The Ashes of the Tyrant

They climbed all night. Íñigo fainted once, near dawn, and woke with Irati's face very close and her hand slapping his cheek, not too gently.

"If you die now, little lord, after everything you've made me walk, I'll leave you here for the vultures."

"You told me that yesterday."

"Yesterday I didn't mean it."

She put his good arm over her shoulders and carried half his weight for the last three hours of the climb, without complaint, counting the steps under her breath the way he had counted the trees. Whenever his shoulder bled again, she stopped, tightened the bandage and went on. Íñigo thought that in all his life no one had ever carried him, not even as a child.

At sunset they reached the saddle of the Gorge of Souls. The north wind had swept away the fog and from there the whole valley of Oakhaven could be seen, its stained-glass windows lit by the last sun like a beacon of colors in the middle of the range. Beside a cairn the shepherds had raised to mark the edge of the free lands, Íñigo sat down because he couldn't stay standing.

Six riders of the Oakhaven guard came out from among the rocks in brown cloaks with longbows. The sergeant recognized Irati and dismounted.

"The lookouts heard shots on the sunken road. Who is this?"

"Don Íñigo de Vivar, auditor of Burgos," said Irati. "The chancellor's nephew. And what he carries in his doublet Prince Fadrique has to see this very night."

Íñigo took out the document, stained with his own blood at one corner, its three seals intact. He put it into the hands of the sergeant, who looked at it without daring to open it.

"Four regiments and two companies of Swiss," said Íñigo. "Before the new moon, through the Gorge. My uncle's signature is on it. With that in front of them, no court in Burgos can claim Oakhaven broke the truce. Let the prince keep it the way he would keep a sword."

The sergeant nodded slowly, put the document inside his breastplate and sent a rider at a gallop toward the stronghold.

Irati put her hand into her jerkin and took out the safe-conduct. She held it out to Íñigo.

"You got here and you didn't run off. It's yours."

Íñigo took it. It was very small for all it was worth: the council's seal, his uncle's signature, his name written in the round hand of the Chancery scribes. With that paper he could go south any day of his life, present himself at his uncle's house, ask forgiveness, recover his office, the clean ledger, the hot supper. His uncle would forgive him. He's family.

He took the flint and steel from Irati's pouch without asking. He knelt beside the cairn, lit a wisp of tinder and held the flame to the corner of the parchment.

The fire was slow to catch in the cured skin. Then it caught. The wax seal melted into a red drop that sizzled on the snow; the chancellor's signature curled, turned brown, turned black. Íñigo's name was the last thing to burn.

The sergeant watched without understanding. Irati understood. She knelt beside him and watched the ashes until the wind began to carry them south, toward Burgos, as if they knew the way.

"Sir," he said at last, "that was a council safe-conduct. You can buy houses in Burgos with that." "That's why," Íñigo answered, without looking up from the ashes.

"Now you can't go back," she said.

"No."

"You'll have to learn to set traps, to sleep on pine branches and not to trip at every ford, little lord."

"I've been told there's a teacher."

She laughed, and it was the first time Íñigo had heard her truly laugh. She took his hand, the one on his good arm, and squeezed it harder than she needed to.

He thought of Beatriz too. He would have to write to her that very night, from Oakhaven, a letter without half-words: You were right. I've seen it with my own eyes. Be careful of your father. He didn't know if it would reach her. He knew he had to write it.

They went down toward Oakhaven escorted by the riders, slowly, because Íñigo couldn't go any other way. Halfway down the slope, he turned once toward the forest of the Mist.

"My horse," he said. "I promised him I'd come back."

"Tomorrow," said Irati. "I know where that overhang is. I saw it from the fir while you were talking to him." She glanced at him sideways. "That's why I didn't shoot you in the neck."