“The queen sent me. How do you come here, Freedman Jarnulf?” she asked.

He smiled, recognizing, as she had, that it was to be a long, slow game, one that could last for days. In this land of endless, snowy plains, of gray-white skies and stunted forests of dark, gnarled trees, nobody was in a hurry.

“I come out of the slave pens of Nakkiga, of course,” he said. “Nakkiga-That-Was to be more precise, the old city outside the mountain. I was born in White Snail Castle at the foot of Stormspike, and I was taught from the time I could draw breath to fear the queen. So in that way, no different from you.”

“Except I wore no slave collar. And I was taught not to fear her but to love her.”

“It comes to much the same.” His look was mocking. “And I knew you were not born in the slave pens, Sacrifice. That is obvious in your every movement.”

“What do you mean?”

“The hue of your skin and the shape of your face tell me you are a halfblood, but you move like one raised among Nakkiga’s nobility. Am I right?”

“You are,” she said, nettled by the accuracy of his guess. “Is there more that you can see of my past merely by looking, Queen’s Huntsman?”

He showed the hint of another self-satisfied smile. Mortals, even this one, were so over-generous with their thoughts, Nezeru thought: their faces were like books, with everything written there. “It is not only your proud posture that tells me you were raised in a noble house before you joined your order,” he said. “You clearly learned the Hao sa-Rashi—the Way of the Exiles that is taught to children of the higher clans. And the stiffness with which you still perform some of the gestures tell me it is not long since you left the house of your childhood.”

“How so?”

“As your people grow older, their performance of the ancient gestures grows smoother and less careful. Among the eldest—in the queen’s Landborn advisers, for instance—it is impossible to tell that they have ever expressed themselves or moved in any other way.”

Nezeru was a bit taken aback: whatever else he might be, this mortal was no fool. But she was also beginning to enjoy the game. “Let me tell you something about yourself, then,” she said. “You had a teacher, the sort that slaves do not usually have. You learned the fighting arts and even horsemanship before you left the slave life. And you have tried to unlearn the same sort of rote gestures you mock in me, at least enough to pass for an ordinary Rimmersman among your own kind.” She was gratified by a slight shift at the edge of his mouth—a strike! “Now why would you do such a thing, try to disguise how you were raised?”

“I give you honor, Sacrifice Nezeru. Your eye is keen, although I had spoken of my teacher Xoka before. But the reason I had to unlearn the gestures taught me as a child slave should be obvious. As one of the queen’s huntsmen, I range the whole of these lands from the border of her domain down into Rimmsersgard—and occasionally, as this time, all the way into the northern reaches of Erkynland. I must deal with other mortals that I meet in my travels, and I often trade in their villages. What do you think I would receive instead of jerked meat and grain if they knew I was one of Queen Utuk’ku’s slave-catchers?”

“A noose, perhaps. And an iron cage for your bones.” Now she smiled, with the conscious desire to show him how pleasant it would be to see him thus. “I hear that the bodies of traitors are often hung along the borders of the mortal lands, to show what the rest of your kind think of those who take the Norn queen’s silver, as they say.”

“Exactly.”

They rode in silence for a while. Far ahead, Nezeru could see the humped silhouette of the giant, like a moving snowdrift. Behind him, Makho spoke with Saomeji, with Kemme following a little way behind. More and more in these last days the chieftain and the Singer seemed to be in deep conversation, often arguing, and Nezeru wished she knew why. She also wondered why Saomeji’s master Akhenabi had allowed her to remain with this hand when Makho had wanted her sent back to Nakkiga for punishment. Their mission was important, of course, but surely the Lord of Song could have picked any one of dozens to replace her from his own entourage of Singers and Sacrifice-trained guards. And Akhenabi, in the plundering of her thoughts, could not have failed to learn that she had lied about being with child. Why had that also been ignored? Certainly the arch-Singer had not informed Makho, who clearly still believed her lie.

“If I am right, as I think I am, that you are young for your kind,” Jarnulf said abruptly, as if he had been listening to her thoughts, “how have you come to join this grave undertaking—whatever it may be?”

“I was top of my file in the Order of Sacrifice.” She could hear the tightness in her own voice, and was unhappy with herself. Was it so obvious that she, too, had wondered at the same thing? “I killed six armed slaves with my bare hands. I crippled two rival Sacrifices in the Games. I can fight as well as any male and better than most.”

“Oh, I am certain,” he said. “But still, files pass through the Order of Sacrifice every few years, don’t they? There must have been dozens of other warriors who reached equally high rank in their own time, and who have been blooded since in actual battle.

“Because you have not been in real battle before our fight with the Erkynlanders, have you?”

She was surprised by how that stung her. “A bad guess, mortal. I have been in many fights, many struggles,” she said almost too quickly, thinking of the islanders she had slaughtered, but also of the one she had let escape.

“Ah.” Irritatingly, he acted as though she had agreed with him. “So who are your parents, Sacrifice? They must be powerful indeed to secure such an important posting for their daughter while she is still so young.”

“My youth means nothing.”

“Really? It certainly means something to me. Your people live to be a hundred times as old as mine—and yet I would wager that despite your high position and honors, I have lived longer than you have in this world, beneath these stars.” He spread his fingers toward the night sky. “I have seen twenty-eight summers. How many have you seen?”

“Meaningless.” She kept her face immobile, but now she wanted to kill him and silence his mockery. “You jab at me so you do not have to answer any questions of your own.”

The pale blue eyes surveyed her. “Then I apologize. I suppose, in a way, I am a guest, and should be better behaved. Question away, Sacrifice. Is there something about me that warrants your interest?”

“Interest? Perhaps.” Nezeru knew she had lost her calm. She silently repeated the Prayer of Loyal Servants until she could think with her customary clarity. “Your arrows are different than ours,” she said at last.

He raised his eyebrows in feigned surprise. “Well, that is certainly cause for concern.”

“Not in and of itself, no. But yours are fletched with hawk or eagle feathers. We Sacrifices use feathers from the black goose.”

“Do you want a contest, then, to see whose arrows fly most truly? I may not be Hikeda’ya, but nobody yet has complained of my skill with a bow.”

“I do not seek a contest—although it might be interesting to have such a thing one day, you and I.” Now she allowed herself to smile, just a little. It felt like power, like lifting her cloak to display a sharp blade. “But I followed you down the hill that night we escaped the mortal army and I saw many arrows with that fletching. They were all sticking into trees.”

For a moment he rode in silence. “I’m afraid I don’t understand you, Sacrifice.”

“Oh, I think you do, Freedman. For someone who professes to be a skilled archer, you seem to have hit very few mortal targets.”

He dismissed it with a shake of his head. “The hills were full of mortals that night. They were all around us before we broke for freedom. Surely I am not responsible for every arrow that was not feathered with black goose.”