Page 149 of Winter's Echo
Nicco was quiet for a moment. “What kind of things?”
“Places. The lands south of here. Buildings and boats and—” I paused. “Blue skies.”
He tugged on my hood, and I turned to look at him. “You've never seen a blue sky?”
“I don’t think Crystallese has them. Not like that.” I turned back, far too aware of how close we were, and kept my eyes on the trail. “Gray. Always gray. Sometimes lighter gray. But not—” I stopped. “Not like what I saw.”
He was quiet for a long moment. The horse moved steadily beneath us, breath misting in the cold air.
“Then we show you a blue sky.”
I looked back at him.
“South of here,” he said. “Farther south than you've been. Past the border into a warmer country.” He kept his eyes ahead, sparing me the discomfort of watching my reaction. “There are blue skies. Not all the time. But enough.”
I thought about the column. About the images that had moved through my mind, slow and certain, things the land had wanted me to know. Blue sky, water that wasn't frozen, buildings that reached upward and weren't built against the cold.
I thought about Vorn. About his patience. About the fact that a man who had followed me to Iskaeld and back, and had taken me in the dark, wasn't going to stop just because I was headingsouth. He'd wait. He'd find another trail, another time, another moment when I was alone or close enough to it.
I didn’t want to be the woman tied to a pole in his spare tent.
I thought about my purse, heavy and generous, and the fact that generous didn't last forever.
“For how long?” I asked, not liking the fact that my uncertainty was in my voice.
Nicco considered. “As long as you want. There's work farther south. People who need someone who can read terrain and find trails.” His arm around my waist tightened a little. “You're very good at it.”
“I am,” I agreed. “In Crystallese, where I read the snow I’m good. I don’t know if I can do it where there’s no snow.”
I heard his huff of laughter and turned to look at him.
He raised an eyebrow. “So? You learn.”
I looked south. The trail curved, and the land opened ahead. Somewhere beyond the gray horizon lay a border, and beyond that was warmth and blue skies and a world the column had shown me as if it were an invitation.
“I'll think about it,” I said.
Nicco made no further argument, and the conversation was done.
We rode in silence. Baxley and Larana talked quietly among themselves behind us. I sat there, thinking as Nicco guided the horse, considering everything.
That evening, Nicco appeared beside me as I was tending the fire. The others were tending the horses, and the snow was falling gently.
“Have you given it more thought?” he asked as he unwrapped his face coverings, and I saw the thick beard he’d grown during the weeks of traveling.
“Nicco.” I looked at him then, directly, which I'd been avoiding for days. He looked up at me. “Why does it matter to you where I go?”
He held my gaze. That thing, the unnamed thing in his expression, quick and gone as always.
“It doesn't,” he said.
He got up and walked away.
I sat there in the cold and thought about the specific quality of a lie told by someone who usually told the truth.
It sat in my chest alongside everything else.
Patient.
