Page 13 of All the Wandering Light

There was nothing else to do but prepare for the night. Mara and Tem did the cooking, and within minutes, the smell of fried sampa filled the air, lifting everyone’s spirits. It had been days since any of us had eaten a proper meal, and I had to stop myself from scooping the half-cooked porridge from the pot with my fingers. To distract myself, I set up the second tent and fed the dragons and the yak. Lusha didn’t stir—her face was buried in her telescope again, but the instrument was pointed at the sky now.

After eating, we took turns bathing in the stream that trickled down the mountainside a short walk from camp. The surface was crusted with ice, which had to be smashed to reach the frigid water below. I scrubbed myself quickly from head to toe, my teeth chattering. I dunked my head under and rose with shards of ice tangled in my hair. Finally, when I was unable to feel my hands or feet anymore, I dressed in the clean clothes I had left at base camp and staggered back to the fire.

“I could kiss you, Tem,” I groaned unthinkingly as he handed me a bowl of butter tea. He smiled, but a flush started on his cheeks. My thoughts flashed back to the last night we had spent here together, the feeling of his lips against my skin and the warmth in our small tent. I felt a prickle of guilt—I knew that Tem had feelings for me that I didn’t share. I had known then, and yet I had almost let us go down that road again, which wasn’t fair to him. I looked away, swallowing the tea so quickly I burned my throat.

The night was clear, and the stars blazed with their cold light. The yak was asleep, her rump turned toward the fire, the dragons burrowed contentedly in her fur.

“How are you feeling?” I asked Tem. As Mara had pointed out, we were at least two weeks from Azmiri, though I hoped to reduce that by setting a punishing pace. Tem was the one I was most concerned about—he had stumbled several times during the descent.

“I’m fine.” He wasn’t looking at me. “Don’t worry about me, Kamzin.”

Mara sat across from us beside the fire, head bowed over a map. He rubbed his nose absently, smudging it with charcoal. I craned my head, and found a painfully familiar rendering of our abandoned camp on Mount Raksha staring back at me. Mara was not mapmaking, but drawing, the image bordered by lines of dense characters. I would have thought it impossible that such a sensitive rendering could belong to someone as cold and high-handed as Mara, was I not seeing it pour from his hands.

“That’s beautiful,” I said.

Mara started. He muttered something that sounded like “thanks” but was accompanied by an unpleasant look in my direction.

“You’re still recording,” I noted. “No one would blame you for stopping. You aren’t exactly River’s chronicler anymore.”

Mara shrugged. “Some habits are hard to break.”

I watched him, wondering. If it was merely habit, why had he seemed so absorbed? The look on his face reminded me of the one Tem wore when he bent over a scroll detailing some ancient incantation, or Lusha’s as she arranged her telescope before settling in for a night of stargazing.

“You must be one of the greatest chroniclers in the Three Cities,” I said.

He swiped the charcoal over the page in rapid, precise lines. “Not one of. Why do you think I was chosen to accompany the Royal Explorer on his expeditions?”

“But you don’t want to be the Royal Explorer’s chronicler,” I said. “You want to be in River’s place.”

“And I will be.” Mara’s voice held a deep satisfaction. “Can there be any doubt? I’m the most experienced of the emperor’s explorers by far. Once River’s betrayal is known, the court will turn to me.”

I made no reply. I thought of all I had heard of Mara’s reputation, not to mention what I had seen from him. He may have traveled to the farthest reaches of the Empire, but it had not made him a great explorer. Would the emperor truly turn to him, when other candidates existed?

I watched, engrossed, as the mountain grew beneath his skilled hands. Mara captured not only the look of landscapes, but the taste of them. And he was certainly a natural storyteller—I had read over his entry from yesterday, which wove details together so skillfully that I had seen the images rise in my mind. It struck me as strange, almost sad, that Mara couldn’t content himself with what he was good at. Yet it seemed to be a fixture of his character, to care most for what he couldn’t have.

“I haven’t seen Ragtooth since morning,” Tem said.

“He’s probably skulking around the stream, looking for fish.”

Tem was frowning. “He’s been going off by himself a lot lately.”

I felt a flicker of worry. But Ragtooth had seemed perfectly healed, and in any case, his wanderings were as familiar to me as the stars over Azmiri. “He’ll turn up.”

Tem looked like he was about to say more, but Mara, his face still buried in his scroll, said, “No doubt precisely when you need him.”

I blinked at him, surprised. “What does that mean?”

“There’s an explorer in the emperor’s employ who travels with a familiar,” Mara said, leaning back slightly from the sketch to examine it. “A man named Tsering. I traveled with him once. His familiar is a brown panda. It had an uncanny ability to locate game and forage when our supplies were low.”

“Is Tsering’s familiar as bad-tempered as Ragtooth?” I said.

“No,” Mara said. “Tsering is a steady sort of man. A familiar’s temperament seems to reflect that of its master.”

Tem seemed to smother a snort. I glared at Mara, replying in a dignified voice, “I haven’t heard that to be the case.”

He shrugged. He was in an uncharacteristically communicative mood, as if his work had loosened something inside him. “They’re interesting beasts. Some have magical abilities, which must be spirit-granted. They seem to arise in response to the master’s need.”

This amused me. “Magical abilities? Can Tsering’s panda fly?”