The Black Unicorn
Having gathered what she needed through the North Wind, Nina ranged back and forth through the Purple Forest, collecting plants as she went.
"How do you even find things like this?"
Jin never stopped marveling. He slung the gathering sack from the horse, and little by little the two of them pressed deeper into the woods. Once they passed the sealed ward and went farther in, the air changed completely. Evening came, they made their camp, and the sun dropped almost at once.
"I've never gone past this point."
Jin said it as he tossed firewood onto the campfire. A shower of sparks leapt into the sky. A tin kettle hung over the flames.
"Mm. But there are things you can only find once you're inside."
"True enough." He stared at her.
His catlike green eyes glittered in the firelight.
"A spirit tell you?"
"Hm?"
"All of this. Where to find the plants and the herbs."
"Some of it Kirill asked for. Some of it I heard from the spirits."
Nina answered without quite explaining. Jin hooked the steaming kettle down with a stick and asked,
"Couldn't you teach me, too?"
"Huh? Teach you what?"
"The sword."
"The sword? Me? To you?"
"Yeah. You've gotten ridiculously good. I couldn't even give you a match now. Of all of us, you're the strongest."
Even a complete outsider would have seen what a superb swordswoman Nina was. There was not a wasted motion in her swordwork. The blade flowed from her fingertips as naturally as water, as if it were simply another of her limbs.
"You're the captain, aren't you? Then favor me with your instruction."
He held a cup out to her as he said it. Nina took it and answered.
"But I use a sword, and you use a halberd."
Axe and spear joined as one, the halberd was Jin's chief weapon. Watching that huge frame of his handle the heavy thing as if it weighed nothing never failed to draw a breath of wonder.
"The fundamentals are the same, aren't they?"
"Well..."
Nina broke off and pressed her mouth shut. Now that she thought of it, she had learned the halberd from the Sun as well.
Best to know, more or less, how to handle every weapon.
Had all of that been part of some larger design?
She said it teasingly.
"But could you survive my training?"
"Of course! If it'll make me stronger, I'll do anything. Back then... if I'd been stronger back then..."
Jin spoke with his eyes squeezed shut, as if he were coughing the words up with blood. The force of it startled her. She stared.
"Jin? Are you all right?"
"Nina."
"Yeah?"
"You're precious to me. If it weren't for you, I'd be a wreck by now. Some drunk in a corner somewhere, taking a knife and croaking there."
"Isn't that a little extreme?"
"I mean it. I..."
He winced and swallowed the rest. Out here in the dark, a few days of adventure with only the two of them might have loosened something in him.
"You know I'm the second son of a trading house, right?"
"Yeah. I heard."
"My family were the sort who thought money could buy anything."
Nina tilted her head. At the look on her face, Jin let out a soft breath of a laugh.
"Love, loyalty, good faith—even a life. Anything, so long as there's coin. So a person without money is worth nothing, and there's no need to keep your morals if they get in the way of making more. Money is all there is."
If money could do a thing, they did it. If money could not, they left it alone. Spending coin on anything useless was the same sin. That was why his family had put their hands to usury and the slave trade.
"I hated it, so I ran off and took up mercenary work. Then I stood surety for a friend I trusted, and the bastard left the debt on me."
"So that's why you joined the Black Knights. They do pay, and they pay properly."
Jin nodded. He was briefly, privately glad she didn't click her tongue and ask why on earth he had stood surety for anyone.
"But once I was out there mercenarying, and then in the order, it really did start to feel like money was everything. Really. The good faith I'd believed in, the friendship, the love—all of it seemed like nothing but a weak man's thin little fantasy."
He grinned, crooked.
"I was sick of it. So sick of it I couldn't sleep unless I drank. And then..."
He looked straight at Nina. There was not a speck of shadow in those green eyes.
She had always thought they stood in contrast to the Young Master's, shadowed as a lake. She opened her mouth.
"Me?"
"Yeah. You."
Jin smiled, sure of it.
"After you came, I knew what I'd believed in hadn't been wrong."
"I haven't really done much."
Nina looked unconvinced as she said it, and Jin shook his head.
"No. You've done a great deal for me. But..."
He cut himself off clean, eyes narrowing.
"Do you know how it felt to turn my back and run, leaving you there to die?"
"Um..."
"You don't. You shouldn't."
"No. I don't."
She lowered her head, and still she was perfectly unabashed.
Jin blew out a great sigh—ha!—and then went on.
"I don't want it a second time. I want to be strong enough to fight with my back against yours. I've been trying, in my own way... but looking at you now, it's no good. Not even close."
A gap in skill was one thing. This was something else entirely.
"Jin."
Nina grinned.
"I really do like you."
"That came out of nowhere."
At that she laughed again, louder. She liked his honesty, and the way he blurted things without warning. Someone else might have found a confession like his too sudden, too heavy—why say a thing like that?—but Jin and Nina were not someone else. He was years and years older than she was, and from the very beginning he had spoken without reserve, never hiding anything from the girl she had been.
"I like that you're honest."
"As honest as you? Not a chance."
Nina nodded.
"That's right. I'm an honest person too. Being true is a virtue that ought to be honored for what it's worth."
"So you'll teach me?"
Jin hauled the talk back from wherever it kept wandering. Nina let the smile leave her face and answered.
"All right. Then I'll run you into the ground."
"Huh?"
"If your heart is that firmly set, I'll teach you properly. All the way through."
The hellish training she had taken from the Sun—she meant to pass the very same thing on to him. Telling him not to worry, she spoke with her mind made up.
"I'll set my heart as well. I will never grow weak."
"Right, right!" Jin nodded along, quick to agree. He would regret that eager agreement the moment the training began.
Early the next morning they went deeper into the Purple Forest, and the land turned savage. A ravine ran between cliff and cliff, and beyond it the mountains followed, steep past all reason. There Nina and Jin found the Black Unicorns.
Lying flat to watch them, Jin let out a breath of wonder.
"Those really are Black Unicorns. They're running the cliffs like mountain goats. At that size, how is that even possible?"
"I'm going to catch one."
"What?"
Nina grinned.
"It's a mount fit for the Black Knights. Especially that one. That one there."
She was pointing at the leader of the herd—the largest of them, and the most beautiful, obvious at a glance.
"How do you plan to catch it?"
"The same way you'd break a wild horse. Don't worry."
She said it as she shrugged off her pack and left it in his care.
"I'll be off, then. Don't worry if I don't come back for a day or two."
She worked the rope into a loop.
"What? Hey—what are you going to do?"
"I am she who bears the North Wind's favor."
"Silent wings—drive me on."
⟨ North Wind ⟩
At the incantation, Nina's speed surged. By the time the herd sensed her, she was already closing on the leader. While the Black Unicorns shied, unsure what to do with her, she swung up onto its back, and in the same instant slipped the loop around its neck and hauled. The motion was lightning.
Jin caught his breath.
The lead unicorn broke into a run as if it had truly gone mad—a gait that ought to have thrown whatever was on its back. When Nina did not fall, it began to buck and bound, plunging down the cliff in a single rush, thrashing to tear her off however it could. Its feet were so quick that in a blink it was gone from sight.
"God."
The groan left him before he could stop it.
She'll be all right.
It was Nina. Even if she fell, the North Wind would catch her. Jin scratched his head, found a place nearby that would do for a camp, and made one.