Free Scarlet and the White Wolf [01] - Scarlet and the White Wolf by Kirby Crow Page A

for thousands of years.
    Liall started when he heard a scratching sound outside his yurt. It was Peysho rubbing his thumbnail on the canvas wall.
    "A messenger, Atya," Peysho called.
    He glanced at the marked candle burning on a stone pedestal by his bedside. Perhaps two hours had passed since he left Peysho's yurt. The wind had died down outside, but now it was much colder. He sighed at the feel of the warm furs around his body, briefly wishing he had taken Peysho up on his offer.
    "Ye might want to see this one, Wolf."
    He got up. There were few people who would send him a formal message. Somehow, he knew it was coming.
    The messenger was an aging Minh lately from Volkovoi, and with the look of that people, being squat and yellow-skinned with wise, narrow eyes and clipped speech. Volkovoi was a harbor city across the Channel in Khet. It was one of the last open ports north before the sea.
    The Minh wore the traditional blue-striped cloak and the silver badge of his office, and he insisted on being paid before he spoke. He was, he said, on his way back to his homeland and had agreed to make a brief, hazardous stop on the shores of Byzantur. He carried a message to the White Wolf of the Longspur krait from a certain Captain Lanak of the merchant ship dal Ostre Nadir.
    The Minh held a small box out to Liall, and he signaled Peysho to pay the man yet again.
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    Scarlet and the White Wolf--Book One
    by Kirby Crow
    "For your silence," Liall said meaningfully, with a hard look at the Minh. Liall was surprised that the Minh had agreed to carry the message at all. If the man was caught on land in Byzantur, he would be killed on the spot. The Minh were deadly enemies to the Byzans.
    Curious but knowing better than to press, Peysho did as he was told and dismissed the messenger, who hurried back down the Sea Road to his waiting ship. Peysho went back to his warm bed and the even warmer Kio as Liall stood frozen in place with his hands locked around the box. He did not open it right away, but set it aside in his yurt until his nerves stopped jangling. The box was wooden and plain enough, but the case was stamped with Sinha letters, the language of Rshan.
    When the great eye of the moon hung over the mountain pass, looking close enough to touch, he opened the box and looked inside. He sat and looked at it for a long time.
    I tried to run from it, he thought. A man can try, at the least.
    He had lost so much of himself in Byzantur, drowning his memories in the lonely blue shadows thrown by the crags of cliffs and the jutting shelves of rock, in the last red gleam of the sun before nightfall, or in the first wink of a silver star in the deep, open sky. The weight of all that came before and the chiaroscuro contrast of the life he had now seemed to him like two ships bent on an unwavering course to collision. Now that he was about to lose it, his second life was suddenly very dear to him. The past had come seeking him like a persistent hound.
    69
    Scarlet and the White Wolf--Book One
    by Kirby Crow
    It has not all been sweet, he reminded himself. This life could cradle him gently or rend him to ribbons of flesh with its claws. It depended on the day, and how drunk he was the night before, and whether or not the tide that pulled at his mind in an endless crosscurrent of guilt had battered and eroded him enough to weaken his resolve, his promise to himself not to dwell on the past. Not to think at all, if possible. His dreams were not so easily commanded, and they knew no master.
    "I tried to run, Nadei," he said aloud. "I told you I never wanted it."
    "Atya?"
    Liall turned, startled. Peysho had not gone back to his bed, but stood on the wooden steps just outside his yurt. Liall rose and thrust back the thick flap. "What are you doing?"
    Peysho shrugged.
    Liall shook his head. "Come in, then. I have no che or anything warm. Will bitterbeer do?"
    Peysho nodded and accepted the cup without comment, sinking down onto a padded ottoman as Liall