A Sword from Red Ice

Marafice entered Spire Vanis as its one hundred and forty-second Surlord, with the man who intended to be its one hundred and forty-third raising his dry and wrinkly cheek to be kissed by him.

FORTY The Cursed Clan

The river smelled different at night, older and deeper, black with tar. Insects hunted its surfaces, black flies and phan-tom crane flies, mosquitoes and biting midges. Effie wondered if they hatched from the snow. Mist slid along the sides of the boai keeping close to its breeding ground, the water. The alders and water willows were quiet, unmoved by wind, and the only sounds beyond the splash of poles breaking the surface were the hollow cry of the night heron and the shriek of wild dogs far to the north.

It was a bleak and uncertain landscape filled with traps for the boat. The Curseway, Waker had called it. The watery path that led to Clan Gray. Effie swallowed and tried not to think about what Eggtooth the pirate had said about the Cursed Clan. She tried, but did not succeed. Know what they do to young uns there? Tie stones to their chest and sink em" Effie began shivering and could not stop. She really should have learned how to swim.

Waker Stone and his father had taken to poling after sunset and often struck camp during the bright hours of the day. Until today this had suited Effie Sevrance well enough, for in all her eight-almost-nine-year life she could never recall being afraid of the dark. Tonight was afferent, though. Cold and strange-smelling. And she couldn't get Eggtooth's words out of her head.

"Pull em up a week later and eat what the fish didn't want"

A water rat launching itself into the river nearby made a soft sloshing noise as it carved a trough in the water. Overhead the quarter— moon seemed to keep pace with the boat. Directly ahead of her Chedd Limehouse had faked his way into sleep. It had started out with a bout of pretend head-nodding and some truly stupendous wet-sounding snores—he had definitely taken notes from Eggtooth's pig. The next thing you knew the snoring had gotten softer, the head had tipped forward and he was really, properly asleep. That boy had some undeniable talents, Effie reckoned. Until she'd met him she'd never realized that a space existed between fake and real, let alone that it could be exploited.

Thinking about Chedd helped Effie feel better. Not that she was afraid, of course. Just… anxious.

Chedd was interesting to Effie. He knew things in the way she knew things. Different knowledge, but got the same way. Take that water rat. All she'd need to do was poke Chedd's chubby shoulder and ask "Girl or boy?" and Chedd would tell her its sex. Might tell her a few other things too. Like whether or not the rat was hunting or fleeing or simply out to have a cooling swim. He was good at finding hibernating turtles and salamanders under rocks, though for some reason he had less luck with fish. Always he saw things on the shore before she did; the beaver amidst the sticks, the fawn in the trees, the heron standing still in the rushes. "There's a bear cub over there," he would say casually, flicking his hand toward one of the banks. Effie had given up trying to prove him wrong, for even when the animal never emerged from hiding they both knew it was there. "How do you know?" Effie had asked him more than once.

Chedd had a way of shrugging that made his neck disappear into his chest. "Dunno," he'd told her jusathis morning as they stood ankle-deep in the snowmelt pool searching for fairy shrimp. "Until I was your age I thought everyone knew when animals were around."

Your age. She'd feigned some disgust over that particular comment but in a way Chedd's answer was oddly reassuring. You knew what you knew. That's how Effie had always felt about her lore: when it was there, hanging around her neck, she just knew things. Nothing fancy about it. No hocus-pocus or song-and-dance. Knowledge was there and if she chose to she could draw it in. It was like sporting something blurry in the distance: you could stop and look and concentrate upon the object, or pass it right by.

Effie extended her arm over the gunwale and let her hand touch the greasy black water. She hoped it wasn't bog. Eggtooth had been most particular about that: it was bog she and Chedd would be fed to, not river water.