I open my mouth and then close it again while they watch me. Then I wait.
A few moments pass, and then they speak again. “Will you kill this prince, Alinya? Knowing what you know, will you kill him?”
“No.” I will not lie to them. If I am supposed to kill my friend, my first friend since I was a child, in order to keep the world the way it is - I’d rather see it all burn. Even though he is kind of an ass. I don’t much like the world the way it is now anyway.
They turn and face each other; it’s like they are speaking to each other without words, conferring. I try not to fidget but there are things I must know. I worry there will be consequences for my answer. One of them picks up a newer looking book and writes something in it and then sets it down. They turn to face me again.
“Where is The Undying?” I ask. If The Joker is sending me there I must go, wherever and whatever that is.
They shift in their armchairs. I imagine they are surprised.
“The Undying is outside the Forest of Nevel. Be careful, Alinya. If you do this thing you are thinking of, you may not like what comes after. If the agreement is broken, if your people defy the rules set by the gods, they will take everything away.”
“My people don’t have anything, loremasters. My people dig in the dirt so the Five Families can be bored and rich and overfed. I’d rather risk everything at the chance of freedom for my people than continue like this any longer. I will not be told what to do by old men any more.”
“Interesting,” they say. “We will write your story, Alinya. Whether you succeed or fail we will write the story of the assassin that would try to change the world, for we have heard something in the rumors on the wind. At night, as it travels over the fields of magic and sweeps up to us here in this mountain, it says that the time of the gods is passing. We only hope your people can survive.”
“What about you?” I ask, I cannot stop myself. “Don’t you want to survive?”
“We cannot help but survive, even if we wished it otherwise. We were placed here by the gods before your people came and we will be here after you are gone; we are cursed to survive until all the heat in the universe dies and there is no one to hear our stories or whisper us the secrets in the night. But we will remember you, little assassin, you and your fire and your pure loyalty that isn’t tarnished by love. We will remember you.”
They bow their heads at me and I do the same in return, and then I turn and take the moving path. I hope I’ve chosen the right hallway.
◆◆◆
The path deposits me, shaking, back at the boundary between the mountain and the palace, where I find the queen waiting for me, still as a statue. As soon as she sees me she takes one look at my face and gently reaches for my hand.
“Come to my room, Alinya. Come to my room and let me show you what is real.”
I walk as if in a dream; when we get to her rooms I barely notice how lavish they are. Instead I push her down on the bed and all the fire erupts from me into a passion I don’t recognize. Our bodies tangle in a heat that comes from knowing the world might soon end and I feel the kind of desire that might just burn down the world, as we do all the things I’ve wanted to do since I first saw her until we are sweaty and exhausted and the sun rises over the palace of the Winter Queen.
CHAPTER 11
We fall asleep a little after dawn and wake in time for the noon meal. Servants carry in trays and set them on tables set next to the giant white bed and we sit up against pillows and eat and drink as if we’ve been starving for a week. Her skin is just as soft as I expected, although we are both marked from the heat from last night. She kisses me softly and I smile, remembering what it was like to feel someone.
“What are the bears watching for, Freyja?” I ask as she butters a croissant and takes a bite.
“I’m assuming the loremasters told you some of our true history?” she asks, and continues when I nod. “The gods set guardians to watch us. Here in Winter City it’s the bears, and sometimes the snow cats, although they mostly don’t seem to care. Each area has their own. The City in the Sky doesn’t need them because the Priestess lives there and she is enough to keep order.”
“Do all the royalty know the real history?” I pick up some winter berries and wince at how tart they are; I love them.
“No. We teach our children a little of it but the real secrets, and the duty, are revealed to each ruler when they take the throne. It’s not just the loremasters and the Priestess that are tasked with keeping everything the same, year after year. The royals are as well. If we do not,” she clears her throat and takes a sip of chilled mint water, “if we do not, the consequences are terrible. I can’t tell you what they are, Alinya, so don’t ask me. But as much as I chafe at this, I will not risk upsetting the guardians.”
She picks up a small piece of cheese and inspects it. There’s an ice sculpture in the shape of a dragon on the tray; it doesn’t melt. She puts the cheese down and looks at me; reflexively I look away from her eyes.
“You must kill the prince of the air,” she whispers. “If you don’t, it’s not just you who will be punished; everyone will suffer. I don’t care if I die,” she says fiercely, “and if you must die to keep this world safe, I would kill you myself. So, while I love my cousin, you must kill him. The Priestess has called for his death and you must be the one who does it. His mother didn’t like it either but she knows it’s for the greater good. The priestess told me last night; if you kill him, all will be forgiven. If you do your duty you will be welcomed back to Hinshalla, to the Guild. Or you can stay here. You can have whatever you want as long as you do what the Hand of the Gods was set up to do, which is to help keep order.”
Why Zair? Why so much importance on this one prince’s death?
“Tell me you’ll at least think about it,” she says, her voice pleading.
“I will think about it,” I whisper. I will. The thought will haunt me; but I still won’t kill my friend. Nothing about this feels right.
◆◆◆
I get dressed and go back to my room. Zair and Alexsi aren’t in our suite. I run a bath and soak away last night, and I think. I still have the wizard’s transport spell; I can just leave. I might be able to sell it and get money for passage somewhere. I realize I still have some of Zair’s gold and jewels; I think about using them and then decide to give them back to him. I’ll figure something out. Maybe I will sell the spell, maybe I will use it; but if I keep myself far away from Zair maybe everyone will stop asking me to kill him.
When I leave the bathroom there is a snow cat waiting in my bedroom. It’s massive, the size of one of the giant armored bears, and it’s laying on the floor at the foot of my bed. I stop and stare at it, at its white and gray fur and giant paws and a head bigger than a man’s. It yawns and the blood drains out of me at the sight of its teeth, as long as my hand. It winks at me and then stands up and stretches.
While I stand, frozen, in the doorway from the bathroom it walks up to me and sniffs me head to toe. If the snow cats are guardians like the bears, will it kill me for breaking the law, for refusing to kill Zair? It rubs its head against me and rumbles deep in its chest. It headbutts my hand and I instinctively scratch behind its ears, rubbing them as well. The ears are thick and impossibly soft, just like its fur. Under the top layer of fur there is an even softer layer next to its skin.
The snow cat stands and rests its giant paws on my shoulders; I try not to stagger under its weight. It sniffs my face and then licks me with its giant tongue, pink and scratchy. I hear a gasp from the doorway and Alexsi and Zair are standing there, as frozen as I am; Alexsi’s hands are overy his mouth and his beautiful amber eyes are filled with wonder and terror.
The cat, its face right up against mine, turns and looks at them in the window, and then it drops back down on all fours and walks up to it and passes right through it and out into the night.
It’s Zair that rushes over and grabs me.
“Alinya, are you alrigh
t? You disappeared from dinner and then stayed out all night and then we come back and you’re snuggling with a snow cat?” He wraps his arms around me. “I was so worried.” This side of Zair is a lot nicer than the other.
“A snow cat,” Alexsi says in a hushed voice. “They never come up to people like that. I wonder what it wanted.”
“Are they sentient?” I ask.
“They are,” Zair answers. “But their minds aren’t like ours.”
“Well, they are cats,” I joke. They both look shocked.
“Have you ever made a joke before?” Zair asks, not a hint of cruelty in his voice.
I think about it. “No.”
“Something did happen to you,” he insists. “I’m sure of it.”
“Yes,” I say slowly. So many things have happened I can’t process it all, but I remember the thing I want to tell him the most. “Your mother didn’t want you dead, Zair. It was the Priestess; your mother didn’t order it, the Priestess did, and she forced her to go along with it. I wanted to make sure to tell you; you shouldn’t have to live with the thought that your mother wants you dead. She doesn’t.”
He closes his eyes in relief and Alexsi comes and puts his arms around him. For the second time since I’ve known him Zair cries; the cry of a heart breaking from a weight it’s been carrying, a hurt that can finally start to heal.
“I thought she wanted me gone,” he whispers. “I thought she hated me.”
Alexsi rocks him and I awkwardly hug both of them and wonder how I can possibly leave them.
They haven’t eaten so we order lunch and I eat again. I’ve done nothing but eat since we arrived yesterday and I’m still hungry. When I mention it to the guys they laugh and tell me it’s the heating spell; it draws its energy from our bodies so we have to eat more. It seems like such a waste of magic and food when fires and furs would do just as well. When I share my frustration with them they both shake their heads.
“It’s colder here than you think,” Alexsi explains. “This is the Winter mountain; the temperature never gets above -100. Without the magic we would never be able to keep the city warm enough; we would freeze to death in minutes.”
There are so many things I don’t know.
“What about inside the mountain? Is it warmer in there?” I remember the chill of the air and the smokeless fire.
Alexsi nods slowly. “Yes, of course, the mountain gets heat from the planet and if you are far enough inside it, its own natural insulation would keep the heat in. Did you go see the loremasters?” At my look of shock he shakes his head. “You forget, I grew up here. Besides, where else would Freyja take you? To her bed?” They laugh, and then stop when I don’t join them. “Did you sleep with the queen?” he asks, shocked.
“Yes, I saw the loremasters, and then I spent the night with the queen.” I quickly fill them in on everything I learned, even what the loremasters said about our history. They had a right to know how we got here. When I get to the part about The Undying Alexsi interrupts me.
“That’s what I wanted to tell you last night! You showed us the letter and then at dinner I remembered; I heard my mother, long ago before I was sent here to be fostered, mention The Undying. Whatever it is, it is near the Forest of Nevel, because my mother traveled to it and back and made the journey in two days. We need to go to the Forest; we need to go see my family.”
The Forest of Nevel; another city out of legend. I’m seeing things other people only dream of.
We all stop and think about what it would mean to go to yet another part of the world. I think about leaving them and realize I’m not going to. I will still have the wizard’s spell; I don’t need to use it here. I can always use it later if I need to. The Joker told me to go see the Undying and I need to see this through. Besides, if they send someone else to kill Zair I want to be there to protect him.
“I still don’t believe the gods are real,” he grumbles. “No matter what those old cave bats told you.”
Something is bothering me. We don’t know why the Priestess ordered his death. “Zair, did anything happen before they sent me to kill you? Anything different?”
He shakes his head but then Alexsi looks up. “Wait. A few days before, we talked about leaving, remember? That’s when we talked about leaving together, even though we knew we shouldn’t, we knew the families are supposed to stay apart. That’s when we talked about it.”
“What do you mean the families are supposed to stay apart?” I ask. They both shrug.
“It’s a royalty thing; the families are supposed to stay apart, unless the Priestess says otherwise. She had to approve me even fostering here at the Winter City.”
I’m staring at them. It’s so obvious. “The Five Families made a deal with the gods. The Five Families are the key, somehow. The Priestess does everything she can to keep you apart, even if that means killing the Prince of the Air. Zair, what would the queen do for an heir if you died?”
“She would just get another one. The Priestess would tell her when and who, and soon there would be another prince or princess, all very orderly.”
“Almost every aspect of our lives is completely under the Priestess’ control,” I muse.
“Even more reason to do what we want,” Zair says, sounding confident and in control for the first time since we found out he’s officially dead. “We leave for the Forest of Nevel in the morning. We are going to find The Undying and we are going to finish this, whatever this is.”
CHAPTER 12
We spend the rest of the day exploring the palace. The suns go down early here in Winter; Alexsi takes us up and up, using more of the shimmering portals, until we are at the very top of the palace. We can’t go outside here; the height and the wind are too dangerous. Instead there is a room made entirely of a thick, unbreakable glass, a kind of lookout or enclosed observation deck, and we stand there and look out into the emptiness, all open sky and setting suns. The moons haven’t risen yet and we wait for moonsrise.
“You have to see it,” Alexsi tells us. “It is one of the greatest wonders of this place.”
It feels like we are in the void of space as the suns go down and the minutes pass before the moons come up. The waiting is hard. I still haven’t touched snow; it doesn’t snow in Hinshalla, not even in the City Below, and now I know it’s not safe for me to go out there. I flush as I realize that, while I may not have touched snow, I certainly touched the Winter Queen.
The moons come up at last, one by one, red and blue and silver, the light playing off the moisture in the air outside and refracting over and over again until a soft rainbow glow lights the world around us. Above, as high as the sky will go, we see streaks of lights in all colors; the Winter Aurora, something I never dreamed I’d see and which entirely defies description.
And then, wonder of wonders, something flies slowly across the three moons, something white and elegant with long, graceful wings and a sinuously curving tail.
“An ice dragon,” I breathe. We watch it fly across the sky, so slow in the great distance, until it’s flying across the aurora and the light plays on its scales and it swoops and rises and curves, over and over again, dancing in the night sky.
◆◆◆
“It’s a sign,” Alexsi insists at dinner. The queen hasn’t arrived and they keep serving appetizers until she comes. “We saw the aurora and an ice dragon, just hours after a snow cat appeared for Alinya. This isn’t a coincidence.”
Zair snorts but he doesn’t call Alexsi a superstitious peasant like he would if I were saying it. I don’t know what I think; I’ve had too much thrown at me in the last two days and my head hurts dealing with all of it. I just want a nice dinner and to get some real sleep, especially since we’ll be leaving in the morning. I just want to savor the fact that I saw all those amazing things; I don’t want to worry about what they mean.
Freyja comes in and as soon as she’s seated the stewards sweep through the room and deposit dinner platters. I don’t even see the food I he
ap on my plate. She leans in close. “You’re leaving tomorrow, aren’t you?”
“We are,” I respond. She leans back.
“Don’t tell me where you’re going,” she says without looking at me. I stare down at my plate. I don’t know what’s going on.
Her hand reaches for mine under the table. I wish I could feel what she wants me to feel, but I don’t. I squeeze her hand anyway.
“If I could go with the three of you, I would,” she says. “But I can’t leave the city right now. Take this with you.” She slips a spell into my hand and I tuck it into a pocket. “Listen to me,” she says, and I finally look into her crystalline eyes. They are piercing through me. “If you won’t kill him then you’d better succeed at what you are trying to do. When the time comes, I will be with you. I will join your side. You’ll know when it’s time. Use that spell and it will bring you to me and I will help as best I can, no matter what.”
I realize I’ve misread her. She seems so indifferent at times, and so cold when it comes to telling me to kill her own cousin, but she just wants to be a good ruler, no matter what that means. I grip her hand tightly. “Thank you, Freyja, thank you.” I waste a moment wishing for the simplicity of my life before; and then I finally let that go. There is only forward now.
◆◆◆
The Joker visits me in my dreams that night. I know it is him, for he has the attenuated limbs and the blue coat of many tails with the collar so high that it frames the silverglass sphere he has instead of a head. His long-fingered blue-gray hand holds the skinny forked staff that is his hallmark, and around his shoulders floats the silver half-circlet that marks him a god.
In the dream I look down and he’s floating six inches off the warmed marble floor of my room. He looks exactly like the painting in the ceremony room of the Guild hall, except in the painting he is hovering in the air with his hand out, as if to bless us or give us a task. Here he is instead in the process of leaning over me, a process which takes some time as he is so very tall and somehow not entirely here. He looks like something is pulling him away as he attempts to lean closer, and I wish for a moment that he were touching the ground so he would be more real.
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