Watching him and Hyla struggle against Winter thaws a smile on my face, but it’s a fleeting pleasure. Winter’s ready for us to move on.
THERE ARE SECRETS HERE! MY SECRETS!
Her words ramble about on the wind, gusting up and down.
THEY CLIMB THROUGH MY HOME, she screams, DESECRATE MY THRONE. PULL IT APART WITH THEIR STONE HANDS AND HIDE LIKE THIEVES.
She howls about trickery and lairs. About mysteries and invaders. It’s hard to follow her logic, but one thing is clear: She doesn’t like sharing this place. Not with us. And not with the Shiv who’ve burrowed into her walls.
There’s a cave cut into the cliff face about twenty feet above Kyn and Hyla. It catches at my peripheral, but the shadows within are still.
Mars hasn’t moved in ages except to drag his finger over the kol marbled into the stones. I’m tempted to lay on the horn, but before I can lift a hand, Hyla moves toward Mars. With a quick twitch, she shoves him to the ground. Kyn lifts a gun, sighting something high on the cliff behind the trailer.
Behind me.
And then a jolt as something lands atop the cab. The distinct shuffle of bare feet overhead and I know: It’s not a thing on the Dragon’s back, it’s a person. A Shiv. Has to be.
Despite my caution about not using guns in the pass, instinct has me reaching for the gun rack. It’s empty. Flux. Kyn took Drypp’s shotgun.
I scrabble into the passenger seat, reaching beneath it for his rifle, praying I won’t have to fire it here. My fingers find the strap and I yank until it’s in my hands. Peering over the dash, I fight to swallow down my hammering heart. It tastes like blood and bile and it tastes like the magic I refuse to use. If Mars dies, if the Shiv kill him, I’ll never find Lenore.
Then Mars is on his feet again, white powder on his knees, his hands extended, frostbitten lips moving. He presses his wrists together, fingers curling around an invisible ball as he strides forward, Hyla in his wake, two golden guns taking aim.
It takes me a minute to find Kyn, who is hidden by the angle of the Dragon’s hood. He’s in front of Mars, a step or two closer to the rig. I can make out only his raised hands. He yells something in Shiv, and the scraping feet atop the cab still. A man’s voice responds.
Kyn repeats himself but I have no idea what he’s saying. Much to Mystra Dyfan’s chagrin, I never learned the Shiv tongue. Too much studying, too much confusion. Kyn’s tone is placating, peacemaking. Almost pleading.
I understand, then, something about Kyn. The pitch of his voice, the open posture of his hands. He could have blown this Shiv man away with one pull of the trigger, but he didn’t. He knows Mars will kill these people with little thought if they attempt to block our passage. And despite the risk to himself, he’s doing what he can to prevent that.
Kyn’s desperation crawls up my own back, circles my chest, constricts.
I find myself begging the wretched Kerce smuggler to breathe, to drop his hands. The Shiv here in the pass are not the friendly, laughing comrades he’s found in Dris Mora. They are devout about the Desolation and they would rather die than let anyone desecrate it.
The feet overhead shift, metal creaking under the weight of them, and despite my own reservations, I tighten my grip on the rifle, watching the ceiling bow and curve.
The Shiv man is speaking. His voice is low, the words pulled from somewhere dark. His feet are heavier now. More determined as they move left and then right—I follow them with my gun.
And then the window next to my head shatters.
Splinters of glass fly and I throw myself to the left, smacking my head on the steering wheel. My ear buzzes but I whip around, the rifle pointed at a long pale hand clenched tight around a slick knife.
Not a knife. A stone, sharpened to a point—a triangle of rough serrated edges.
A shiv.
The fist pulls back, glass shards slicing as it slams the window once again.
He’s trying to get inside.
I clamber upright and aim Kyn’s rifle. But before I can pull the trigger, the hand is yanked backward, out through the broken window. The hand has a body now. A long, rangy body, wearing only a pair of trousers dripping with sleet. A fiery orange stone covers his bare chest and abdomen, clashing with the yellow beard hanging from his face, snow clinging to its bristles.
Mars has control of him now and the Shiv is not at all pleased. He’s hovering over the hood of the rig, snow and ice whipping around him. I watch as slivers cut into his face and arms. They chip away at the stone on his chest.
Mars tilts his hands, pushing the Shiv higher into the sky. I lean forward against the windshield, trying to see. With a twist of Mars’s wrists, the man starts to spin. He’s fighting hard to hang on to the knife in his hands, his face strained with the effort of it. Just when I think he’ll keep his hold, he pulls his hand away like the weapon’s stung him. He’s a good ten feet above the hood of the rig and the blade is falling hard and fast. Too fast.
I throw myself back into the seat as the weapon crashes into the glass, sending spider cracks across the windshield. I catch only a glimpse of the makeshift knife before it slides to the ground, frozen solid in a block of ice.
Mingled relief and horror race through my veins. Through the shattered glass, I see Mars drop his hands, satisfaction somewhere amongst the rage. And then the Shiv is falling.
“The window!” I yell. “The window!”
But it’s no use. The Shiv tumbles from the sky, his knees crunching into the hood, his face smacking the splintered glass with a thud that has his arms flopping forward and the air audibly squeezed from his lungs. He’s hurting, clearly, but he catches himself before he can slip to the ground.
In one swift move, his feet are underneath him again, and in two leaps he’s back on top of the hood, warm handprints fogging the broken windshield. His blue eyes narrow at me and he punches at the glass separating us. I whip the rifle around, but he’s done nothing more than bloody his hand.
Mars flings his right arm wide and the Shiv skids across the hood, flying into the air again. This time, he collides with the mountainside and crumples to the snow.
For a moment, all is still.
I watch each of the crew in turn. They scan the cliffs above us, Kyn with Drypp’s gun locked and loaded, Hyla with both her handguns raised, and Mars—looking far more dangerous than either of his comrades—his feet spread wide, armed with only the disgust painted on his face.
I climb back into the driver’s seat and kick open the door.
“Stay in the rig,” Kyn yells.
“Because it’s safer?” I drop off the running board and whip around, the rifle aimed at the rocks beyond the trailer. We could blow these caves to smithereens with Hyla’s turret gun, but we’d bring the entire mountain down on us too. “He won’t be alone.”
“Get back in the rig, Miss Quine.”
I can hear the sneer on Mars’s face, but I’m backing toward him now. “There’s a string of dwellings on the other side of the ridge,” I say. “And more behind the monument, deep in the mountains. They’re accessible through the cave there.”
Hyla spins around, her handguns aimed at the cave.
“Kyn,” Mars says, almost bored, “get her back in the rig.”
“Why don’t we all get back in the rig?” Kyn asks.
“Do it,” Mars says.