Lupi 04 - Night Season

enter their land with a lot of soldiers. They’d wait until they got permission. Only problem was that, according to Tash, the Ahk didn’t get the whole notion of visitors, so permission might be a long time coming. If you were on their land, you were either Ahk or a trespasser. They weren’t kind to trespassers.
    He was nattering away at Wen again, holding one of those weird, relayed conversations with one of the other councilors back in the City via two or three Ekiba. The two of them looked pretty funny—the little gnome on a baby-size pony trotting along beside the big, bald, nearly naked Ekiba on his full-size horse.
    â€œI’ll check,” Steve told Cullen, and bravely poked at his horse’s sides with his heels. The animal went into a fast trot.
    Cynna’s horse had trotted a couple times. She did not approve of trotting. “Check what?” she asked Cullen.
    â€œTash’s scout is back, and Steve is fidgety. He’s going to see if that village we’re aiming for is close.”
    â€œPlease, God,” she said fervently. “I think the drizzle is working its way up to becoming real rain.”
    â€œIn Ireland they’d call this soft weather. When it isn’t raining hard, you see, it’s soft.”
    â€œYou been to Ireland?”
    â€œA few times. Mum had a cousin who married an Irish lass. What they say about the incredible green of the land is true.”
    â€œHow about what they say about leprechauns?”
    â€œAh, now, that’s another story.” And he proceeded to tell one, probably 90 percent fiction but entertaining.
    Cullen didn’t speak, act, or look like a man troubled by nightmares or some hidden trauma. But last night…
    Maybe she was imagining things. Cullen was a prime manipulator. Maybe turning down sex was part of some grand scheme to get her so hot and bothered she’d agree to marry him temporarily so he’d have rights to his child. She might have imagined the flatness in his voice last night. Even if she were right about that, she might have read all the wrong things into it—that he was shook, bad shook, and needed time to pull himself together.
    But she’d hadn’t imagined the feel of his skin—clammy and cool, as if he were sliding into shock. Could a nightmare do that? Manifest so strongly the body reacted as if it were badly injured?
    Nor had she imagined the tremors, if that was the right word…nothing as obvious as trembling, but before she woke him, he’d been vibrating like a tuning fork. She was pretty sure those tremors were what had woken her. When they hadn’t woken him, she’d decided to do that herself.
    So, yeah, her guesses might be all wrong. Guesses often were. But this time she didn’t think so. She knew how sometimes the only way you make things okay is by pretending with everything in you that they were. Last night he’d needed her to pretend with him. He’d needed that more than sex.
    But a wish ached deep inside her that he could have told her. Could have let her step into the pain with him and know what it was about.
    Â 
    T HE village parked perilously near the mountains was called Shuva. According to Tash, Shuva existed because of its market. The Ahk were not farmers, so they traded for produce at the market here and in similar small villages near their territory.
    Shuva was small, the stone cottages tiny. Many of the roofs gleamed darkly in the damp—slate tiles, Cynna thought. Some were thatched, their hats dull and dark in the damp night. They rode past some larger buildings, too—a school, a store, and what seemed to be a church or temple. No voices came from inside the last one, but light flickered in the windows, and as they rode by she heard music—the wild lilt of fiddles chasing some song to its end.
    She glanced at Cullen. His head was cocked and his face had fallen into an absent smile, the sort that means you don’t know you’re smiling. Lupi loved violins.
    The light was thin here, not like the City. More candles and firelight, fewer mage lights. How did people endure three months of darkness?
    Up ahead a tall man strode along beside Bilbo’s horse. He was human, or looked it, with a bushy beard and long, dark hair pulled back in a rough tail. His features were Anglo; his skin, weathered in the way of a man who’s spent much of his time outdoors. He had a Cossack look going—dark, heavy