Dragon's Winter by Elizabeth A. Lynn

the man went by her cage, she lunged upward, throwing herself against the icy bars with a cracked, demented roar.
    The man in the last cage was naked, slimed with his own waste, and very thin. He lay on his side, knees drawn up. A crust of bread lay at his feet. His sides were scarred with whip-marks. “Azil,” the standing man said, “I know you’re awake. Look at me.” The captive opened his eyes. “I’m sure you missed my company. It must be lonely here. Are you bored with the silence yet?” The man in the cage did not answer. “You know, you could be warm. Even the slaves have coal fires, and fur. That would feel good, so good, the warmth and softness of fur against your bruised skin. You have been cold for so long. Cold hurts. Tell me it hurts. Say it.”
    Resolutely, despairingly, the caged man shook his head, and was silent.
    “Traitor,” purred the man outside the cage. “Damn your stubborn soul! You will speak, you know.” He picked up a short-thonged leather whip. He ran the three tails through his fingers. “Get him out,” he snarled at the man beside the door. The cage door swung open by itself. Gingerly the slave dragged the unresisting prisoner through the narrow entrance, and backed away. The man with the whip snaked the thongs very lightly, caressingly, across the other’s battered ribs. Then he brought it down hard. Azil gasped. “That’s better,” Tenjiro Atani whispered. His eyes were hollow with the darkness. “Sing, traitor.”
     
     

 
     
    PART TWO
     
     

 
     
     
    5
     
     
    In the city of Mako a woman gazed into a puddle of water as if looking into a mirror.
    She saw: a small child curled in a dirty blanket, sleeping; a man, dark hair tipped with silver, lying mortally wounded; a red hawk flying in a mist; a man with shattered hands shivering in a snow bank; an icy field, strewn with bodies of the wounded living and the broken dead.
    Last she saw a man. He was fair-skinned, fair-haired, with eyes that should have blazed blue in a young and vital face. But the face was haggard, aged beyond its natural time, and the eyes were deep, deep black, welling with a destructive and malevolent darkness.
    She slapped at the image, and it shattered. Water filmed her hand.
    She rolled to sit, clenching her teeth against the ache in her joints. Even with the heavy blanket she had wrapped around her like a winding sheet, the August nights were ridiculously cold. She wiped her wet hand on the dirty wool. The sky was thick with clouds, but beyond the clouds lay darkness. Her stomach growled. She was hungry, though she had eaten meat that night, the bottom round of a merchant’s dinner, thrown out as scraps for the dogs. No one in the fine house on Aspen Street had seen a beggar woman crouched near the back gate, and no dog living could cow her; they had not even barked, only slunk aside whining, and the bitch had licked her hand.
    The streets were stirring; a wagon creaked along the road, pulled by a balky mule. Haggard features slid stealthily into her mind, between clip and clop, heartbeat and heartbeat. Ignoring them, the beggar woman rolled her blanket, tied it with heavy twine kept for the purpose, and slung it on her back. Pulling her black stick from its place against the wall, she levered herself to her feet.
    At the House of White Flowers on Plumeria Street, two doors down from the Temple of the Moon, the girls were still asleep, but the cooks were up, grumbling over their pots. She banged on the door till it opened.
    Kira the head cook brought her half a loaf and honey in a crock.
    “A cold night,” Kira said. “A bad night to be sleeping on the street. It’s been strange weather for August. Did you eat last evening?”
    She grunted assent. As she lifted the bread, the crust warm in her hands, she saw a dead woman lying in snow. Beside her lay the man with silver-tipped hair, his red belly ragged and wet. She growled like a dog at the image. It vanished.
    Kira said, “What is