Chapter 4

Toru stares down the side of the cliff. Mist and fog, rock and stone. Snow and ice. The silence seems like it could go on forever, a great moonless sea. He does not know how long he keeps staring, but by the time he hauls himself to his legs, his bones are creaking. What should he do now? There must be choices, but he cannot think of any.

Fire first. He gets up and gathers twigs and branches for what seems like hours but cannot be more than a few minutes, and fumbles for the flint in his breast pocket, and strikes it, again and again. His hands will not do what he wants them to. Finally, a flame. He muffles the lower half of his face with his cape and waits for feeling to come back to his body and clarity to come back to his mind.

A place to recuperate for a night, that’s what he needs. He thinks of the map he had memorised; he would take it out of the bag to check it again, but he is sore and so very tired. By the next evening, if he is quick, he could reach the nearest village – not many days off from the area that is being terrorised by the Vitara. Yes, he will go to the village, and he will show Stuvan’s seal, and he will get little more than four walls, for that is all most villagers have, but it will be four walls more than what he has now.

Come on, he thinks. Up, now. He totters towards Mekhala, loathing every step. “To the side,” he whispers, urging her as far away from the cliffside as possible. “To the side.”

He wakes the next morning after a fitful sleep. Hunger gnaws at him but he makes himself eat little; he can manage. When the sun begins to dip, he begins to worry – had he miscalculated the distance to the village? What if it’s really much farther? Then he will not return home victorious – he will not return home at all.

A pinprick of orange light lower down in the valley makes him raise his head. No, those are not spots in his eyes. He urges Mekhala on, and many hours later, the village comes into view, still and half buried in snow. What is its name? He had read it on the map, but cannot recall.

He dismounts and raps on the door of the first house he sees. To the bent, white-haired man who cracks it open, he introduces himself, and produces the king’s seal. He blinks away the blurriness in his vision.

The man eyes Toru’s tattered cape and thinning frame and wayward filthy hair. He ignores the seal. “Many thieves steal from merchants and make outlandish claims. Show me a bag of gold, or a party that’s accompanying you, and I might direct you to a house that has the means to shelter another body.”

Toru is not carrying any gold. He was not meant to stop at a resthouse. Ire grows in him. “The seal should be enough,” he says. He wonders if he should repeat himself; he’s not sure he actually said the words.

“Find another house.”

Toru does not have time to argue with insular villagers. “I am your prince,” he says, angry now. He has stopped shivering. “You will accommodate me, or you will die at the hands of the Vitara.”

“Threats now!”

“You’ve no’dea what a threa’ looks like, you foolish...” A dark curtain begins to drop over his eyes. As the dim blue of the world recedes, tendrils of voices come to him: What do you think you’re playing at? What’s wrong with him?

When Toru wakes he does not know where he is. Dried herbs hang like stiff old animal corpses from a misshapen wooden roof: chickweed and holy rope and lemon clematis and others he cannot name. The scratchy blanket he is buried in smells of goat. Sunlight struggles through the cracks around the door. The cold has left his bones, but he still shudders and draws the blanket closer around himself.

“You are so much heavier than you look.”

Toru turns his head to find a man seated on the ground against the wall. It is not the same man from before.

“What brings you to this village, thief? Not enough people to hassle in your own?”

Toru is too weary to explain the danger of the Vitara. “Where is my horse?”

“A cow pen down the street. There aren’t many cows, so there’s space enough. Your weapons and seal – if it’s a real seal – and other things are over there.”

Toru’s hand reaches halfway to his spear, which is on the floor; it is almost too long to be kept upright in this house.

“Now, how do you expect to compensate me for keeping you here? You think I’m rolling in jewels?”

Toru drags himself up on his elbows. His head is a mass of pain. “I’ll be going soon. Just need some rest.”

“If it’s death you want, there are easier ways.”

“Thank you kindly, but I am not looking to die.” He stands up, and although he is not a very tall man, the top of his head brushes the ceiling. He takes a step and his knee buckles, and he finds himself on the floor once more. In his frustration, and anger at being frustrated, he asks, “How do I know you won’t slit my throat in my sleep?”

The man’s eyebrows climb. “It’s me or the cold. I’ll be fast – I cut wood on the regular.” He runs a hand across his scraggly white-flecked beard. “Besides, if I wanted to, I’d have done it already. Give me your name at least, so I know who’s leeching off me. Mine’s Ishir, before you go accusing me of being discourteous.”

“Why you?” blurts Toru. “Why did you take me?”

Ishir scoffs quietly, sounding rueful and resigned. “I’m the only one with space. There are a few widows, but your presence would make them uneasy. There is another widower, but he’s half blind and can barely walk. I wasn’t about to shaft you onto him, and the headman and elders agreed. Now, your name.”

“Toru.”

“What kind of name is that? Give me your real name.”

Toru bites the inside of his cheek. “Tarulatha.” He does not like the sudden glee in Ishir’s dark eyes.

“Isn’t that a woman’s name?”

“What do you want me to do about it? It’s the name the queen gave me.”

“The queen, huh? Why did she do that?”

“She wanted a daughter.”

Ishir laughs so hard he chokes on his own spit and Toru reaches over to thump him on the back. (And if he thumps harder than necessary, well, Ishir will live.) Ishir flaps a hand at him, his eyes watering. At length he composes himself. “I’ll get you something to eat.”

Toru picks a bit of straw out of his hair. “There is a pack of food strapped to Mekha – my horse. You do not have to give me what is yours.”

“What, you find it insulting? You’ll take my bedroll but not food made by my hands?”

Toru has never taken food from a villager before. It is considered beneath anyone part of a royal family – it is considered dirty. He is silent long enough that Ishir looks at him, calm and disappointed, and leaves. Toru is suddenly alone in the one-room hut, with only the soft scratching of what must be tree branches against a closed wooden window.

Soon after, he passes out, and that is how he spends the rest of the day, waking only once to find his own waterskin by his side, from which he drinks a little. The next time he opens his eyes, in less pain but still exhausted, Ishir is coming in and closing the door quietly behind him – the last shards of sunlight are disappearing. Ishir drinks deeply from an earthen jug, rolls himself in a blanket, and faces away from Toru.

Toru finds himself listening for the crunch of steps in the snow, for growls and snuffles, but there is nothing but leaves rustling in a sullen wind. A weight drags his eyelids down. He sleeps. He dreams. Ishir is splitting logs with an axe and when he looks up he has Stuvan’s face, and he says something that could be Your place is here or You shouldn’t be here.