Page 7 of Shadows of Winter

With longer and stronger legs, Vlerion was seconds from catching up to Frayvar. Kaylina hurled one of her lead rounds, adjusting her target at the last instant from his back to his head. That leather armor would keep the round from doing any damage, and she had to stop him. She couldn’t let him hurt her brother.

An arm wrapped around her from behind, yanking her off her feet. Not before she glimpsed her round slam into the back of Vlerion’s head. Hard.

Though the blow had to have hurt, he didn’t slow down. He glanced back with ice in his eyes, ice and calculation as he doubtless reconsidered if she was capable of murdering someone.

“Leave him alone!” Kaylina yelled as she lost sight of Frayvar. “He didn’t do anything.”

Jankarr flipped her around to face him, then slung her over his shoulder. He ripped her sling from her hand.

A cry of pain came from Frayvar. Vlerion had caught him. Caught him or worse?

Jerking and twisting, Kaylina tried to escape, but the ranger had her pinned. Her knee thudded against his chest, but the leather armor might as well have been steel for all the good her blows did.

Her captor headed back to the front of the castle, toting her like a sack of potatoes.

“Jankarr, when I said watch her, I assumed that would also imply you should keep her from attacking me,” Vlerion said calmly from a few steps behind.

Kaylina twisted enough to see under her captor’s armpit. Vlerion gripped his sword in one hand and used the other to grasp Frayvar’s arm and force him to walk with him, the same as he’d done with her moments before. There wasn’t any blood on that blade, but it was hard to tell from Frayvar’s red face if he’d been hurt. His eyes remained wide, panic making the whites visible around his pupils.

“I wanted to see if she could use that sling.” Jankarr sounded amused.

“Effectively.” Vlerion grimaced when he touched the back of his head. When he considered Kaylina again, that cold calculation remained in his eyes.

Her heart pounded in her eardrums as she realized he’d reclassified her from not-a-threat to dangerous. And capable of being a spy, if not a murderer.

How had things gone so wrong so quickly?

3

Give the traitor enough freedom to condemn himself.

~ King Gavatorin the Elder

The cold of the stone bench seeped through Kaylina’s parka and trousers, numbing her body, as heartless as the glacier-filled mountains looming behind the city. Common sense told her to stand up, move around, and figure out how to get out of the cell. Instead, her treacherous mind fixated on the confrontation with the rangers, on what she should have said to Vlerion, on how she shouldn’t have lost her temper, on how, on how, on how—

“It’s not my fault,” Frayvar said for the fifth time. “Kafdari root is from the altered myristica fragrans tree.”

“I know,” Kaylina murmured.

She hadn’t known when the rangers had spoken of it, but Frayvar had been apologizing and explaining ever since they’d been locked in the cell.

“It’s magical,” he said, “like all altered plants are, but that’s not the problem. It’s from the same tree as nutmeg and mace. That means I’m almost certainly allergic to it. If they make me ingest it, I could die.”

“I know.”

“They execute spies and traitors.” Frayvar paced as he spoke. Five steps to one wall. A thump as he pushed off it with his hands. Five steps to the other. Thump.

Kaylina did her best not to find the thumps irritating. Better to be with her brother than alone. “I know that too.”

“We have to figure a way out of here.”

“Yeah.” She stared up at the dark ceiling. A single north-facing window high on the stone wall let in little light.

“Unless we get an adjudicator who’s much more reasonable than the rangers, we could be put to death by sunset.”

“Yeah.”

“You know I normally find solace in obeying laws and rules, since they’re barometers for what’s socially appropriate behavior, but in this case, I think we have to break out of jail, escape back to the south, and hope the rangers have more pressing concerns than coming after us.”

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