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79. [Nortmost] Twenty Days Up, Part Six
🕑 Added 2024-12-19 22:31:40 +0000 UTCCarina Goldstone, Logician of the 3rd Renown, Vitt Secondson-Salvado, Hunter of the 9th Renown, and Orryn es-Salvado, Beast Master of the 3rd Renown, Kingdom of Infinzel, on the precipice
Cortland Finiron, Hammer Master of the 12th Renown, Kingdom of Infinzel, getting what he asked for
***
19 Meltzend, 61 AW
Ascending the Nortmost Mountain
Day Twenty of the Trial
And she fell again. Her body plummeted down through the clouds and snow, helpless and flailing. She could use her [Force Armor] but the impact would still be—
Carina gasped and lurched forward. Vitt’s arm snaked across her chest and pressed her back, so that she could feel the stone against her spine. She wasn’t falling; she was balancing. Her toes curled over the edge of the narrow ledge. She’d become disoriented trying to tease some new way forward from the tangle of her [Future Sight] and almost gone over. Perhaps those old spook stories about bumbling clairvoyants ushering in the very future they endeavored to prevent had something to them.
“You need to stop doing that,” Vitt said. “On the boat was one thing. Now is not the time.”
“I’m sorry,” Carina replied. “I’m done.”
That was the truth. But only because she sensed her Ink was close to fading and she wanted to conserve some for what she foresaw coming next. Carina’s possibilities had narrowed over the last few days, thinner now than the jutting rock she perched upon.
The ledge was long enough for the three of them to stand side-by-side but not wide enough to sit down. At least it was set back within an indentation and thus shielded from the swirling wind that had threatened to rip them off Nortmost for the last few hours. Pockets of snow whipped around them, muting the daylight in fuzzy whiteness. Vitt stood on Carina’ left. Orryn squeezed in on the hunter’s other side. The representatives of Soldier’s Rest—Henry, Watts, and the mysterious woman called Rivian—had hopefully found shelter in a similar crevasse. Carina had lost sight of them an hour ago when the snow picked up.
“Did you at least see when this blizzard breaks?” Vitt asked.
“Soon,” Carina said. “But not soon enough.”
“What’s that mean?”
Carina leaned forward against Vitt’s arm to peer downward. The view from this height was dizzying, like falling into the sky. She could barely see the mountain ten feet below. Carina edged back and breathed out icy mist through her nose.
“Fornon aren’t far back,” Carina said. “They know the mountain. If they catch us up, there won’t be enough Ink left at the top for us all.”
“Shit,” Vitt said. He glanced upward, searching for the next handhold drilled into the ascent by enterprising lumberjocks of past expeditions. The metallic grips were painted white making them difficult to spot unless you knew exactly where to look. “You’re saying we have to keep going.”
Carina swallowed. “Yes.”
Climbing the final ascent had been Carina’s idea. She’d been able to user her [Future Sight] to isolate the best route. It was more dangerous, yes, but also quicker than navigating the winding crevasses that twisted through these final chimneys. Most importantly, going this way would keep them from encountering Cortland—that had seemed important to Carina at the time.
Henry had asked her to find Cortland and Traveon. She could have done that—sought out a future where their paths intersected. Carina told the others as much. Such a delay would potentially keep them from the Ink, though. Henry still argued for reunion, but the others had been persuaded to keep going. If Cortland had been there, he would’ve urged them not to wait.
Carina found that all that maneuvering hadn’t changed her fate. She still fell, whether her future overlapped with Cortland or not. The assassins were on the mountain, as well, their presence blotting out any number of possibilities—Carina knew that she couldn’t trust her visions. And yet, the compulsion to keep looking, to dig through the infinite for an out, had only grown stronger these last few days.
Vitt spun on the ledge so that his chest was pressed against the rock. The movement made Carina flinch, but Vitt’s [Agility+] made such acrobatics nearly effortless. She could still feel the thrum of Henry’s [Empowering Beacon] in her muscles, and likely Vitt could, too. He adjusted the studded glove on his right hand, then pulled the pickaxe from his belt.
“I’m going up,” Vitt announced.
Orryn’s face had gone pale, his reddened nostrils flaring. “Are you sure? I can barely see.”
Vitt tugged the rope that connected him to Orryn; a second length connected Orryn to Carina.
“Just follow the line,” Vitt said. “We have to be close. Right?”
Carina nodded.
“Don’t come up until you feel two tugs on the rope,” Vitt said to Orryn. “I can’t have you right on my heels, nephew.”
With that, Vitt stretched his arm upward, twisting his pickaxe toward a crease in the stone. Carina leaned close, stopping him.
“Wait,” she said, quiet enough that the wind swallowed her words not far from Vitt’s ear. “Did you tell him?”
Vitt squinted. “What are you saying?”
“Did you tell Orryn about the king?”
Carina didn’t need to be any more specific than that. Vitt’s lips curled back, ice crackling in the scruff of his beard. “You asked me this morning and the answer was no. Do you think I made time for that sort of heart-to-heart since? While climbing a mountain? In a blizzard?”
“We discussed—”
“You want to tell him so badly, go ahead and do it. But do it later,” Vitt said. “Get your mind together, logician.”
With that, Vitt wedged his pickaxe into the rocks and pulled himself upward. Orryn managed the rope between them, making sure it stayed untangled, while eyeing Carina warily. He’d looked at them like that often—whenever Carina pulled Vitt aside for a hushed conversation urging that the hunter tell his nephew how King Cizco siphoned power from their gushing bloodline.
“It doesn’t matter when I tell him,” Carina muttered. “He doesn’t believe me.”
Although, in the futures she’d seen where Vitt did tell Orryn, Carina’s fate remained unchanged. The getting there became messier, but the drop still waited.
Another branch of possibilities. Cut off.
A fresh flurry of snow swept across the mountain, causing Carina to press her back against the rocks. She looked up, following the rope to where even Vitt’s silhouette had been swallowed by the freezing white.
When she glanced back down, Orryn had edged closer. Carina’s ears began to ring.
[Alert].
She remembered her return to Infinzel in the summer. Orryn had been the first person she’d revealed her Ink to. He had been the one to usher her through the door to the Garrison and into her new life as champion.
“Orryn,” Carina said quietly.
Movement at his wrist caught her attention. Orryn’s silver-furred rat skidded across his hand and disappeared up the sleeve of his coat. Briefly, Carina wondered what that creature had been doing.
“Do you think this is the highest vermin has ever climbed?” Orryn asked.
He had a distant look in his eyes. She had seen the same coldness in the king, and in Vitt—perhaps it was a trait that all the Salvados shared. A detachment from those who didn’t possess their noble blood.
Carina understood that his question about vermin hadn’t been about his rat, so she didn’t give him the satisfaction of a response. The buzzing in her head became louder.
From above, Vitt gave two tugs on the rope. Time for Orryn to go up.
Orryn shifted his position. His leg slid between Carina and the wall. His hip leveraged against hers.
And Orryn nudged her off the ledge.
Carina had seen a version of this where she reacted quickly enough to use [Force Armor] and deflect Orryn backward. That only delayed the fall—and left her with not enough Ink to absorb the impact to come. In that instant, she resisted the urge to protect herself, even though her instincts cried otherwise.
Her arms flapped. Her legs kicked out for purchase. The rope connecting her to Orryn pulled taut.
“Carina! No!” Orryn shouted in a voice so strangled and frightened that even Carina almost believed him. His cry was loud enough so Vitt would hear and know that Orryn had tried. He sounded desperate enough that, should Carina survive, Orryn could claim it had all been an accident.
Orryn could’ve reached for her. Instead, he grasped the rope between them in both hands and yanked with enough force that the wind briefly went out of her.
The rope snapped. Chewed through by tiny rat teeth, Carina figured.
The fall was no better for having known it was coming.
***
The woman stood at the mouth of a passage between the rocks. She was so still that, at first, Cortland thought she might be a stone walker. And then, as he drew closer and saw how the snow settled in the open curves of her wooden mask's monkey ears, Cortland thought she might be a hallucination. Too much cold, the air too thin, and too many days of aimless anger.
Then, she shifted, brushing the gathered snow off her slender shoulders, and stretching one leg out in front of her. It was as if she were coming back to life. The cold didn't seem to bother Laughing Monkey. Cortland was sure the woman was flesh and blood. He knew she breathed—he’d felt her chest rise and fall beneath him—but no mist flowed out from under her infuriating mask.
Cortland stopped walking, one hand on the marble hammer at his hip. Laughing Monkey’s long fingers caressed the hand bow at her side. Wind twisted through the Nortmost’s uppermost crags, sounding like scream rushing to escape the hollows.
“Huh?” Theo Adamantios grunted. He trudged a few steps past Cortland before noticing the assassin in their path.
“You, axe master,” Laughing Monkey called, her voice carrying above the wind. “Keep your hand on the right wall until you reach a passage that seems too narrow to squeeze through. It is more forgiving than it looks, though you may need to hold your breath. Continue on. When the rock cleaves, take your next two lefts. You will reach a tunnel in the shape of a fishhook. Climb up it and you will find the top and the Ink.”
With that, Laughing Monkey stepped aside from the crevasse.
“A trap,” Theo said. He glanced at Cortland. “Right?”
Cortland didn’t take his eyes off Laughing Monkey.
“What reason would I have to mislead the champion of a loyal customer?” The assassin cocked her head and put a fist on her hip. “But then, the gods don’t protect from bad directions. We have tested this. So, exercise caution.”
Although at times it seemed like Theo might explode from the effort of silence, the last few days ascending in his company had been mercifully without small talk. The stone walkers hadn’t bothered them again and, though Cortland looked for him, he lost Traveon’s trail after encountering a fresh rockslide. Cortland had not minded the relative solitude.
“Go on,” he told Theo. “Fuck off.”
The axe master hesitated, but then flinched as if a surprising thought had come over him. Probably the voice of his sponsor—Sylvie Aracia—under her blankets back in Tiptop, observing this whole scene through Theo’s eyes.
“Right,” Theo murmured. “I will.”
Whether that statement was meant for him or his sponsor, Cortland didn’t care. The axe master hiked warily up the rocky path, lingered briefly by Laughing Monkey, and then disappeared into the wedge between the chimneys. Cortland waited.
“I invited you to my home,” Laughing Monkey said. “I was disappointed not to see you.”
Cortland grunted. “Yeah?”
“I don’t often get to host.”
“You put that broken little girl from Penchenne in my path and you think that’s going to square us?” Cortland started forward. “I’d have been around to see you soon enough. On the island. Still going to see you there. Nothing changed on that score.”
“You’re a stubborn folk,” Laughing Monkey said. She tapped her mask. “You know, a former queen of Infinzel wore this mask once. She wasn’t born to the pyramid. A Crucifalian originally. I can still feel how badly she wanted to escape that place. Do you ever feel that way, Cortland Finiron?”
With a snarl, Cortland used [Hammer Toss]. He aimed for the wall above the assassin, hoping to bring some rocks down upon the woman. She glanced up, then used [Shadow Step] to melt into the shadows cast by one of the falling boulders. Snow erupted from where the rocks landed, but Laughing Monkey was now yards away, stepping out of the darkness cast by an overhang. She curled her finger at Cortland.
“Immature,” she said.
“Whatever you expect to gain from this, I swear it won’t be fucking worth it,” he replied, snapping his hammer back to hand with [Weapon Return]. “You won’t get what you want.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Laughing Monkey said.
Cortland almost made it to within arm’s length of the assassin. He wasn’t sure what he would do if he could catch her—the gods would hold him back so all of this would just be play. She danced backward, though, before Cortland could test the limits. He followed her into a narrow break in the rocks, barely wide enough for Cortland’s shoulders.
“You want me to blame that girl,” Cortland said. “But you’re the one who accepted the contract. You’re the one who opened Ben’s neck. You’re the one who dies. I’ll content myself with that.”
Laughing Monkey tittered. “Wait. Which girl are you talking about?”
Cortland’s feet caught on a rock and he stumbled, voice rising in frustration. “You think you can weaken Infinzel, but I won’t be baited.”
“Weaken Infinzel,” she repeated with a laugh. “Gods, who cares about that place? You’re twelfth renown. Do you know how many achieve that, Cortland? Do you know how many with your strength exist at this very moment?”
“Do I give a shit?”
“Thirty, at most,” she continued. “The gods keep our numbers low. Think of it. You are one of the thirty most powerful people in the world.”
His brow furrowed. “So?”
“So, you run errands, you do grunt work, you take orders,” Laughing Monkey said. “You dance on strings for a withered buffoon in his little fort of blocks and blankets. You could take that hammer and shape the world.”
“I’m a champion,” Cortland said. “A champion of Infinzel. You wouldn’t know what that means, loyal only to blood and money.”
“Blood and money, blood and money,” the assassin chanted. “Gods, they picked you for your lack of ambition, didn’t they? We can work on that.”
“Big thoughts, higher purpose, bunch of fucking bullshit,” Cortland snarled. “Coin goes in fountain. Knife goes in back. You ain’t more than that, bitch. Don’t pretend with me.”
The passage opened up behind Laughing Monkey and she stepped onto an open ledge, sinking down to her knees in fresh snow. Cortland lumbered forward and took her by the neck. She did the same to him, the point of her thumb digging into the bump of his throat.
They broke apart when the body crashed down a few yards away. It glowed on the way down—[Force Armor] offering some protection from what had been a considerable drop. A crater opened up at the impact site, ice cracking, or maybe those were bones.
Cortland watched the lump in the snow as she started moving. He recognized the timbre of the ragged coughing and the curls in the blood-streaked hair. He knew the screaming determination as the girl began dragging herself across the rocks, trying to get to gods only knew where, unwilling to concede to legs that flopped uselessly behind her.
Carina Goldstone. Fallen from on high.
“Go on, then,” Laughing Monkey said. “Don’t give me what I want.”
