Page 16 of All the Wandering Light

“We should send the dragons ahead,” I said. “They might be able to sniff him out.”

But Lusha was already shaking her head. “If the storm hits, and they get lost, we’ll be in a bad spot. We need them.”

“So does Dargye,” I said, but Mara was talking over me.

“We should take weapons,” he said. “Just in case.”

They began running over our supply of weaponry, paying me no further heed. Again I chafed at Lusha appointing herself leader of our group, despite the fact that I was the most skilled navigator. Not to mention twice as good at tracking.

I swallowed my anger, or tried to. Dargye’s safety was what mattered. Lusha’s insufferable self-assurance was something I could deal with another time. Just yesterday, I had been so relieved to be reunited with Lusha. Now, a tiny, dark part of me fantasized about a world in which I had left her on the mountain.

Ten minutes later, we were walking south through the frosty dawn, trailing behind Tem as he murmured to the kinnika. Even in that short span of time, the wind had risen, lifting the loose snow from the ground and dragging it along as a sharp mist. Mara had his dagger unsheathed, while Lusha’s bow was slung over her shoulder. I felt uneasy without a weapon of my own, though I knew full well that, if we encountered witches, neither dagger nor bow would be of much assistance.

Without comment, Tem gave a wide berth to the crevasse where Aimo had fallen. It was covered with snow, as it had been when we came this way, with only the faintest furrow to mark its presence. I didn’t want to think of Aimo, trapped down in that dark place, but once the image arose I was unable to think of anything else. The water whispering deep beneath the glacier had seemed peaceful before. Now it seemed hungry.

It was awful that we were going to leave her there. Yet that was the fate of most explorers, eventually—they weren’t cremated and put to rest beside their ancestors, in a temple where their family and friends could visit their spirits. They rested in dark mountain passes, or on precarious summits, with no company but the wind and snow. I thought of the bodies River and I had found on Raksha. That could have been my fate. It could still be my fate, if I became one of the emperor’s explorers—not that I was thinking of that now. The future I saw before me—before all of us—was dark and clouded.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered to the crevasse.

Tem stopped, waiting for us to catch up. He was frowning, his eyes fixed on the kinnika. “His trail is fading. I don’t understand it.”

“It’s too old,” I said, my teeth chattering.

Tem sighed. He shook the kinnika roughly, and the bells sang in protest. “They aren’t cooperating again. I’m not sure I can trust what they’re telling me.”

“Let’s follow this course for a while,” Lusha said. “If we see no sign of him, we’ll return to camp and plan our next move.”

“What is there to plan?” I said. The thought of abandoning Dargye was terrible. But we had to return to the village. “We make for Azmiri as quickly as possible.”

“We’re not going anywhere with this storm bearing down on us.” There was a note of finality in Lusha’s voice that raised my hackles.

“It may swing south,” I said. “Even if it doesn’t, I can keep us on the right course.”

“Through a blizzard?” Lusha gave me a stern look. “I want to reach Azmiri as much as you. But we won’t be any help to the village if we end up dead on the way.”

My eyes narrowed. It wasn’t so much what Lusha said that angered me, it was her calm certainty, the dismissiveness with which she greeted my words.

“I can navigate a storm,” I said. “You’ve seen me do it. That time we visited the spring market with Father, and a squall overtook us on the way home. I led us to safety while you were in the wagon hiding under a blanket.”

It wasn’t entirely fair, given that Lusha had been ten at the time, but I felt a flicker of satisfaction at the sight of her cheeks reddening.

“We can’t just go charging off into a blizzard,” Mara said. “The wiser plan is to go back to camp and wait it out.”

“Oh, shut up, Mara,” I snapped. I knew I was being unreasonable, but I didn’t care. All the anger and fear I had been holding back since I had stood on the summit of Raksha seemed to swell, overwhelming me. “We all know the real reason you’re taking Lusha’s side. And it has nothing to do with wisdom.”

Mara looked as if I’d struck him. “If you’re implying—”

“Kamzin.” Tem’s voice was strange. He lifted something out of the snow, where it had been partially submerged.

Dargye’s bow.

Silence fell. Tem didn’t seem able to tear his gaze from the weapon. Mara turned slowly on his heel, scanning the terrain with the gaze of a wary animal.

Lusha broke the spell, marching to Tem’s side and seizing the bow. She kicked at the snow, unearthing a quiver of arrows where it lay a few feet away.

“We’re going back,” she said. As she strode past, she dumped the bow and arrows in my arms.

“I don’t know how—”