The Woman from the Karak Workshop
It was something very like a glittering diamond.
A transparent, lozenge-shaped crystal flashed and flashed again, throwing off every color at once.
“Has the seed crystallized?”
“Let’s pick another.”
To see whether this fruit alone was like that, or whether the others were the same, the two of them plucked more and split them open.
A seed crystal lay inside every one of them.
The larger fruits sometimes held two or three.
“If we planted these… would they sprout?”
Jin muttered it with doubt all over his face. Nina rolled a crystal this way and that and tipped her head.
“No. I genuinely have no idea either.”
If they sprouted out here, that would be a problem of its own. She lifted her head. Trees heavy with scarlet fruit stood in a grove.
“For now, let’s fill a pouch.”
“Yeah.”
They looked sound enough on the outside, but there was no telling what effect they might have. For samples they cut away whole branches, fruit and all, then gathered more of the fruit, and a heaping handful of the crystals besides.
“Let’s go. I want to see farther in before the sun sets.”
At Nina’s words Jin gauged the light they had left and nodded. She stared straight at him, then grinned.
“Why?”
“Nothing. I’m just glad your eyes are green. Looking at them cools mine. The color out here is all like this.”
She squinted over the last of it. Jin rubbed at his own eyes before he knew he was doing it, let out a short laugh, and turned the words straight back on her.
“Then it’s a good thing yours are gold. Like looking at the sun.”
“Right? Pretty, aren’t they?”
Nina shrugged, blinked at him, and swung up onto her black unicorn.
Struck past words, Jin gave a helpless laugh and mounted his own.
The unicorns took rough stone and narrow mountain tracks no horse could climb, and so the two of them were fast.
Then a unicorn stopped.
“What’s wrong?”
When Nina asked, it snorted and stamped. Its refusal to go any farther was plain. Jin spoke from behind her.
“What is it?”
“It won’t go on. Why’s it doing this?”
“Could there be something dangerous? We’ve never come in this far. There might be something we can’t even imagine.”
At that, Nina’s eyes narrowed.
“Mm…”
She slid down off the unicorn.
“Stay here. I’ll go look and come back.”
Jin frowned and dismounted after her. He didn’t even tie the reins to anything.
“I’m coming with you.”
“It might be dangerous, so stay.”
“Which is why I’m coming with you.”
He said it from right against her side. Nina glanced back at him, then nodded.
She drew her sword and took up a buckler, the small shield meant to be gripped in the fist. Mindful of the trees and brush, Jin drew a sword as well, rather than his halberd. Nina’s blade was about two fingers wide. His was closer to four.
They went forward slowly, watching ahead and behind, and a faint scream reached them. Both of them flinched.
“Just now?”
“Quiet.”
Nina called softly on the North Wind.
“You who carry sound, messenger and bearer—bring the echo here.”
⟨ North Wind ⟩
On the cold wind, the scream came loud.
“A person?”
Jin’s face twisted. Nina’s darkened.
This deep? A human?
“Let’s go see.”
Nina kicked off and broke into a run, and Jin followed hard behind her.
“Jin, watch your step!”
Nina vanished as if she had simply dropped away. Jin stopped short. A sheer cliff fell away just in front of him, and down in the valley he could see people.
“Nina! Spirits! Aaaaah!!”
Yelling fit to split the air, Jin leapt. Nina had been bounding goat-light from crack to crack in the stone; at the sight of him falling with no plan at all, she screamed.
“What? Jin!! North Wind!!”
At her cry a fierce wind surged up from below. For an instant Jin hung in empty air, then was flung the other way.
“Th-that’s seriously cold.”
Even a brief brush of it was a wind cold enough to freeze a person dead. White breath still smoked from his mouth, but he was quick to pull the halberd from his back, draw out the shaft, and lock it together.
Nina landed lightly after him and shouted.
“That was dangerous!”
“What’s dangerous, with you here?”
Jin said it as if it were nothing, and ran. Nina shook her head.
“Honestly.”
And she sprinted the other way.
The people barely reacted to the sudden appearance of the two of them. The Bellac before their eyes had taken every scrap of their attention.
Jin whistled.
They really are huge.
Three enormous bears. Even three ordinary bears would have torn people apart without trouble, and these were Bellac. Standing on their hind legs they looked some ten to thirteen feet tall, and every hair shone as if it had been forged of steel—sharp, and hard. One casual brush from a forepaw bristling with blade-like claws, and a person would be stabbed through and dead.
Bodies already lay scattered everywhere. The dead looked to be many. Some were fleeing. Others had spears in hand and were trying to meet the things.
“O Winter—quiet death, steadfast shield, savage cold that stops all things!”
⟨ Winter ⟩
Nina’s blade froze white, and the ground iced over with every step she took. She slipped cleanly past the first black bear’s attack and drove a full-strength kick into the white bear beside it.
With a heavy thud, the white bear was blasted away.
“Jin! The gray one!”
“I know!”
Jin swung the axe-head and sheared off the gray bear’s arm.
“Graaaah!!”
Black blood fountained, and the enraged gray bear charged him. Light on his feet in a way that did not match the beast’s bulk, he kept clear of its blows and kept attacking.
“Opening!”
His axe took the bear in the neck. The head did not come all the way off.
A neck cut two-thirds through ought to have killed it, or at least stopped it. The bear swung a forepaw anyway.
I underestimated it…
In a split-second decision he let go of the shaft and fell back—and Nina appeared as if in flight, kicking the bear’s head from midair.
Hide tore with a sound like a drum splitting. Body and head came apart, and the head sailed far away.
Nina landed, frowning.
“You let your guard down because it’s been a while.”
“I did. That actually scared me.”
Wiping cold sweat, Jin shook his head.
“Something cut that deep is supposed to stop.”
“The grade must be high.”
Nina spun around. Her cool gaze swept the party standing there with their spears. The long slim sword turned over and over in her hand.
“So. What kind of commotion are you raising on someone else’s land?”
Jin planted his halberd with a thud and stood aslant, all insolence.
The trespassers looked at one another and murmured. A woman walked out from among the spearmen.
Her brown hair was bound tight, and she was very tall. Six foot three, perhaps? She was solid through the body, a woman who looked every inch a warrior.
“I am called Poco.”
The greeting was more courteous than Nina had expected, but she had not the slightest wish to answer courtesy with courtesy. She was offended. The Purple Forest was their backyard. Strangers in the backyard, and she hadn’t even known.
“So what’s your business, trespassing in Rubuaene Territory? How did you get in? What were you trying to do here?”
Poco raised her clasped hands and bowed her head.
The clothes. And that greeting.
“Not even from the Empire, are you?”
As Nina’s voice grew more cutting still, Poco spoke at once.
“I understand your displeasure completely. But we did not come to do harm. Please, hear us out.”
“Talk.”
Poco was wary to the bone. Three Bellac had killed half of those who came ashore. Every one of them a fighter people would name among the best—and this slender-looking girl had finished two of the beasts in a single breath. Which was to say she could harm them whenever she pleased.
“We have come from Rengshi. Do you know Rengshi?”
“I know it. The iron’s famous.”
Rengshi steel was expensive, and it did not import well. The special steel for weapons used against Bellac was produced in Rengshi as well. Nina lifted her own sword.
“This was made from iron ordered out of Rengshi, too.”
Fifteen percent, though.
It was a hot country, and a long way from the Empire.
A faint smile touched Poco’s mouth.
“Even in Rengshi, I am one who works at the Karak Workshop.”