A Sword from Red Ice

She had learned to love Blackhail, and its proud, grim ways. She had even become proud and grim herself, and when friends or kin visited from Dregg she would feel superior to them. We are the first amongst clans, she would remind herself as she tolerated their frivolities. That claim was Blackhail's alone. Dregg might be brighter and better situated, but it would never be first.

Raina stared at the cart rolling across the graze and the crowd of people walking behind it and tried to hold on to some of that old and deeply held pride. She had the sense that if she could it might anchor her. She feared that she, Raina Blackhail, was drifting free of this clan. How much could a person lose and remain whole? A husband, peace of mind, a dear friend? What was left? Dagro was gone. Effie was gone. Now Anwyn. She lived in a house full of strangers, some of whom wished her harm. Since Dagro had died her life had been this clan. But this clan had changed. The Hailstone had shattered and the gods had fled. Stannig Beade had wheeled in half of the Scarpestone to lure them back, but no god would enter such an ili-begot stone. Blackhail was cursed. Its chief had murdered its chief, its guide was a man who would stop at nothing to gain power, and the guidestone at its heart was as dead and useless as Anwyn Bird's corpse.

Breathing hard, Raina turned her hack on the procession She found herself staring directly at the Scarpestone that stood on its tar nished silver plinth at the center of the greacourt. Work had just been completed on a wooden canopy that would be hung with skins to protect the narrow hunk of granite from rain and snow. Raina's lip twitched as she looked at it. At first she had wondered why the gods didn't simply destroy it as they had the first Hailstone. It would be an easy thing for a god—an exhalation. Now she realized the god didn't care..

So why should 1?

Tugging her shawl across her shoulders, Raina crossed the short distance to the roundhouse. People walking in the opposite direction minded her then looked away. Some elbowed their companions and whispers were exchanged. She could guess what they were saying: Why is she not attending Anwyn Bird's death march and laying?

Because the man who murdered her will lead the ceremony. And if I were forced to watch it there would be no telling what I would do.

Perhaps some of this answer was showing in her face, for clan maids and children seemed afraid of her and were quick to step out af her way. Raina felt an odd and bitter smile come to her face and she let it stay there as she made her way through the roundhouse.

Anwyn Bird's throat had been slit so deeply that the bone at the back of her neck had been cxposed. Laida Moon had told Raina that the clan matron would have died instantly. Was that statement supposed to bring comfort? Sheela Cobbin, one of the bakers, had found her.

Anwyn's absence had been noted for several hours but no one was too concerned — the clan matron had other responsibilities beside running the kitchens — and it wasn't until it was time to prepare the pork legs for supper that people began to wonder where she was. Anwyn was known to be fussy about pork and she had left no instructions regarding its preparation. One of the cooks thought they should parboil the legs to speed cooking. Another said you shouldn't parboil a leg that had been brined — it'd boil out all the taste, A heated argument erupted and Sheela Cobbin, who had been listening with growing impatience by the bread ovens, said they could both stop their hollering as she was off to fetch Anwyn Bird.

Everyone in the kitchen heard her scream two minutes later. Anwyn was found slumped by the little box pallet she used as a bed in her cell beneath the kitchen. There was so much blood it had seeped through the blanket, sheets and mattress and onto the rush matting that covered the stone floor. The last anyone had seen or heard of her was when she was seen heading down the stairs from the widows' wall and stopped to tell Gat Murdock that she'd meet him in the stillroom in a quarter to discuss the latest malt they were aiming to distill. Apparently Gat Murdock had gone to the stillroom, grown impatient with being kept waiting, taken more than a few tipples of the low wines, and then wandered off to dice with the old-timers in the greathearth. In fairness he was in a terrible state about it later, telling anyone who listened that Anwyn was the finest girl in the clan and that he'd give up his one remaining arm to have her back.

Raina had expected to feel sorry for him. But didn't.

Something had happened to her when she caught sight of the body and now she was something other instead. She could look back and recall the old Raina and know exacdy how she would feel and act in any given situation, but she could no longer feel and act that way herself. The old Raina had gone the way of the gods. And the new one didn't even know if she was sane.