Sea of Shadows (Age of Legends 1)

"Don't move," he said when she started to rise.

There was a long dark pin stuck in the back of her hand. She looked to see more embedded in her tunic, hanging there harmlessly.

"What are those?" she asked.

Gavril pulled his sword from the creature. "If you don't know, then you shouldn't have leaped out. Were you going to protect your cat's life with your own?"

"It's the same thing."

He snorted. "You don't believe that superstitious foolishness, do you? That your lives are bonded? My father said--"

He stopped abruptly. She'd never heard him mention his father before.

Gavril bent and fingered the long needle embedded in her hand. "It's called a quill. It's barbed, and if you move when I'm pulling, it'll only make it worse."

"What did your father say?"

He worked at the quill. "Just that my grandfather once met a Keeper whose bond-beast died in battle. She was fine."

"She lived?"

"For a while. Then she took her own life. Apparently, she decided that would make a more tragic tale. You ought to appreciate that."

"Perhaps that means we don't die if the other does, but we cannot bear to go on living."

Another derisive snort.

"So you've seen those things?" she said.

"Quills? Yes. In the south there are creatures that bear them on their tails. But that's not the same beast. It's . . ." He glanced over at the dead thing. "Not like anything I've seen."

"Sorcery," she whispered. Then, "Oww!" as he jerked the quill free.

"I told you to be still."

"It must be sorcery," she murmured. "To make such a creature."

"You're as superstitious as an old nanny. Sorcery didn't make such a creature. Necessity did."

"Necessity?"

"Quills for protection? Jagged teeth for tearing? Claws for climbing? Large eyes for seeing in dim light? That makes the beast perfectly suited for living in a place like this." He eased a quill from her tunic. "Anything new is frightening to the superstitious mind. There are villages in the south that have never seen a Northerner. They would think pale skin and reddish-yellow hair a sign of sorcery. Your coloring is a product of your climate. As are your slow wits."

She twisted to snarl a protest and yelped as a quill jabbed into her side.

"Didn't I tell you to be still?"

She swore there was a lightness in his voice. Nothing pleases him so much as mocking me.

She glared at him. "If you're book-read enough to know why my skin is pale, then you know that Northerners' wits are not dulled by the cold climate."

"True. Your sister seems bright enough."

She resisted the urge to shoot her fist at him, and lay there, still on Daigo, fuming quietly.

Yes, that was the typical view of Northerners. Slow thinking, slow moving, lazy, as if they had ice in their brains and their veins. Her father had made himself wealthy using that to his advantage as a merchant. It worked best on the lower castes, those who'd never met people beyond the empire's middle realms. For Gavril, highborn and court-raised, such a belief would be as quaint a notion as her superstitions. He was goading her, and she was foolish for letting him.

As for the beast, it could indeed be an adaptation to an inhospitable environment. The exiled boy--Ronan--had survived the winter. He must have eaten something.