Snorri stood at the wall beside the stone steps we had once run down, escaping Maeres Allus’s thugs. The wound on his face was healing, and his broken arm was hidden beneath a thick bearskin cloak fastened with a heavy golden clasp—a gift from the queen.
“We have snow here! Why are you leaving?” I spread my arms to encompass the unreal whiteness of Vermillion. Dockhands shivered around us in their too-thin coats as they loaded the last of his stores.
“The North calls me, my friend. And this isn’t snow—this is a frosting. In the North we—”
“Dance naked on such days. I know! I’ve seen it.” I clapped a hand to his good arm. “I’ll allow it . . . but come back, you hear? As soon as you’ve had your fill of frostbite and bad food, come back and warm up again.”
“I will.” A grin, white teeth in the bristling blackness of his short beard.
“Seriously. I mean it. Life will be too dull without all your nonsense.” I had more to say but it left me, along with the air from my lungs, as Hennan shot up the steps and bundled into me. “Ouch! Careful! Wounded hero here!” I put an arm round him and ruffled his red hair in the way that used to annoy me so much when my father did it to me. “Kara! Rescue me!”
The völva came up from the boat at a more leisurely pace, casting an amused eye over the three of us. “The boat’s ready. The river too,” she said.
“Look after these idiots for me,” I said. “The only thing Snorri knows in Trond are the docks and the Three Axes. And Hennan has never had the chance to appreciate the true horror of a Norseheim town.”
“I’ll see they get there safe enough,” she said. “After that I have things to do.”
I shrugged and smiled. I didn’t know much about boats, but what I did know was that very often the people who stepped off them at the end of a long voyage were not the same people who had boarded them.
And that was that. Snorri crushed the breath out of me with a onearmed hug, and the Seleen took them away, running west toward the sea.
The weeks that followed saw the continuing rebuilding of the outer city, a labour that would keep the people of Red March busy for years to come. If we have years to come. But who knows how long they have? We stopped the engines driving us to destruction. All that turns the Wheel now is us. More slowly, yes, but the destination is the same. We purchased time and time is a wonderful thing. Me, I intend to waste it hand over fist until it’s time to panic again. And even then it will be someone else’s task to fix the problem. My adventuring days are over—a neat parcel of memories sealed with a bow and shoved into some dark corner of a cupboard to gather dust and never see the light of day again.
Weeks later when the maid arrived at my rooms to stow away my laundered clothing, she came with Dr. Taproot’s lens laid neatly on the top in its silver hoop.
“It’s lucky they found that, your highness,” she said, beaming beneath her curls. “A delicate thing like that could easily come to harm.”
I was tempted to grind it to dust beneath my heel there and then. Loose ends warrant stamping on if they’re the kind that connect with people like Dr. Taproot. In the end though I feared summoning trouble and settled for wrapping it up and finding a literal rather than metaphorical seldom-used cupboard with dark enough corners to hide the thing away. Then went off to the kitchens to demand a huge lunch with plenty of wine.
Grandmother shook up the palace. Hertet, who miraculously survived the night of horror at Milano House, she sent into exile as permanent ambassador to the eastern czardoms. To quell any future manoeuvring over succession she officially named an heir. She even summoned me to a private session of court to discuss the matter. I backed her selection. Cousin Serah had showed in the siege that Grandmother’s blood ran deep in her. When at last the Red Queen met her end our people would shout “The Red Queen is dead! Long live the Red Queen!”
Which just leaves me, here in the guest wing of the Inner Palace, watching from a high window as Barras Jon limps off to one or other of his duties. They found him alive on the morning when the Dead King broke his siege. He lay trapped amid a heap of broken corpses at the base of the city wall where we had fought together. His leg proved to be too badly shattered for a full recovery, but with the aid of a cane he gets about, overseeing his father’s affairs in Vermillion. Indeed, these days his business interests see him called hither and thither across the length and breadth of Red March. He says I saved him that day, and if I ever want anything from him I just have to ask. So really, my only crime is having forgotten to ask . . .