Free The Whitefire Crossing by Courtney Schafer Page A

around our camp. Cara was happy to flirt with anything short of a rock bear. Though she always held to her rule about not mixing bedplay and outriding, it didn’t stop admirers from hoping. I had no doubt Pello would eagerly play the part.
    “Glad I could help,” Harken told Pello as he handed Cara her dinner ration. At least he didn’t offer Pello any of his seedcakes. “Nasty storm like that, I’m surprised more tarps weren’t damaged.”
    Pello’s expression turned serious. “Perhaps you outriders could answer a question for a man new to the westbound route. Is it natural to get a storm so strong this early in the season?”
    Beside me, Kiran went still. When Pello had first showed up, after one quick sidelong glance at me, Kiran had stared at the ground, picking idly at small rocks as if bored. Now I sensed him listening intently, though he didn’t raise his head.
    Cara dropped to sit against a wagon wheel, her hands full of food. “It’s not the usual way of things, but weather can be strange up here. I’ve seen it snow in midsummer.”
    To my surprise, Jerik spoke up. “The question’s a fair one. A storm that bad before summer takes hold...it reminds me of the weather some twenty years ago, during the mage war.” A frown marked his dark face.
    “You worked that year?” Cara sounded impressed. “Must’ve been a hell of a trip.”
    “It was,” Jerik said, shortly.
    My respect for Jerik shot upward. I didn’t remember anything from the mage war, since I’d only been a toddler at the time. I’d heard the stories, though; we all had. There’d been a falling out among some powerful mages, and they’d got to fighting. Lord Sechaveh had ignored it for a while, keeping to his hands-off policy. But when the magic thrown around got to the point of damaging the city and killing crowds of unfortunate bystanders, he’d gotten mad enough to draw the line.
    The stories differed on what he’d done—some said he’d had the mages involved killed, others that he’d banished them. Nobody agreed on how he’d managed to do either, but the end result was that life in the city went back to normal. Still, it had been a crazy few months, and all that messing around with magical forces had screwed up the weather in a big way. I’d heard stories of storms with colored lighting bright enough to blind anyone foolish enough to look at it, and hail the size of a man’s head.
    I glanced at Kiran, wondering if his reaction to the storm had something to do with the mage war stories. He was several years short of my own age, so chances were good he hadn’t even been born when it happened. Maybe somebody had told him the more gruesome stories as a kid and scared him good, but it was hard to imagine that making him go rabbiting off into the catsclaw. I had a sudden flash of the horror on his face when he’d realized a message might reach Ninavel. Had he thought the storm meant a mage was after him? Surely not. Even a highsider would know how dumb that idea was. Whatever mages want, they get, and they don’t fuck around about it, either. If a mage wanted to stop him, Kiran would be dead already. No, it had to be something else.
    Kiran didn’t look scared now; far from it. His fascination was plain as day, and I could practically see all the questions jamming themselves up in his throat.
    “Mage war.” Pello spoke as if he were savoring the words. “Now there’s a thought to disturb a man’s sleep.” An odd undertone colored his voice, and I shifted forward, wishing his eyes weren’t in shadow.
    “Surely so,” Harken agreed. “I worked a convoy traveling all the way to eastern Arkennland that year, so I missed all the excitement, but from the tales my sister shared, I’m not sorry. She lost her husband and two nephews—stonemasons, all of them. They were on a job repairing the southgate wall when one of the fights flared up. The whole wall came down, killed their entire crew in an instant.”
    Jerik stood, his