Tarin chuckled. “I wouldn’t know, princess. My job was to guard the door. All I know is that we had to eventually carry the captain out. He was as drowsy as a hibernating ice bear.”
Annise laughed at that, glad for the levity.
Tarin pushed a finger to his mask, cutting her off. The sound of singing and merriment arose, coming closer. They huddled in the shadows, peering out onto a gray road. Several soldiers stumbled past, holding each other up, as well as several ill-clothed women. They sang with voices so slurred and out of tune that they belonged in the deepest depths of frozen hell.
Weeeee drink until we’re drunk!
Weeeee sink until we’re sunk!
Weeeee think until we’ve thunk!
Weeeee stink until we’ve stunk!
On the last word they broke into a gale of laughter and stumbled onwards, pushing through a door and into a tavern. Annise remembered the day her brother had learned the silly song from one of the castle guardsmen. He’d sung it all day long, until she’d finally threatened to beat it out of his head. He’d only laughed and launched into another round.
Despite the way he’d abandoned her to Tarin and the Howling Tundra, she missed him. Arch, are you here somewhere?
“Pull your hood around your face,” Tarin said. “Follow the main road north until you reach The Laughing Mamoothen, it’s a tavern owned by a friend of your aunt’s.”
“Netta?”
“Aye.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you have to go alone.”
Annise frowned. “Where will you be?”
“Close. Watching. I can’t be seen with you. Not here. We will be too conspicuous as a pair, especially because of…how I look.”
Annise held back a laugh. “True. You do sort of stick out like a frost-bitten toe. Will Archer be hiding in the tavern?”
“I cannot say for certain,” Tarin said. “But if Sir Dietrich passed through Gearhärt, that’s where he would’ve hidden your brother.”
Annise frowned. “It’s been nigh on seven days since we’ve seen them. Would they really linger in the city that long?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. But the innkeeper will be able to tell us either way.”
Annise had little other choice, having no knowledge of Gearhärt or its people. “Fine. You will meet me at the tavern?”
“Yes,” Tarin confirmed. “It’s not far. Whistle if you need me.”
Annise peeked left and then right. The streets were eerily empty, though she could hear the muffled sound of revelry forcing its way through several closed doors. She turned northward, striding with a purpose through the empty streets, pulling her woolen hood tight around her face. Gearhärt wasn’t dissimilar from Castle Hill, with its stone structures and snow-packed streets.
An odd thrill ran through her, walking alone in this foreign city, the chilly night air making her feel as alive as she’d ever felt.
The feeling vanished as she saw a shadow ahead, approaching. Frozen hell, she thought. What now? Would it be a castle guard? With her luck it would be a knight.
She was wrong on both accounts. It was just a man, his gait slightly off. He held a flask in each hand, alternating them as he took long swigs of whatever poison he’d chosen. Though Annise refused to look directly at him, she could tell when he spotted her, his movements slowing. She ducked her head and veered to the right, trying to put as much space between them as possible.
He mimicked her movement in reverse, angling toward her. Annise immediately thought of Tarin, stalking her movements somewhere else, watching over her. It didn’t make her feel safer; it made her scared for this man, who was clearly drunk and not thinking clearly.
“Come here, woman!” the man slurred. “I won’t bite!” He cackled and nearly tripped.
“Leave me, sir,” Annise said. Please, Tarin, don’t get involved.
“Sir? Ha! My lady has good manners. Who do you think you are—a princess of the north?” More cackling. He tucked the flasks into a hidden pocket in his thick coat. His hands free, he groped for her, but she squirmed away.
“I said leave me alone,” Annise repeated, slapping his outstretched hands away. Whistle if you need me. Annise gritted her teeth instead.
“Ah, that’s more like it,” the man said, undeterred. “I like a little fire in my women. And war is coming, didn’t you hear? This could be our last night alive, shouldn’t we spend it with each other’s company?”
Annise could hear the sound of heavy footsteps racing toward them. No, she thought. Impulsively, she grabbed the man by the collar and shoved him back. He stumbled, landing on his arse. “Bitch!” he spat.
“Drunk bastard,” she growled in response, kicking him between the ribs. He groaned and rolled over. A moment later he was snoring.
The heavy footfalls slowed to a stop. Annise whirled around to find Tarin staring at her, his fingers curling and uncurling at his sides, his chest heaving.
She turned away and continued on without a word. The drunken fool would wake up the next morning with not more than a headache and a chill, not knowing a runaway princess had saved his miserable, meaningless life.
The Laughing Mamoothen was impossible to miss. A huge, frosted sign hung over the door, a large depiction of a tusked mamoothen bearing a wide smile displayed beneath the tavern’s name. The door swung open as Annise approached, and three women emerged, trading quips about their husbands.
Too caught up in their own conversation, they didn’t seem to notice Annise as she slipped past and through the entrance.
The first thing she felt was the warmth, which hit her in the face like a hot wind. Fires crackled in three separate hearths. Ivory tusks were mounted in several places on the walls, the largest above a long stone counter where patrons sat eating, drinking and talking.
The second thing Annise noticed was that every person inside the tavern was female. Before she could consider this strange fact, a voice said, “Clean your feet and come on in.” A woman beckoned from behind the bar, waving Annise forward. She wore a furry brown apron and a smile almost as warm as the atmosphere.
Annise obeyed, stomping the snow and ice from her boots and snaking past round tables, most of which were empty, cluttered with used dishes.
Annise sniffed the air. Something smelled good. Come hungry, Netta had responded the day before. The hunger monster in her stomach tried to claw its way through her skin.
“Welcome to The Laughing Mamoothen,” the woman said. “I’m Netta and this is my place.” The tavern’s proprietor had gray hair piled in a bun atop her head.
“Where are all the men?” Annise asked, unable to stop herself.
“Women only,” Netta said. “You want men, try Deep Freeze, Howling Wind, or The White Lantern. You’re not from around here?”
Annise concocted a quick lie, just in case the other women in the tavern were untrustworthy. She could pull Netta aside later and explain she was the blooming hope flower Tarin had streamed her about yesterday. “I grew up along the Snake River, east of Castle Hill. My father’s a fisherman.”
“And your mother?”
She’s dead. She was a beautiful queen from the west. “A damn good cook,” Annise said.
Netta laughed, and several other women turned to stare. “She must’ve been an impressive woman,” Netta said.
“That she was,” Annise said, her heart skipping a beat.
The women at the bar made room and offered an empty stool. “Mamoothen stew?” Netta asked. “It’s the house specialty.”
“Aye,” Annise said. “Thank you.”
The woman on her left, a dark-haired bruiser with the shadow of a mustache over her upper lip, said, “You’re young.”
“Twenty,” Annise lied.
The woman on her right, whose lips were as pink as a hope flower in spring, said, “Are you travelling alone?”
“Sort of,” she said. “I have a companion, but he’s not always around.”
??
?Ah,” the women sighed in unison. “A soldier, then. He’s gone to Raider’s Pass?”
Annise didn’t respond, tucking into her stew the moment Netta slid it in front of her. The concoction was thick and hot and hellfrozen delicious. The women watched her as she gobbled it down, wiping her chin with the back of her hand.
“I take it you like it?” Netta said, smiling.
“You made this?” Annise asked.
Netta nodded. The mustached woman beside Annise said, “It’s famous. The men of Gearhärt have been trying to sneak inside for years to get some.”
Annise pushed her bowl back toward Netta, who refilled it using a deep ladle. “I’ve never heard of a ladies only tavern,” she admitted.
“Probably ’cause I’m the only one,” Netta said.
“Doesn’t it anger the men?” Annise barely managed to ask before returning to the fresh bowl of stew. She scalded her tongue with the first bite, but she didn’t care.
“That’s half the fun of it,” Netta said. “But they have their roughshod taverns and pleasure houses, so why shouldn’t we have a place of our own?”
Annise had never thought of it that way, but it made sense. “What of your husband?” Annise asked between mouthfuls.
“Dead,” Netta said bluntly.
“I’m sorry,” Annise said. She stopped eating for a moment out of respect.
“Don’t be,” Netta said. “He was a mean bastard who liked to hit me if his soup got cold. I hope he freezes in hell.”
Annise gaped, but then the other women laughed, and she couldn’t hold back her own smile. She’d never met women like this—so strong-willed, independent, and confident. They seemed to have much more…texture than the sanded-down ladies of Castle Hill.
“Finish your stew and you can have dessert,” Netta said. “I just made teakleberry pie today, and there’s still a couple of slices left over.”
Annise almost fainted. It was like she’d gone to the western kingdom’s seventh heaven and these women were angels. She slurped the last morsels out of her spoon and her bowl was whisked away. While she waited for pie, she asked casually, “Do you know a knight named Sir Dietrich?”
Netta’s hand froze in place, gooey teakleberry filling dripping from the end of a flat serving spatula. She dropped the utensil and spun around, her eyes suddenly dark. “Who in the frozen hell are you?” she said. The other women pushed off of their stools and surrounded her.
“No one,” she said. “I’m just…”
“Queen Annise Gäric,” a stern voice said. “Once a princess of Castle Hill and now the rightful heir to the northern throne.”
Annise knew that voice, and she craned her neck to see past the circle of women, who parted in the center. A cloaked form emerged from a corner table, wreathed in shadows. She threw back her hood and grinned.
“Aunt Zelda?” Annise said.
The first thing her aunt did was steal her pie. The second thing she did was threaten the tavern women with violent dismemberment if any of them so much as breathed a word of Annise’s presence outside of the establishment. They all readily agreed to the secret, and Annise could tell they meant to keep the promise.
“I was pleased when Netta received Tarin’s stream yesterday afternoon,” Zelda said, when the women had departed and the tavern doors were locked. Only Netta remained, busying herself with cleaning the tables and gathering bowls and glasses.
“I thought everyone wanted me to go to Blackstone.”
Zelda grinned. “I want you to blaze your own path, as I have always done.”
Annise didn’t think her brother would agree. Still, he was her kin, and she longed to be reunited with him. “Where is Arch?” she asked.
“He was here,” Zelda said, taking a large bite of pie.
“And now?”
“Gone south, to Raider’s Pass.”
Annise’s heart sank. “Why?”
“He felt his best chance at exerting his right to the crown would be with the soldiers closest to the front lines. I agreed.”
Annise remembered how her aunt had referred to her as Queen Annise Gäric. “You know I have passed my eighteenth name day,” she said.
“Yes.”
“And yet you let Arch go south? People are saying war is coming.”
“Yes, I let him go, because his decisions are not mine to make, no more than yours are. And yes, the front lines have been quiet for several months, but now the streams are saying there’s an eastern legion marching north toward the Pass.”
“Why didn’t you tell him I’m the ruler by law?”
Her aunt didn’t answer, asking a question of her own. “What do you plan to say to your brother when you see him?”
After spending only a little time with the strong women patrons of The Laughing Mamoothen, she found herself embarrassed to tell her aunt the truth. But she couldn’t lie. “I plan to relinquish the crown.”
Zelda nodded, as if unsurprised by her response. “You’re so much like your mother,” she said.
Annise’s heart fluttered. The statement was so much like what Tarin had said that it was eerie. “How?”
“Your mother hated the power the most. She hated Castle Hill and all that it stood for. It was her prison, and she longed to escape from it.”
“I know she did,” Annise said, feeling suddenly cold inside. She had felt the same way about Castle Hill her entire life, though she’d never thought of how that gave her and her mother something in common.
Zelda nodded thoughtfully. “The only thing that kept her going was her children. You. Arch.”
Annise shook her head. “No. You’re wrong. She hated us because we’re Gärics. She hated that our father was in us. She barely looked at me.” At least until the very end, just before she was…
“It was an act. Your father was a bad man. He only knew one way to rule: fear. He ruled his household the same way. His wife—your mother—knew this. He was willing to threaten her into obedience with anything and anyone she cared about.”
Wait. Did that mean… “She pretended to hate us to protect us?”
Zelda nodded, her pale complexion almost moon-like as the room darkened when Netta began extinguishing the fires in each hearth. “He would’ve hurt you to hurt Sabria.”
It was suddenly all too much for Annise. She stood quickly, her stool clattering to the floor. Her mother’s love was all she ever wanted, and then when she finally received it…
Gone. It was gone forever. Still…
“Thank you for telling me,” she said, “but it doesn’t change anything. She’s still dead. And I still hate the north.”
Zelda nodded again. “That’s what Sabria said. She wanted a different life for you. For your brother. She asked me to give it to you and I agreed.”
“What life?” Annise leaned closer, desperate to learn about the mother she never really knew.
“Away from here, from these lands, from the war. She wanted me to arrange for you to sail to Crimea, where you could start over.”
“You said you agreed with her. Then why are we here?”
“Because I lied.” Zelda’s eyes met Annise’s, dark and piercing.
Annise stared right back. “I won’t be queen,” she said. “And Arch is too young to be king. He’s only sixteen. You have to fulfill the promise you made to my mother. You have to help us get to Crimea.”
“Is that what you want?”
The question took her by surprise, because she’d never been asked it before. Not by her father or her mother. Or even Arch, who forced her to go with Tarin when she wanted to go with him. “Does it matter what I want?”
“It’s the only thing that matters,” Zelda said, her eyes twinkling.
Twenty-Six
The Eastern Kingdom, Norris
Roan
Norris was a well-fortified town on the eastern edge of the Snake River, just north of Hyro Lake. The town’s double wall was constructed of felled trees from the Tangle, a thick forest across the wa
ters separating the east from the west. The trees were then bound together with metal wire channeled by skilled Orians and transported from Ironwood. There was a wide gap between the two walls—the kill zone—in which invading enemies would be subjected to varied attacks from above: molten ore, boiling water, flaming arrows, and enormous boulders.
All of this was explained to Roan by Prince Gareth as they passed beneath the first gate and before they reached the second. “Norris has been attacked twice,” Gareth said. “Once by the west when they managed to paddle upriver from the Bridge of Triumph and make landfall, and once by the north when they broke through Raider’s Pass.”
At the mention of the west, Roan’s heart hammered. He was so close now. But he’d be even closer on the morrow—he needed to be patient for a while longer.
Running his hands along the walls, Roan inspected them for damage, but there was none save the occasional bit of chipped wood. “What happened?”
“The enemy breached the first wall, but then we slaughtered their armies in the kill zone,” Gareth said. “They retreated.”
Roan couldn’t help but to look up at the men and women patrolling the top of the inner wall. None smiled, despite the fact that the current invaders were friends not foes, and each guard had a deadly glint in his or her eye. “You were here for those battles?” Roan asked the prince.
Gareth laughed. “I was still crawling,” he said. “But the Juggernaut was here for both, weren’t you, Da?”
“Aye,” the king said, bringing his muscular horse astride. “Your mother was, too, before we were bonded. She was a Redfern then, not an Ironclad. Ah, you shoulda seen her then, son. She was a sight to behold, clad in body armor, her sword flashing as she felled soldier after soldier. Those were the days. I was but a prince seeking the glory of the kingdom and the eye of a beautiful woman. Mine brother and I fought back to back against a dozen foes and emerged victorious. He wielded this very ore hammer with more skill than any before him.” He held up a massive sledge that looked capable of smashing a skull to rock dust. Roan was amazed the king could even lift it, much less swing the blunt weapon. The handle was laced with exquisite metal-work, engraved in a strange language Roan wasn’t familiar with. It was a work of art.