Chapter 1

The Girl and the Jaguar

Green shoots needle out from frosted branches, casting spidery shadows over the snow in Flyfisher Forest. Chaëlle clutches the trunk. Her hands hook into the grooves; nails dig into the bark.

Wind lashes across the tundra, each gust a hard breath against her face as it bellows. Mists of snowflakes blow over the stretch of ice. The sun sits dull behind the morning clouds. A lone alpine parrot rides the waves of wind.

Up ahead, she hears a sound. A deer creeps through the thicket, antlers growing like roots from an eggshell skull. Chaëlle writhes on her belly, dragging herself along the branches, tracking the deer’s movements.

Kava would’ve clicked her tongue by now, muttering about show-offs with crossbows and idiots who chase lunch into stranger tracks.

Chaëlle keeps crawling anyway.

As she unfastens the weapon slung across her back, her gloves catch. She tugs them off with her teeth.

Her fingers wrap around the crossbow as cold bites. The deer grazes below. With eyes levelled to focus, she lines up the aim and stares down the neck of the bolt. The deer’s ears prick. It sniffs the air. Howls thread through the wind, then twist into shrieks; she mistakes them for foxes or the ice shifting.

The deer jumps, hopping through a gap in a hedge. Snow flicks from the cloven hooves, leaving a zigzag of prints behind. For a heartbeat, she thinks of the meat those prints would mean on someone’s table. Then, the thought is gone.

Canopies block out stray light escaping through the iron-bound gloom. The deer pulls her further and further from the rendezvous point. No sign of Kava. Strange. She’s always early. The branches moan. A small black dot moves at speed along the horizon unnoticed; her eyes fix on the hunt.

She lies belly flat against the bark. Deer tracks fill with snowfall, the hoofprints shallow. The last impression is embedded deep. No more prints follow after.

Whips crack behind her. Blades of a sledge lance through the ice. Men urge the huskies to ride faster, their shoulders bulging against the harnesses. Northwest wind drives them toward the forest. Hounds yelp between pants. The sledge wobbles over dips in the hummocks.

Men cling to bundles of carcasses: bloodstained snow leopards, moose missing ribs and pulped bear paws. At the edge of the wood, the sledge skids to a halt. The figures wade toward her. Fur hoods are pulled tight around their faces.

The Southlanders have grown wild since the monarchs died. Her mother’s voice flashes up unwanted: poachers don’t just starve beasts, they starve villages.

She tightens her grip on the stock of the crossbow. Sweat soaks into the beech, staining the timber. Time to poach a poacher. Wisps of condensation float from her lips.

A stench of corn whiskey drifts from the men. Sheepskin flasks slosh in their hands. The tallest man waggles a severed bear head. Glazed eyes roll inside the sockets, and the tongue lolls from its bloody mouth.

‘Bastard to catch.’

‘Lucky we caught them,’ another says as he pulls out a leg-hold trap crusted with hair.

They play the puppet show of the dead, too distracted to notice what shadows them from the bushes. An Aksalan jaguar. Barely adolescent, it is still apex here. Its coat is a light-drinking soot, but as it ripples, the weak sun catches the ghost-markings of rosettes: faint webs like shattered ice trapped beneath the surface of a frozen lake. She has only ever seen one before—on a shrine.

Chaëlle rests the crossbow to point at the poachers. Each breath of wind keels the scrawny branch. The jaguar’s glare flicks to the treetops and detects her position. She stares back into the pear-drop eyes. Why do you feel familiar? Her heart slows like a muffled drumbeat. Iced air floods her lungs.

The drunk man steps on a husky’s paw. Its squeal pierces the quiet. Birds scatter from the trees. The dog cowers, tail tucked between its legs, and pulls at the harness. Cat eyes watch. Pupils narrow into slits as the jaguar glowers. He kneads compact snow with his claws and his hind legs twitch.

An iron smell emanates from the gutted animal bodies. The jaguar raises its head to the packed sledge and inspects the kills. Snow clumps to his hackles. One paw hovers.

Chaëlle swats the air to shoo him away. The arm of the tree splits as it bends but the wildling takes no heed. She lets out a sigh of steam. She poises to aim at the man by a curtain of frozen vines. Above him, an ice-shelf.

Cattail shrubbery conceals the jaguar, whiskers dusted in ice, as it watches the stranger buckle straps over animal skins. Jowls pull back over his frothing mouth. Ears lay flat. Snowflakes saturate his coat. He shifts the weight onto his hind legs and prepares to spring.

The lock plate snaps when Chaëlle releases the trigger. A bolt shoots from the track and the bowstring judders. It flies through the lace of creeping silver vines twisting down like a running river current. It lodges into the anchor of ice-shelf encased around a hemlock tree.

A chunk of the block wobbles, then cracks.

Fletching feathers quake. Pinecones drop.

The poacher looks up. His mouth opens as the crystal slab plummets.

‘Who the—’

It smashes into his face and shatters on impact.

Blood bursts over the bridge of his caved-in nose and falls to stain his boots. He sways, then drops, unblinking. The earth tremors. Inside the ruined bone, jagged shards of ice melt.

His companions scamper behind the body of trees, blundering footwork tripping them, and they squash their backs against the moss. Eyes glow behind the creepers. The jaguar vaults. Claws sink into chest cavities as easily as a bone knife slices through a slab of butter.

A final survivor crawls through the undergrowth. One limp arm trails deadweight behind in the leaves. He rakes himself forward, fingers gouging into the dirt as he seizes the length of a spear wedged in a tree stump.

The crook curls into himself, one good hand gripping the spear while the other turns grey. Blood curdles in the open fracture. Mangled fingers twitch at odd angles as the nerves die. He stares at a deflated lung that hangs over his friend’s belly. The jaguar crinkles a lip. Saliva drips from his muzzle into the open chest. It trickles between individual ribs.

Chaëlle slingshots from the evergreen. Pine needles rain as confetti over the forest. As the man lunges at the animal, she launches onto his back like a tundra flower trap. Vertebrae crunch. The spear falls. His spine folds like paper. He shrieks once as bones crack. The splintering splits through the woods. Then, silence.

She rolls off the warm body and it sighs. Skeletal shards poke out of the doughy flesh. Slick sweat collects on her brow. Breaths rasp like gusts of air blasting through a drain grate.

Paws pad through the snow. The predator adjusts his ears toward the wheezes, hackles flattened. His pink nostrils flare above a lolling tongue.

Play dead. The command breaks into her mind. It is her mother’s voice. Not the gentle, honey-soaked tone. The hoarse, sleep-deprived holler. Crisp with fear.

Chaëlle tilts her cheek to the snow and lets her limbs slump. The feline shadow spills over her. His tail swishes, skimming her boots. Tears roll down her cheeks. She holds her breath until her chest is still.

The young beast bats a thread on her trousers. His whiskers tremor as he pushes a paw pad against her thigh. He traces the wet tip of his nose towards her chin until he stands astride her. Intestinal mucus seeps from his fur, absorbing into the fabric of her hood. The barb of his claws lies inches from her eyeballs. If only they weren’t so delicate… why do the spirits bless us with such fragile bodies? Her mother used to say: pain has purpose.

A velveteen forehead nuzzles into the gap beneath her chin. Liver sullies the breath tickling her neck. Fat and sinew hang from his teeth. Her muscles tighten at his body heat. One finger flinches. He circles, mouth ajar and panting. The tip of his pink tongue pokes out. Frostnip bites her fingers, now numb as useless stubs. She raises her gaze to meet the beast.

His eyes are olive-green, pearled like sea glass, catching the sullen light. He leans away, studying her, head tilted like a question.

Chaëlle pushes herself up, taking time to be slow. She rolls her shoulders and stretches her neck with a crackle. The shadow cat jumps, tail flicking, and emits a low rumble. She wags a finger and shushes.

‘Be grateful.’

The growl turns to a quiet spit.

‘Hush.’

Silence.

‘Good. Don’t eat me.’

He hisses.

‘Please.’

More hissing.

‘Manners.’

He chuffs.

She tugs the sodden gloves over her inflamed fingers and ignores the burns as she dusts herself down.

Then, snatching a handful of the tarp, she veils the bodies. Only when she walks to the front of the cart, does the jaguar paw at an exposed antler. He folds his ears and caterwauls at the mass grave.

The cart weighs over half a ton. Only a pulley system can move it from the thicket. Chaëlle uses tools from the dead men’s packs and sledge. She lashes reins and chains around the biggest tree trunks. With a pickaxe, she digs out the wheels and hacks grooves for them to follow.

The trail of the poachers leads into a clearing. She retraces them to scout the risk.

‘Why did they—’ Her foot steps and falls through a leafy net. She almost tumbles into a hidden pitfall but tosses her arms back and directs her weight to the other foot. ‘Close one.’

After uncovering the trap, she finds it empty. Any dry branches Chaëlle can find, she throws into the pitfall.

The jaguar glares from behind a bowing maple, dark patches of fur visible between the crimson leaves.

She hitches herself to the crude pulley. It is a twenty-foot tow to haul the sledge into the glade, but with each lurch, the ropes saw into her arms, chew through her tunic, and bury deeper into her flesh. Chains pinch at her skin. It feels as if her limbs will be torn off. Sweat like vinegar steeps in her armpits and the creases behind her knees. A final stride drags the cart with all its burden of bone and fur on top of the sticks in the pitfall with a whump, and she collapses face-first into the snow.

Once the burning in her cheeks stops, Chaëlle sits up. She flicks her switchblade, usually nestled in her boot, and begins to loosen the ground beneath the cart by stabbing the dirt. The red oak tree has limbs poised outstretched—like the wingspan of a phoenix—against the crowd of pine and bare aspen.

Slipping her charcloth, flint, and steel from a pocket in her pack, she tears the cloth into strips at the edge of the trap. Then, she takes the flint and holds it in her left hand, pressing the cloth on top with her thumb. With her right hand she grasps the steel which curves over her knuckles.

The firesteel strikes against the flint. Its glancing blow is not forceful. Tiny shavings of steel are sheared off. They spark against the charcloth. Chaëlle folds it into a tinder nest and blows against the kindling until it lights. Fire licks the wheel and the cart slowly cremates.

Kava is not at the meeting point. Bark digs into Chaëlle’s back. Splinters prick her palms into pincushions. She straddles the bough and leans against the trunk. Noon passes.

The jaguar has trailed her here. He is stowed away out of sight, up in the canopy or beneath the undergrowth. She doesn’t know which. Along the horizon, the sun sails west. A blood sister is never late. Any moment now, that round face should pop out of a bird’s nest or slip from behind the willow leaves. Chaëlle checks the hollow of their favourite tree, patting deep inside the pith.

No offering or note.

A sign marks the border, where the North thaws, the post buried beneath the clay. Snowdrops burst through slush. Petals glazed in dew. Washed-out paint spells in capitals: MAGNUSHIRE.

Beside it, a new flag snaps like a whip in the wind. The unsullied canvas bears fresh gold stitches: a sharp-beaked eagle perched atop a bundle of rods. Fabric bends and creases under gusts. An axe-blade juts from the side of the crest, catching dull daylight. Bootprints cut a clear path across the boundary, leading straight into Aksala.

Crystal dusts the wind caressing her shoulder. A sting of peppermint aroma haunts her with thoughts of her mother.

Danger.

‘To me, or you, Mother?’

The Crippled Mountains slope behind the clouds. Sleet rains down onto the plateau. She scrambles higher, immersed in a fog that pastes her knotted hair to her neck. The air is thin with moisture. For half a league, the jaguar skulks after. If she turns around, he veers to eclipse himself behind skeletons of trees and glacial rocks.

On the steep Aksic slopes, the animal cannot stay hidden. Chaëlle hoists her body weight up the shrinking ridges. Slate breaks, falls, and smashes with an echo. Her biceps burn. She jams her feet into rifts in the stone. The support strains her toes. Her mummified chest tightens, every breath a struggle against the binding. A ledge above the halfway point—a wobbling shack of tin and rot with holes through the thin roof—teases her legs as they seesaw under her hips.

She sips from the thermal flask and pulls rations from her pack. Dried plum and duck remain. She slides the meat to her new friend. He hunches away from her on the opposite edge of the ridge.

‘I’ll call you Ohanko.’

The jaguar observes her with heavy eyes and snatches the meat.

‘It means reckless.’

Echocrest, home of the Taekh’Va, slumbers in the cradle of mountains, unreachable except by crossing the jagged spine that splits the sky in two. Chaëlle trudges across its angular shoulder, legs laden, vision bleary. Ohanko prances through snowdrifts and darts behind frozen brambles; he is an elusive shadow that she can’t shake. Every so often, she catches a flash of luminous eyes watching.

Hours disappear. The descent comes fast, sharp. Cramps grip her joints like manacles. She slides over ice patches, breath ragged in the thinning air. The beast pauses on a slope, one paw mid-step, frozen like the ice figurines she used to carve as a child. He watches. Waiting. Daring.

The Silver Flatlands span into silence. Iglulik’s outpost is burrowed there—her kin, her people. But something is wrong.

There is no smoke. No laughter. No clack of tools or barking sledge dogs.

The village is dead.

Snow lies heavy and untouched where it should be grooved by runners and boots. The watchman’s chair is knocked on its side, spindles fractured like bones. Igloos slouch inward, collapsing under some invisible weight. Near the outskirts, scorched fire pits still smoke, embers choking in ash. Fish skin clings to half-chewed bones. Dog bowls are empty.

The scent comes first—charred hair, roasted fat, human entrails. It hits her throat like a fist, making her stumble. She pulls her collar up too late. The wind veers, dragging the smell through her lungs. She gags, retches, and swallows it whole.

Domes crumble; crater-sized holes drip where bedding had been set aflame. Feathers swirl in the breeze. Tracks are gouged into the ice, edges razor-cut, heading south in a surge. Glancing back over the ridge, Chaëlle understands why: towering against the sky was the column of oily black smoke from the supply cart she had torched hours ago. To the raiders, that pillar of fire looked like the signal flares of an approaching war party.

Snow is blackened. She steps into the old prints left behind. A totem pole stands as a memorial, chipped and slanted. The hacked wings of Father Thunderbird rest at the base, partly submerged in red-packed slush. Brother Fox weeps icicles from carved eyes.

She moves faster.

The corpses begin with shadows—slumped forms in contorted angles. Then details emerge: scalps shorn, tombstone bodies, glass marble eyes, and fingers burnt down to bone. Intestines twist through snowbanks like discarded rope. A child facedown, no hands, head encircled by an incomplete ring of teeth like a wreath.

Hot tears. Acid rises in her stomach. Unable to breathe. Chest constricting against the tight linen cage.

At the centre of it all sits the jaguar, perched upon an ice block like a sentinel carved in obsidian. He cocks his heavy head, eyes locking with hers, and, with calculated grace, leaps down. Chaëlle meets him, quivering, and leans on his shoulder. She clings to his body heat, fingers ravelled in his fur. He matches the dragging pace as she treads in baby steps. His silent presence is steadying.

They walk the killing ground together.

The place is home but unlike home. A lair. Dominoes of cadavers where she searches for just two.

In the ruins, she finds her mother—head backwards, hair shaved to stubble, mouth agape, bloody pits where ears had been, and her thumbs are all that remains of her hands. She stares, eternally, at her husband.

A morningstar’s spikes puncture his belly, the head caught in coils of intestines. His lower jaw, only half-pried from the skull, hangs at an angle—iron wedge still jammed into the joint, left abandoned mid-strike. Tongue dangling like a strip of leather. A cruel finality: his own genitals sawn off and forced down his throat.

Dizziness fogs her with double vision. A scream catches in her throat, suffocating on bile, on grief, on rage. She doubles over with cramps, vomit scalding her mouth. Residue sours. The image will not wash away.

She wipes the bitterness from her lips with the back of her glove.

Ohanko brushes her hand with his head.

She braces for one last look at what has been lost.

This is no raid.

This is a message.

Chaëlle hears it loud and clear.

Something grunts behind.

‘Missed one.’ An unrecognisable accent jars. Blonde hair sticks out of the edges of his hood. He cradles a weighted tube of metal and wood in his arms.

But it is the belt at his waist that draws her eye. Slotted through a stolen loop is her father’s blade. The smoky steel is Taekhi-made, and the amber stone in the pommel glints in the torchlight like a preserved flame, mocking her from the soldier’s hip. The featherlike talons of the crossguard brush against the man’s bloodied uniform.

As he steps closer, he points the device’s mouth at her teeth. Even with five paces between them, his breath travels downwind. It reeks of stale cigars. Chaëlle takes a step back, pinching her nose with one hand, the other dropping to her crossbow.

The man chuckles. He hacks up a mouthful of phlegm and spits it at her feet. She stares motionless as he approaches and puts his mouth to her ear. The hairs on his beard scratch her skin.

‘You never seen one of these, have you?’ He grabs her arm to yank her back toward him. ‘This one’s a beauty. Rifle with a bayonet. Best gun money can buy.’

His vice-grip crushes her wrist. Chaëlle doesn’t fight the pull; she leans into it. His chest smacks against her shoulder. Hidden underneath the drape of her oversized coat, her free hand skims his waist, fingers finding the pommel. It is warm, as if the stone remembers her. With a ghost-touch, she eases the sword from his belt.

Chaëlle thrashes, the heavy weight of the weapon slides free and vanishes into the churned, knee-deep snow between them.

He grins, unable to feel the weight leave his hip. His other hand has a finger on a trigger, barrel now pointed skyward, ready for a demonstration. He squeezes. It creaks, snaps, then, it explodes.

Air ruptures with a lightning strike of noise. Sparks pop. Ohanko yelps, ears flat and spine arched. He squats, ears flat, pupils dilated into black holes as they search for cover. They settle on the rippling caribou hide of a torn tepee. He skids under the fabric, eyes like two fireflies.

The man rests the butt of the gun against his foot and the muzzle against his sternum. Metal of a knife flashes as he whips one from his belt. She rolls to one side, but not fast enough. His meaty hand hauls her and holds her still as he presses the blade against the flesh of her cheek.

She squirms, a mere mealworm wriggling in his grip. As she claws at fabric, skin, and snow, her foot kicks the entombed sword further away, deeper into the drift.

The knife’s honed edge is held against her throat. Chaëlle thrashes, wild. Bruises stain the pale skin of her neck as the fragile flesh splits. She claws at fabric, skin, snow… The tip of the knife flicks down. It cuts below her eye socket and drags to the jawline, blood pooling in the hollowed dent of her face as she rips herself away.

The soldier stands up and chuckles. ‘Some spirit, kid. But we gotta build the world up. Means demolishing it first.’

He bites open a paper cartridge containing powder and a stone ball. Then, he dribbles the powder into the priming pan and clicks the frizzen shut. Flint strikes the plate. He draws the ramrod from under the barrel, inserts the powder and ball into the muzzle. The paper cartridge is wadding, stuffed in last. He clips the safety off.

She careens to the steps behind him and trips. He draws back the hammer. The jaws hold a flint. He pulls the trigger. The hammer falls. Flint pounds steel. The powder-filled flash-pan flashes. A brief pause. It ignites.

A charge fires.

The first round stone shot tears through the air. It strikes the steel of the sword lying in the slush with a high-pitched ping. Sparks spray. The blade spins further downhill.

But he reloads.

A second shot rips into the hide of her coat and linen undershirt. It misses the flesh by an inch. She shrieks. The ammunition sears like a hot poker pushed right past her side.

Lightheadedness thrusts her forward, tumbling down a foothill. The tear in her cheek sprays and blood stains snow as she whirls. Specks contort her sight. The soldier reloads. He follows, kicking up slush. She belly-crawls through sleet. Ice chips. Salted tears sting her chewed lips.

Another blast rips from the gun, burying itself in the ice next to her. Shards splinter. Shooting pain runs down her leg. Her face slaps against the path. Frost glitters.

A laugh comes from above.

‘Plucky.’

The earth spins. Chaëlle shuts her eyes trying to forget the man’s face: trenched wrinkles of crow’s feet, sawtooth birthmark across the chin, and rows of gilded badges stitched to his jacket. Twelve that she counted, beneath three medals. His breast plate embossed with a lone, downward striking axe-head. Southern military.

A roar bellows. Chaëlle lifts her head and opens a blurry eye. The jaguar yearling flings himself from a ledge at the soldier. He claws the neck into strips, coils his body around the soldier’s ribcage, and wrangles him to the ground. The rifle explodes.

‘Oh-an-ko,’ she croaks.

Blood puddles in the curve of her back. Her hands search for fur through the snow. Blind like a mole, burrowing through the sleet.

It begins in the white stillness of sleep. Not silence—stillness. Stillness that sinks beneath bone. Stillness without warmth, without breath, without memory. Chaëlle stands in snow but the sensation is like sinking into sand.

She does not panic. Panic belongs to first-timers.

Each step crunches like ice, but the wind carries dry desert heat. The dream can’t decide where she belongs.

Above her, the sky is wrong—green fire dances across a northern firmament, while snowflakes rise instead of fall.

Layers crossing. Someone’s bleeding through.

Her skin prickles with sunburn. Her breath doesn’t steam.

She turns—and there’s a lake. Black as oil, ringed by glassy stone. Heatwaves pulse from the surface, but the water is motionless.

Something tugs at the edge of the dream. Not a shape. A pressure.

A mind moving without knowing how to step. Too loud. Too earnest. Too stubborn to fall back asleep.

At the far edge stands a woman. A braid snakes down her back, tangled and matted. Her coat is scorched. One hem smoulders. Something inside Chaëlle knows her. Without logic. Without name. She opens her mouth to speak, but her own voice doesn’t come.

Instead, an alien scent of dry sandalwood and baked stone hits. For a fractured moment, she isn’t standing in the snow; she’s sitting on a sun-warmed parapet, a heavy brass telescope cool against her palm. The phantom weight of it is so real that her thumb twitches to adjust a focus dial that is not there.

Then a voice escapes her throat.

But it is not hers.

‘Amma? Solæ?’

The name rolls across the lake like a whisper through leaves. Male. Unfamiliar.

Wrong.

It grips her spine like a tether.

The dream folds as she turns toward the sound.

She lets it.

She is the woman now.The braid brushes against her shoulder as she moves. Heat from the singed hem warms her thigh. She feels herself, as if from the outside.

The Road ripples with the static of green fire above, sputtering through the connection. A different name rises from the black water of the lake, vibrating through Chaëlle’s tongue even though she has never heard the sounds before.

‘Avelæ,’ she answers, voice lilting and layered with the echo of a palace hall she’s never seen. ‘And you are the stranger.’ Her mouth moves without command.

Across the lake, a boy stands in shifting sand. His skin gleams with sweat and frost. His face flickers. Pale one moment, sun-dark the next.

‘You’re a ghost,’ he says. ‘This isn’t real.’

‘You will make it real,’ she hears herself say. Her voice is deeper now, older. The words are smoke.

You’re walking blind, she thinks. But you didn’t turn back.

The lake shatters, not with sound, but with vision. The surface becomes a mirror. It flashes.

A bleeding moon. A silver stag, obsidian arrows almost piercing its coat, collapses mid-leap. A boy who wields a blade of bone, soaked in moonlight. A girl with soot-stained skin and wild eyes, holding a burning branch aloft, its fire flickering violet. A jaguar, regal and wounded, dripping stars from an empty eye socket.

She tries to cry out for Ohanko, but the vision yanks her downward like a river rapid pulling her under. The Road does not like being followed.

Chaëlle tenses. Waking hurts more after company.

The mirror cracks. Darkness floods in. Searing heat burns through her chest. A sudden, crushing grief for a mother she barely remembers.

She awakes with the taste of desert dust and a strange word—amma—on her tongue.