The Phoenix Thief

TWENTY TWO

PIERSTOV AND VITTELA woke Kilter after only a few hours of sleep. They hurried through a meal of leftover stew and bundled up in layers of furs and fringed leather coats then stepped out into the grey dawn. Everything seemed brittle in the cold – the tree branches against the pale eastern horizon, the stars still overhead, the air itself as Kilter breathed it in ­–­ and the snow squeaked underfoot. The settlement was not quiet, though. Lights glowed in many windows, and the paths between the lodges were full of people, their voices clear in the silent air. Kilter heard many orders about supplies, weaponry, and scouts, and everywhere the sound of hoofbeats and hammering defied the earliness of the hour.

Near the tritrak stables the crowd was thickest of all. Everyone was loading large sleds with rifles wrapped in oilcloth, bundles of darts, food, and healer's kits, then hitching the shaggy tritraks to the sleds in pairs.

Pierstov led Vittela and Kilter through the hurrying people and the steam-breathing, stamping tritraks to the wide main door of the stable. There, the broad form of the man with a bird that Kilter had seen the night before was silhouetted against the lamplight from inside. Several of the grey and white birds were perched on his shoulders, now, with leather hoods over their heads, and his belt was heavy with ciphers on cords. He was talking to a group of men and women with antlered fur hoods and darts and odd rifles like Pierstov's, but when Pierstov called out to him he turned around. Catching sight of Kilter, the edges of his long moustache twitched.

"Goin' to show Pierstov and Vittela where their little gel is, hmm?" Despite his size and his pale-brown eyes, which were as piercing as those of the gyrfalcons on his shoulders, his voice was quite mellow.

Kilter nodded, and the group of armed people behind the bird-man looked Kilter over with new interest, some leaning on their long rifles to study him closer and others whispering to those next to them. The bird-man's smile grew wider, crinkling the corners of his eyes.

"Good! I'm Koffkal. Catrío is my niece, and I can't thank you enough for what you're doing."

Kilter shook the broad hand held out to him, his own mittened hand all but swallowed by the thick leather glove that closed around it.

"Don't waste your breath, then. I've already thanked him enough to turn blue in the face." Pierstov laughed, but, like the others around him who'd Kilter heard laugh on their way there, the sound was too quick, too loud in the expectancy-throbbing air. Pierstov cleared his throat, as if realizing how nervous he sounded, and then jerked his thumb at Koffkal. "He's my brother, my second-in-command. He's got to save his breath for giving orders while we're gone. Have our tritraks ready, Koffkal?"

Koffkal nodded and pointed inside the stable. Several young men Kilter's height were leading three long-legged tritraks towards them. They carried only small packs behind their saddles, and though, like all the others they had tassels on their antlers, their bridles were plain. When they reached the doorway the young men halted them, but the creatures lifted their antlered heads, snuffed the air, and stamped the snow.

"Our best grain-fed lightweights," Pierstov said, as if Kilter would understand these words, and moved between the tritraks to stroke their glossy, dappled sides. "They'll get us to the house by nightfall, or, so help me, I'll break the ice on the nearest river and swim buck naked in it for an hour! Come on, Ryosha, I'll help you up. They might look big, but these darlings handle like kittens if you've got steady hands."

A few minutes later they rode out the settlement gates, Nysansi running at the side of Pierstov's tritrak and two grey-and-white gyrfalcons and one of the all-black eclipse-owls flying above them in case they needed to contact Koffkal and the rest of the settlers. They didn't take the almost sheer way down the mountainside that Pierstov had brought Kilter up the evening before, which relieved him. The zigzagging trail they rode down instead was little better, but the tritraks moved quickly and sure-footedly. By the time it was light enough for Kilter to make out the fittings of the rifle strapped to Pierstov's back with a bundle of darts before him, they were at the bottom of the mountain.