You sat stiff in the saddle, even at a walk. The hilt of your sword was wood wrapped with leather, undecorated. You had cut your hair close to your scalp, a single arm ring and the haft of the knife at your side the only gold on you, your trousers, shirt, boots, and cloak solid and sturdy, all dull greens and browns. Slight, and shorter than Mawat-it would be a wonder if you were not, the residents of the fortress in Vastai eat so much better, and so much more regularly than the peasant farmers who were your likely origins. Mawat-and Vastai-I knew, but I had not seen you before, and so I looked closely. The white stone buildings and more numerous ships of the city of Ard Vusktia were just visible on the far side of the strait. Gulls coasted over the few bare-masted ships in the harbor beside the fortress, and over the gray water beyond, flecked white with the wind, and here and there a sail. On the landward side of the wall sat a town’s worth of buildings interrupted by a bank and ditch. He was smiling vaguely, saying something to you, but his eyes were on the fortress of Vastai on its small peninsula, still some twelve miles off: some two- and three-story buildings surrounded by a pale yellow limestone wall, the ends of which met at a round tower at the edge of the sea. You rode beside Mawat, himself a familiar sight to me: tall, broad-shouldered, long hair in dozens of braids pulled back in a broad ring, feathers worked in repoussé on gold, his dark gray cloak lined with blue silk. I first saw you when you rode out of the forest, past the cluster of tall, bulge-eyed offering stakes that mark the edges of the forest, your horse at a walk.

The raven tower by ann leckie