling of cold as their small flames shivered in the breeze, permeating the air with a sharp, briny taste.
“Why would he need you?” The question just slipped out, harsher than I meant it.
Lusha gave me a stern look. She was only two years older than me, but it often felt like more.
“Because I can help him,” she said.
“With what?”
She seemed not to hear me. “I was honored that he would seek my assistance. We should all be honored. If the expedition goes well, Azmiri will win favor with the emperor.”
“Well, you will, anyway,” I muttered. It was typical of Lusha to assume that her own triumphs would somehow improve the world. Perhaps knowing from birth that you were destined to become an elder had something to do with it.
I edged closer, trying to get a glimpse of her worktable. But I saw no maps there, nothing that could give me a clue about this mysterious expedition. Only endless star charts—piles and piles of them. There were more scattered around the observatory, furled and leaning against walls, or hanging from nails hammered between the stonework.
“What are you doing?” I said. “Counting every star in the sky?”
Lusha’s brow furrowed as she traced a constellation with an inky finger. “I’m trying to work something out,” she muttered into the table.
I blew out my breath. I was used to my sister’s vagueness, but this was too much. “Lusha, why is River here? What does he want with you?”
She was quiet for so long I thought she was not going to answer. “I’m going to lead him to Mount Raksha.”
There was a loud clatter. Tem had knocked over one of Lusha’s wooden telescope stands. He stared at her, his eyes round as coins. I knew that my own expression was a mirror of his.
“Raksha?” I could barely get the word out. “He wants to climb Raksha?”
“Yes.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know. I only know that the emperor places a great deal of importance upon him doing so, and quickly. I’m to lead him there before the winter storms set in. Once we leave Azmiri, we’ll stop for nothing.”
“But why you?”
She gave me a hard look. “Because I’m one of only two people living who knows the way.”
The wind swirled through the observatory, smelling of night and snow. But this wasn’t the reason I shivered. The memories were, memories that stirred in my mind like a wind that heralded a storm.
“Are you mad?” I said.
“Not to my knowledge.” Lusha turned back to her star charts. “Now, Kamzin, if you could go someplace else? I’m really quite busy.”
I stood there, motionless, for a full minute. Lusha did not raise her head or give any sign that she was aware of me. I could have been a wayward comet in a constellation that did not interest her.
Finally, I stormed out, Tem trailing behind me.
Back in my room, I upended one of my clothes chests, spilling scarves and dresses across the already messy floor. I opened my cabinet and rifled through scrolls, tossing several onto the pile.
“Kamzin,” Tem said, “what are you doing?”
“I threw another scroll over my shoulder. Ragtooth, sleeping on my pillow, let out a growl. He opened one green eye to gaze at me.
“I can’t believe she agreed to this,” I raged. “I bet she doesn’t remember the way.”
“Do you remember the way?”
I didn’t answer immediately. The memories were old—I had been barely eleven—and I didn’t like thinking about them. It had been the first and last time Lusha and I had been allowed to join my mother on one of her expeditions. We’d set out in a large group, accompanied by several shamans and healers. Our goal was to search for new paths through the Arya Mountains—paths that could be taken by the emperor’s armies, or his enemies—and it had taken us within sighting distance of Raksha, the highest mountain in the world. Higher than the stars, the legends said. On the way back, half our party had been killed in an avalanche. A storm in Winding Pass had claimed more lives. My mother had barely managed to save Lusha and me.
“Yes,” I said quietly. “I remember.”
After my mother’s death, Lusha and I became the only living survivors of an expedition to that distant place. Yesterday, this hadn’t seemed significant.
It was now.
Tem rubbed his face. He looked tired—these last few days, he had been out late into the night, helping his father with the herds. “This isn’t like Lusha. She’s not usually reckless, and this goes beyond that.”
Shaking off the memories, I murmured in vague agreement, tossing another scroll onto the pile. Raksha was said to be unclimbable. Only a single explorer had ever attempted it—a man named Mingma, some fifty years ago. The only two survivors of his expedition—both of whom had died before I was born—wrote of black crevasses hidden beneath the snows, of ferocious storms and blizzards, and of sheer walls of ice hundreds of feet high. The mountain was said to be the abode of monsters, and cursed by spirits as ancient and unyielding as the glaciers. Even to lay eyes upon it was considered bad luck.
I found the scroll I was looking for. The light was fading, and I whistled for one of the house dragons. The beast that nested in the back corner of my room uncoiled himself sleepily and fluttered to my side. I dug the sour apples out of my pocket and placed them on a dish—dragons will eat almost anything—and he set upon them with enthusiastic gnashing and gnawing. Immediately, the faint glow radiating from his belly brightened enough to chase the shadows away. I bent over the scroll again, following the lines with my fingertip.
“Kamzin.”
I jumped. Tem was standing behind me, looking over my shoulder.
“What?”
“If you think climbing Raksha is madness, why are you looking at a map of the Nightwood?”
I didn’t reply. The witches’ forest was a dark stain, with little in the way of labeled features—few explorers had visited it, fewer still had returned. It encroached upon the only viable route to Raksha, a grueling, northward hike through the Arya Mountains’ eastern foothills, which lay outside the domain of the Empire.
“Why are you really upset?” Tem’s voice held an undercurrent of anger. “Because Lusha is risking her life on a fool’s errand? Or because you want to be in her place?”
I let the scroll curl back up, turning to face him. “I thought you understood. You said you would help me.”
“That was before I knew what it would mean.” There was no hesitation in Tem’s voice now, as he met my eyes. “How can you even consider this? You saw what happened to your mother’s expedition. You were there.”
“I won’t make the same mistakes my mother did.”
Tem muttered something under his breath.
“What?”
“I said, you’re unbelievable.” His face was pale. “What do you expect to gain from this?”
“Everything!” I slashed the scroll through the air. “Tem, this is River Shara. If I can impress him, I could be leading my own expeditions for the emperor one day. Imagine—me in a tahrskin chuba.”
Tem didn’t need to ask what I meant. All the emperor’s explorers—only the emperor’s explorers—wore chubas made from skins of the mountain tahr, a rare and exceptionally difficult beast to hunt. A single skin could fetch enough gold to buy half a village. The tahr were born with coats of sooty brown, which gradually lightened to white as they aged. Hides of each color were stitched together to make a coat as warm as it was lightweight, and two-sided—the dark a perfect camouflage for forest travel, the light allowing the explorer to blend in against the snow. In a tahrskin chuba, you became part of the landscape itself.
“You would throw your life away for that?” Tem said.
“I’m not throwing my life away.” My own anger was rising. “Are you saying I can’t do this?”
“I think you can do anything,” he said quietly. “That’s what scares me.”
“So are you going to help me or not?” I turned away from him and began digging through the heap of clothes. I needed something that would make me look older, and imposing. More like Lusha.
“Tem?”
Silence.
I turned around. “Don’t be—”
I stopped. I was talking to a room of dragonlight and dusty scrolls. Tem was gone.