Page 47 of Sunsplitter

So did Yme. Her gaze came sharper, probing. Fi glared back, debating the merits of showing her teeth.

“You haven’t met Fionamara properly,” Antal said in daeyari.

“I haven’t,” Yme said, cuttingly cordial. “A pleasure, Fionamara.”

“Fi is fine,” she corrected. Antal could use her full name, no one else.

Antal’s second sigh came longer. He met Fi with fractured eyes, some mix of hurt and apology she couldn’t begin to disentangle.

“Would you like to come?” he asked.

Fi considered it, if only to see how many insults in seasonspeak she could slip behind Yme’s back. But Antal had said he missed spending time with other daeyari. He clearly missed spending time with his mother. Fi would only stir up trouble by tagging along.

He’d said that too, hadn’t he? That his family would never accept her.

“You go,” Fi forced through a smile. “Enjoy your walk. I’ll be here.”

Morning in Thomaskweld smelled like ice. Cold water in the river. Shiverpines encircling the valley. Antal emerged upon the steps of the capitol building and breathed deep.

The scent of jasmine and green growth didn’t belong here, enough to set him on edge.

His mother followed, nose twitching, a squint against the sun. Never as bright on Winter as the other Season-Locked Planes, but more glaring than home. It took getting used to.

They crossed the plaza, dusted in snow. Around them, buildings rose as sheets of windows, metallic struts and domes glittering in dawn light. The finest human architecture. Yme spared few glances for the setting, frowning at Antal instead.

“What are you wearing?” she asked.

A plain shirt rolled to his elbows. Simple trousers. Antlers bare aside from carvings, not glinting silver like hers.

“This is how people dress here,” he said.

“How humans dress.”

“It’s a human city, azaevi.”

It was strange, walking beside her. The tap of bare feet and claws rather than boots. The dual sways of their tails. Yet evenas they fell into stride, Antal felt the tension, a distance deeper than the few inches between them. Yme slipped on a smile. She looked around the plaza, pointedly taking in the scenery. The grounds were quiet, buffered from the rest of Thomaskweld by a perimeter wall.

When they reached the gate to the city proper, she hesitated.

“We’re goingintothe city?” she asked.

Of course. Most daeyari rulers didn’t walk through their cities like simple mortals. They sat on thrones in capitol offices, lurked at forest altars. Apparitions means to stir fear, to seem invincible. Antal had vowed to be different.

“Have you visited Thomaskweld before?” he asked.

A pause. “No.”

“What better way to know a city than to walk its streets?”

He held out a hand, beckoning to the city beyond. Yme appraised the red stone archway like the maw of a beast, the iron gate its fangs. But when Antal resumed walking, she followed.

Thomaskweld was a beautiful city. Antal had taken too long to realize that.

From the capitol complex, a wide avenue formed an artery to the river. Down its center, the parkway was decorated with snowy fir trees. Along each side, lamp-posts were strung in garlands of pine and peat berries, copper energy conduits glowing between them. Bright glass shopfronts. Stained timber and painted doorways. Patios warmed by conduit-powered heaters.

Yme huffed as a caribou-drawn carriage clattered past. Another fluster at a dog barking across the street. Had she ever been surrounded by so many humans before?

Despite the cold, Thomaskweld was a lively city, loud with shouts and laughter and bootsteps. Bright with lit interiors. And the smells. River fish and wood oil, perfume and cloth, baking and frying and salting and all the odd, myriad things humansdid to their foods, that Fionamara was always raving about.