It was the year 1771, following the Celestials' War and the Peace Pact that came after it. The peace was still holding. Yet when Ari gazed at the horizon, she could make out beams of light shining as if heralding a new war.
"None of my concern," Ari thought. "I won't be living that long anyway."
With the Ven cold that cruelly froze the flow of her blood beneath her skin, muscles, and bones, she could go no further. Her hands, gripping the ice axe, had gone numb. The screams of the slaves being whipped for idleness also grated on her nerves. The searing sting of the whip could be felt even through the layers of her clothing; Ari knew that all too well.
In times like these, Ari would imagine Kalin's warm presence to keep herself warm. Unlike other young women her age, Ari had never taken pleasure in the courtships and flirtations that filled their lives; she found them tedious. But in the arms of the night, with a companion who could satisfy her desires on a feathered bed… now that was pleasurable.
One of Ari's closest companions was Kalin. His arms were massive, strong enough to split logs in two. Yet the way he held her, his hands wrapped around her bare waist and the delicacy of his fingers cupping her hips, was always measured in a way no one would expect from a man. Kalin's presence made her forget, even for a moment, all the harshness and troubles of the world. Now, though, those memories felt as if they belonged to a life thousands of years ago.
Lost in her thoughts, Ari felt the presence of a hand gripping her hip; she stiffened, defying all her reflexes to keep from jumping. With furrowed brows and questioning eyes, she slowly turned around and locked gazes with a young inspector soldier. He could not have been older than seventeen, and, like any young man suddenly imbued with power, he was intoxicated by it.
He didn't know Ari. Had he known her, he would have realized that he couldn't harass her like the other slaves, at least if he wanted to keep his hand. Without conscious thought, Ari's hand shot with invisible speed to grasp the one still resting on her hip, while she brought the haft of her axe down into his abdomen with the other. The young soldier collapsed to the ground, exhaling every last breath from his lungs. Ari's lips curved upward almost unconsciously; that must have hurt, she thought, able to imagine just how painful a fall could be in a place where the cold froze everything.
Out of the corner of her eye, she glanced at the other soldiers; those who already knew her would not interfere. Still, to the soldier on the ground, Ari was nothing more than a slave. The excavator's rune branded on the back of her hand made it impossible for anyone to forget that. She sighed. They didn't know who Ari truly was. They couldn't have known. Yet they still understood enough to stay away from her, and that was all that mattered.
Ari was walking a fine line. She had managed to survive longer than most of the diggers exiled to Ven. The barracks commander, Redan, had realized she was trouble, but he couldn't deny her usefulness. That narrow line was still the key to Ari's survival, and she had no intention of crossing it.
Ari turned back to face forward, her expression blank. She was feeling less and less human with each passing day. How long has it been since I last spoke to someone? she wondered, though she already knew the answer. She had not spoken to anyone since Shay's death, four solstices ago.
Like all Varin, Shay had skin the color of pale tree bark and strange lightning-shaped marks that shimmered faintly beneath it. At times, Ari could have sworn she saw those tiny bolts moving under the woman's skin, probably just a trick of her tired eyes and body after a day spent swinging an axe. She had never asked Shay about it, not wanting to make her even more irritable than usual. Besides, Shay was a Varin. They were strange and closed to outsiders. Even now, scholars still did not fully understand their kind.
Still, she could not help but wonder how she had ended up here. Varinar was considered the farthest edge on the map, and she was the only Varin in the camp. Ari was grateful for the old woman's brief presence; if it had not been for Shay, she would have died on her first night. As if surviving in Ven was not hard enough, the soldiers did not allow the diggers to help each other. Even so, the stubborn Varin had given Ari her own rune-woven blanket on the first night so she would not die from the cold.
The runes were made by alchemists, and in a way Ari could not understand, the blankets both kept and produced heat. Ari never learned why she had done it; when she tried to ask later, the old woman either ignored the question or brushed it off with a rough mumble.
Ari swung her ice axe against the ice mountain with a force unexpected from a woman of her size, as if breaking all the thoughts weighing her down. Even here, each day had its own rhythm, and the sound of a horn coming from not too far away signaled that something was about to disturb that rhythm. Ari lifted her head and looked toward the direction of the sound; about a dozen soldiers were approaching on sleds pulled by large wolves. On the front sled was Commander Redan.
The soldiers stood at attention, and the other diggers stopped to watch the approaching group; something was wrong. Redan stepped down from the sled and walked toward the soldiers, not looking happy at all. They spoke to each other quickly, saying things Ari could not hear. Then the commander turned and looked straight into Ari's eyes, nodding toward the sleds.
Ari could fight; she could kill at least two dozen of those men without breaking a sweat. But she knew that for every man she killed, a battalion of soldiers and their trained Ven wolves would come after her. So Ari calmly did as she was told and got onto the sleds without causing trouble or showing defiance. She assumed this was because she had committed some offense and was about to face one of the commander's angry scoldings. Probably someone had told him about the soldier she hit, and now Ari would get a taste of that ice axe herself.
Instead, they took her to one of the lodges built with runes that she had never entered before. This lodge was used when a soldier of authority other than the commander came to the camp. Ari resisted the urge to run as her heart beat faster, knowing that doing so would mean a pack of wolves and certain death. In the past, she had barely escaped being torn apart.
Redan walked with her to the door and, opening it, said in the commanding tone he was used to, "Go inside." Ari gave him a defiant look but stepped in slowly and carefully, as much as her pride allowed. While waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, the door suddenly closed behind her, and her instincts kicked in. She leapt at the door, but it was already locked. Ari wondered if she could smash it with her fists when a surprised male voice echoed from behind her.
"So Linre's oathless girl is just a little child, huh…"