both in his layers of clothing. He had trouble with some elements of infant care, particularly cleanup, since his blindness kept him from seeing when the job was properly done, for which he thanked the One daily. But he was a master at keeping the babies warm and not bad at getting them to sleep.
He leaned his head against the rock wall behind him, then as the cold from the stone penetrated, he fumbled for the hood of his cape to pull up an extra layer between himself and their shelter. “Still snowing?” he asked the cave in general.
“Can’t tell.” Stone’s soured voice came back. “It covered the cave entrance sometime last night. But it’s been snowing for six days running. Why would it stop now?”
“At least we’re not out there in it.” Merinda spoke from near the fire.
Fox was getting heartily tired of her forced cheer, her “look on the bright side” comments. If it didn’t require moving from his spot, he’d throttle her. But as it did, he supposed he would have to let her live.
“You’re right.” Aisse’s voice so close to him would have startled him if he hadn’t known where she was. “We could be out in the storm, but we’re not. And I for one, am grateful not to be in the saddle all the hours of daylight. Fox, do you have room for Rozite, too?”
“Aye.” He opened his cloak and overshirt again and loosened the lacings on his tunic more. The second twin snuggled in next to her sister and seemed to take on some of her calm, losing her restless fidgeting. They were warm and soft and smelled like contentment.
Fox rested his cheek atop their fuzzy heads a moment as he wrapped the coverings more securely about them. Then, with the babies secure in his arms, he closed his useless eyes and let his senses flow outward. Somehow, the act of shutting his eyes helped him know the things he couldn’t see.
There was Aisse, lowering herself onto the pallet nearest the fire. Was it normal for her to sleep so much? He supposed it was, or Merinda would be jollying her awake. The healer took her responsibilities seriously, urging Aisse to eat more when she picked at her food, watching the babies with sharp eyes and with magic to see how they fared in this cold. Fox just wished she didn’t have to be so bloody cheerful about it.
At the moment, Merinda was busying herself near the fire with something or other. And Stone knelt near the cave’s entrance, his attention focused on it. Perhaps trying to measure the depth of the snow?
Fox let his knowing quest onward. It was how he had brought them all to this place, the day the late spring blizzard had fallen on them. Right up until the moment he “found” the opening in the rock, he’d been afraid that the odd extra sense Kallista had given him couldn’t do such a thing. But it had. They had shelter from the snow and the cold.
Outside the cave, the world lay empty and silent. They might be the only souls left in existence, for all Fox could tell. He couldn’t sense things at much of a distance. He stretched, reaching as far as he could, wanting desperately to feel Kallista’s comforting touch against…whatever it was she touched inside him. He found only emptiness.
It had been months and months since any of them had felt that seductive brush of magic across their souls. He missed it. He wondered whether they would ever get it back. Kallista said they would, but when?
Stone was moving, doing something where he knelt, but Fox couldn’t tell what it was. “Learning to dance on your knees like the horse tribes?” he asked.
“Digging a path out of this hole you’ve buried us in.” Stone’s voice sounded sharp, on edge. The women didn’t seem to notice, but Fox had been partnered with Stone for almost twenty years. Since they’d entered Warrior Caste training at six. He knew the man’s nuances.
Carefully, Fox rose to his feet and walked toward the cave entrance where he sat down with his back to the drifted snow. “What’s wrong?”
“You’re going to be sitting in snowmelt in another five ticks if you don’t move.”
Fox shifted a pace away and waited, wishing this knowing of his let him know more than mere presence or motion. He wanted to see Stone’s face, his expression. “Well?” he finally had to prompt.
“We’re running low on supplies.” Stone kept his voice quiet as he continued digging. “There’s enough for the adults for about a week yet, but milk for the babies—they’re too young to be able to eat our food, Merinda says, even were it chewed for them. They could do it for a bit, in an emergency, but not for long.”
Fox’s arms tightened around the little bodies snuggled in against his chest. “We have to find more. A cow. Something.”
“How, if the snow doesn’t stop?”
“We’ll find a way. I will not let our children die.” The fervor in his own voice surprised Fox.
Children had little value in Tibre, until the males joined their castes at six. Women had no caste save the one that they served, so girl children were worth even less. In Tibre, children belonged to the caste, to no one. These tiny girls were his. His and the rest of the ilian’s. That made all the difference in the world.
A gust of icy wind announced that Stone had broken through the layered snow. “Still snowing,” he said.
“How thick is the snow cover?”
“Maybe two paces. Not bad.” Stone moved a short distance away, then returned and laid something over the fresh opening that blocked the wind a bit. Fox touched it; a saddle blanket. Stone laid another atop the first.
Fox was about to rise and head back nearer the fire when Stone sat on the cold cave floor beside him. Apparently in the snowmelt he’d warned Fox against, for he swore and moved to Fox’s other side.
“So, is Merinda ilias? Like the rest of us?” Stone asked in a voice quieter than any Fox had heard from him.
“I—” The question tumbled Fox’s thoughts into a stinking pile. “What do you think?” Maybe if he played for time he could dredge an answer from his memory.
“I don’t know. You were there when it happened, right before we left. You heard what Kallista said when she gave her the bracelet.”
“Ilian together,” Fox quoted. “But that’s not what she said—what any of us said—the night you all married me. Was it the same before?”
As one of the original four in their ilian, Stone had been through the ceremony three times, once when the ilian was formed, once when Obed joined them and once for Fox. “Those were all the same. Not like with her. So I’m asking. Is it just to help look after Lorynda and Rozite, or is it—?”
“You want to have sex with her?”
“Khralsh.” Stone swore by the warrior face of the One they all worshipped. “It’s the other way round. You can’t see the way she’s always touching me, or the looks she gives me. She says we’re ilian now, that I don’t have to be—uncomfortable, she said. You know how long it’s been, what with Kallista so soon after her time and Aisse so near hers and the magic gone besides. It wouldn’t be a problem, except Merinda’s always…there.”
“And you never were one to turn down sex.” Fox grinned. “I wish I could see it. Stone Varyl, vo’Tsekrish, evading a woman’s advances like some—some girl before her rites.”
Stone
