Tears of Frost

by Bree Barton

  Zai rubbed his hands together. “Would you like some tea while we wait? It’s very rich, brewed with licorice milk. Delicious.”

  For a moment, Mia wished she could tell Zai the truth. What a relief it would be to confess all the things she’d lost: the sweet scent of blackthorn blossoms; the sharp bite of burnt sugar on lemon custard; the soft, buttery rush of a warm kiss that sent pleasant chills cascading down your spine. She’d only experienced one kiss like that: the night with Quin in the river.

  But Mia couldn’t tell Zai these things. He was a stranger. More than that, he so clearly lived in his body. How could she ever explain her brokenness to a boy like that?

  “No thank you,” she said. “I don’t drink much tea.”

  Zai’s gaze was steady. Almost as if he were staring into her, not at her. The words circled through her skull. Wavy red hair. Hazel eyes. Zai owned an alehouse; he knew his way around the town and harbor. He might have valuable information. Why couldn’t she ask the question?

  But she knew why. She felt small and pathetic, hopelessly vulnerable. For some reason, she cared what this stranger thought. She didn’t want Zai to see her as a sniveling little girl looking for her mummy.

  So for the first time since arriving in White Lagoon, she bit back the words.

  “Can I show you something?” Zai said, his eyes shining.

  “That all depends,” she said.

  But when he held out his hand, she took it.

  Chapter 12

  Devil

  ZAI LED MIA ONTO the deck, running his broad hands over the railing. She could tell how much he loved this boat.

  They descended three steps, where he stood proudly beside a metal hatch. He opened it to reveal a burnished silver box. Arranged in neat rows were a dozen shimmering stones cut like teardrops and glowing a stunning shade of mauve.

  “Fyre ice,” he explained, beaming. “A clean source of fuel, freshly installed last week. My boat is one of the first to have it.”

  “I see you’re just as smitten with fyre ice as everyone else.”

  He was silent a moment, appraising her. “Do you know the history of the snow kingdom, Raven? The true history?”

  “To be honest, history was never my best subject.”

  “We use fyre ice for everything. Ever since the first pits were discovered by the Addi, the stones have provided heat and light.”

  “The Addi?”

  Zai frowned. “The Addi are indigenous to the snow kingdom. We’ve lived here for ten thousand years, before the ice bridges melted. Surely you know this much from your time in White Lagoon?”

  She flushed. “Right, of course. I’ve seen the costumes.” She shouldn’t have said costumes, it sounded like she thought they were playacting. “The garments, I mean. The red ones with the high metal collars? They’re beautiful. And the soft quilted belts! Not to mention the buttons . . .”

  Mia was babbling. She took a breath.

  “I’m sorry. I just . . . I didn’t know they—you—had a different name.”

  “The Addi aren’t one people. We don’t all herd reinsdyr—there are ocean Addi, forest Addi, snow Addi. Today many of us come to towns and cities to find work, like me. But for the majority of the last ten thousand years, the Addi have lived off the land. That only changed when the Glasddirans came down from the river kingdom three hundred years ago.”

  “The early settlers!” Mia said. She remembered that much from her father’s history lessons, the way he moved walnut shells south from Glas Ddir to represent the ships sailing across Dead Man’s Strait into Luumia. “They brought food, livestock, and timber, right?”

  “Yes.” Zai studied her. “They also brought weapons and disease.”

  Mia didn’t need to feel heat to know her cheeks were burning. Her father had taught her and Angelyne a different version of events. He’d told them how, three hundred years ago, the Glasddirans settled Luumia in peace, warmly welcomed by the indigenous peoples.

  Which was absurd, now that she thought about it.

  “There are ten different languages among the Addi,” Zai said, “but three of them share a word for snow. Luum. The colonizers picked and chose what they liked from our culture. They stitched together pieces of our language and beliefs into a quilt that suited them—and discarded the rest. But they liked the word luum. So Luumia was born on all official maps.”

  “What do you call it?” Mia asked. “The true name, I mean.”

  Zai’s distinctive smile crept back, sad around the edges. “Luum’Addi. We are given snow.”

  Mia could still hear Pilar’s voice in her head. There’s so much you don’t know. And you’re trying so hard to know everything.

  Zai turned toward the boat’s nautical window, pointing to the vast expanse of snowy tundra to the southwest.

  “My family lives in Kom’Addi, a reinsdyr herding community in the heartlands. It’s three days’ journey by boat, another three by foot. It’s a self-sufficient community, but isolated. Fyre ice allowed my ancestors to cook and preserve food, to build kabmas and heal our sick. It was how we survived the long winters. But we were always careful not to use more than we needed.”

  Zai’s eyes narrowed. “When the colonizers came, they wanted our land. Sometimes they traded for it. Sometimes they took it and gave nothing in return. They turned the pits into quarries so they could mine fyre ice in large quantities. They used it to build port towns and cities, to provide heat and light. The royal family in Valavïk demanded an infinite supply of fyre ice to fuel their excesses.”

  Zai shook his head.

  “Fyre ice was not infinite. I was just a baby when the Luumi gutted the last of the mines. People suffered all over the snow kingdom—in the cities, towns, and villages. But people in places like Kom’Addi suffered most.

  “By then the Addi were no longer self-sufficient. The Luumi had established trade routes where they exchanged many of our goods: pelts, reinsdyr skins, tools for building kabmas—and fyre ice, of course. We relied on the traders. Our debts ran deep. We had become dependent on other kingdoms to survive.”

  “Kingdoms like mine,” Mia said.

  “Exactly. Glas Ddir was our closest neighbor.”

  He locked eyes on her. “When King Ronan seized the throne and closed the borders of the river kingdom twenty years ago, he dealt the final blow.”

  “Don’t worry,” she muttered. “Ronan was no particular friend of mine.”

  “He caused the perfect storm. With the fyre ice pits newly emptied and trade routes destroyed, thousands of people died from cold, sickness, and starvation. Addi and Luumi alike. Some in my own family.”

  Something in his expression told Mia he didn’t want or need her sympathy.

  “Ronan caused so much pain,” she said, her voice quiet.

  Zai folded his arms over his chest. “You came to Luum’Addi at an interesting time, Raven. The queen’s uncle has discovered a new variant of fyre ice, one with a thousand times more power. The new pits are close to where my family lives in Kom’Addi. The Grand Fyremaster has returned to us what was taken: a way to harness our natural source of power.”

  “I was taught that magic comes from an imbalance of power,” she said. “Doesn’t that mean something terrible had to happen for the gemstones to be imbued with magic?”

  “There are different kinds of imbalances. Long before humans vied for power, the natural world did. Volqanoes spewed lava over the earth. The ocean smashed rocks into sand. Fire lay whole forests to waste, aided by the wind. And don’t forget animals. Beasts have never shown mercy to other beasts, at least not when their survival is at stake.”

  Zai gestured toward the heartlands. “People often misunderstand our way of life. They assume that, since many of us herd reinsdyr and live off the land, we believe in the perfect peace and harmony of nature. But the physical world is violent. It always was and always will be.”

  Mia thought of the violence in her sister. Three years of turbulent waters brewing benea
th a calm facade. Now poor Quin was drowning, helpless against the deluge.

  “I suppose it’s only natural that Dujia can be violent, too,” she said.

  “Dujia?” Zai’s face was blank. “Is that a Glasddiran term?”

  “Oh, of course—you call women with magic witches.”

  “No. Not witches. That’s just how Græÿa has been recast.” He let out his breath. “We call them women. It’s not as if their magic makes them other than human.”

  Mia almost laughed. Not at him, but at how different life would be if everyone believed this. If King Ronan had shared this belief, thousands of innocent lives might have been spared. One side saw the Dujia as demons, the other as angels. Why couldn’t they just be women?

  “In Luum’Addi,” Zai said, “having magic is like having a nice boat or a healthy herd of reinsdyr. Something to be admired.”

  He closed the hatch, sealing in the luminous violet stones. Absently Mia brushed her hands on her trousers—and hit the carved frostflower in her pocket. Zai’s voice was so pleasant she’d almost forgotten why she came. How long had they been waiting for Zai’s ingineer friend?

  Her nerves jangled. The better question was: How long would she let Quin suffer at the hands of Angelyne? She’d sworn to save him, yet there she was, whiling away the morning on a strange boy’s boat.

  Zai seemed to sense her mind wandering.

  “I didn’t mean to bore you. I should note that things are better than they’ve been in years. Today many Addi and Luumi work together, marry, have children. The late Snow Queen was Luumi, but she fell in love with a boy from Kom’Addi, and the fact that they were able to marry and raise a daughter shows you how far we’ve come.”

  “Their daughter is the Snow Queen?”

  He nodded. “For the first time in three hundred years, someone like me sits on the snow throne.”

  Zai cracked his neck and a lock of black hair came loose from the leather band. It suited him.

  “The Grand Fyremaster has gone to great lengths to make amends to the Addi. The queen’s uncle has found ways to cure the very illnesses the Luumi once brought to our shores.”

  Mia heard a subtle shift in his tone, a tightening. There was more he wasn’t saying.

  “If Lord Dove is the late queen’s brother,” she said, “doesn’t that mean he descended from the colonizers?”

  Zai looked uncomfortable. “Dove works hard to rewrite his ancestors’ legacy. Though you’re right. Some things aren’t so easily undone.”

  Before she could ask which things, he pressed on.

  “Today many Addi call themselves Luumi. It’s no surprise you haven’t heard our true history. But some of us try to hold on to our culture, which can be hard to do.”

  “Like the barmaid at your alehouse,” Mia said. “The one wearing the traditional dress.”

  He nodded. “It’s called a gohki. And yes. I try to hire Addi where I can.”

  “This is probably an ignorant question”—Mia took a breath—“but isn’t your barmaid blond?”

  “Some of us are fair-skinned. Some of us aren’t. My grandfather was full Addi with blond hair and green eyes, whereas I’m dark like my mother. It isn’t about the way you look. When you’re Addi, there’s a knowing in your bones.” He tapped his chest. “In your heart.”

  “Zai!”

  A girl’s voice was calling from the dock. “You coming, or aren’t you?”

  “Don’t keep our asses waiting on the ale!” came another, deeper voice.

  Zai’s smile bloomed. A full smile this time. “There they are, right on schedule. My merry friends.”

  Mia’s pulse ratcheted up. “The ingineer?”

  “That’s Ville, yes. But I should tell you—today is Ville’s one day off. He’ll be far more talkative if you ply him with some ale first. Once he gets going? Believe me, you’ll wish he would shut up.”

  “I’ll buy him an ale,” she said, fervently hoping her two silver coins would be enough. “Whatever he needs.”

  “You’ll come with us, then?”

  Mia blinked, confused. “Come with you . . .”

  “To the lagoon.”

  Her heart sank. She hadn’t understood that part of the arrangement. She had only two silver coins: forty-eight short of what she’d need to enter the White Lagoon.

  “The owner is a family friend,” Zai said, reading her hesitance correctly. “He lets us in for free.”

  “Zai, you scoundrel! Who’s your lady?”

  A boy about Mia’s age with a round face and even rounder belly stood on the pier, a striped purple-and-silver Jyöl scarf tied loosely around his neck. He had the lightest skin of any Luumi she had met. But despite his fair complexion and silvery-blond hair, his hooded eyes were a dark shade of brown—and utterly alive with merriment.

  Mia caught herself staring at the exact moment he did. The boy grinned.

  “I know, I know.” He slicked back his spiky silver hair. “You’re smitten by my good looks. I am the fine product of a love affair between two great tribes, both devastatingly attractive. Much like our lady queen.” He winked. “No relation.”

  The tall, shapely girl at his side snorted. “As if there would be any relation between you and the queen, Ville!”

  If Ville had the palest skin Mia had seen in White Lagoon, this girl had the darkest: a deep ebony brown with cool, sapphire undertones. She wore skin greases on her cheeks and eyes, dusky blues and plums glimmering like twilight. Her thin black braids were long enough to graze her curvy hips, and her lacy peach bodice hugged a figure so womanly Mia felt childish by comparison.

  “Hello and welcome, greetings! Good Jyöl, Zai’s new friend.” The girl’s voice was low and rich, but she spoke at a rapid clip, with just the slightest hint of a Pembuka accent. “I’m Nelladinellakin. That’s an impossible name, believe me, I know. You can call me Nelladine, or just plain Nell.”

  Mia stepped onto the quay as Zai locked the door behind them.

  “Raven, friends. Friends, Raven. She’s coming with us to the lagoon.”

  “Pretty name!” Nell smiled warmly. “You’re pretty, too, so it suits you.”

  “My name is really pretty too, you know,” said Ville. “No one ever says it right, so let me give you a primer. Vee. Lay. Vee as in the letter. Lay as in . . .” He lobbed another wink at Mia. “You can figure out the rest.”

  Nell groaned. “Ville, you are atrocious. I refuse to acknowledge your existence. Consider this my official notice that I am no longer your friend.”

  Ville seemed unflustered by the pronouncement. He grinned at Mia, then at Zai.

  “So, you devil. Where’s the ale?”

  Chapter 13

  Exposed

  THE ACTUAL LAGOON OF White Lagoon was an hour west of the port. A booming carriage business had sprung up, in which visitors doled out exorbitant sums to be ferried to and fro. Enterprising Luumi guides decorated their carriages to reflect popular Jyöltide themes: “Græÿa’s Ghost” was a crowd favorite—a bony skeleton swung from the canopy—and “The Grand Fyremaster’s Laboratory” boasted bubbling glass beakers tilting dangerously on the roof.

  Mia caught Zai eyeing them with grim disdain. But he did stop to admire a plain, boxy carriage that seemed to run of its own accord, ejecting puffs of purple smoke from a pipe at the rear. A small crowd of onlookers had gathered to gape and murmur.

  Something about the carriage unnerved Mia.

  “What a beauty,” Ville said, walking toward it in a kind of daze.

  “Fyre ice strikes again,” Nell muttered. “He’s obsessed.” She waved her hands overhead. “Hello! We’re headed to the lagoon, remember?”

  The boys shuffled back, properly chastised.

  Mia was grateful. She realized why she didn’t like the boxy carriage: it reminded her of the wooden box.

  In the end, Zai procured a simple wagon with two white reinsdyr. When he took the reins, Nelladine swung herself up beside him, leaving Mia and Ville wedged togethe
r in the back.

  As they jostled over the cobblestones, Mia tried her best not to bombard Ville with questions about the compass. Wait for the ale, she told herself. You’ve only just met.

  After months of searching in vain for her mother, what difference did one hour make?

  Meanwhile, Nell gushed excitedly to Zai about a new kind of clay. From what Mia could gather, Nelladine was a potter who sold bowls and tankards to the various alehouses in White Lagoon.

  “They call it firesand; isn’t that pretty? It’s stoneware clay so the specks bleed through the glaze and leave a shiny black patina on the piece, just gorgeous! You’ll love it, Zai.”

  “I run an alehouse, not an art gallery. Are the mugs sturdy?”

  “What do you take me for? Of course they’re sturdy. Firesand cracks and warps so much less, only one out of five pieces blows apart in the kiln!”

  “Will you cut me a deal if I buy in bulk?”

  “Zai K’aliloa!” Nell shoved him playfully. “You’re a brazen thief. Always taking advantage of my generosity.”

  Nell was an artisan with her own thriving pottery trade; Zai owned a houseboat and an alehouse. What did Mia have to show for herself? Two coins, a compass, and a missing mother?

  The easy intimacy between Zai and Nelladine planted a question in her mind. Surely these two shared more than just an interest in clay bowls.

  And then there was Ville, who had zero interest in bowls, clay or otherwise.

  “Is your hair naturally that color?” he said, leaning into Mia.

  “I don’t tint it.”

  “Good Græÿa.” He whistled low. “In Luumia everyone’s hair is either black or white. I feel like I’ve been colorblind my entire life . . . until you walked into it.”

  Mia had yet to meet a boy who laid it on quite so thick. If they’d been in an alehouse, she might have lit him on fire. But she needed his help.

  “Ville’s a bit of a rogue, in case you couldn’t tell,” Nell said over her shoulder. “You can probably tell! So, Raven. Where do you come from? I mean, Glas Ddir, obviously. I meant more specifically where do you come from in Glas Ddir?”