by Ellie Cypher
“Is that so?” I said, the words out of my lips before I’d meant to.
A genuine smile bloomed across Cody’s face and even in the dying light of late evening it were clear something truthful and unguarded. Kind.
With exaggerated focus I brushed the flakes from my shoulders and upped my pace. Reminding myself kindness weren’t kind. Not out here. And not directed at me. What did I even care, really? Sad boys and their kind smiles—those types of stories never end well. Not for you.
“Aren’t the stars beautiful? Swirling up there in the ether, fighting against the blackness of night. Antares was his favorite, you know. Lira was always mine. Every night we’d climb the stairs of the astrology tower. And every night I’d fall asleep counting them, not that I’d done that in years. Not since…” Cody hasty cleared his throat, exhaling a thin mist into the darkness. He didn’t continue.
Around us on the path, massive snow pines stood sentinel at our sides, their long branches swaying in the cold air, shaking the ice clinging to their needles.
“None of that matters now, does it?” His voice, like his shoulders, slumped.
I let the question go unanswered. Out here, that is just how it were. Cause we were all alone. All of us. And no amount of tears were going to fix it. Out here, sadness were weakness and weakness got you killed. Only emotion got you anywhere were anger. At least it kept you warm.
In growing stillness we trudged on, the snow turning to ice as we left the shadow of the winter pines and the last of the solid ground behind us. My throat sudden tight as the front of my house came into view. Tiny crystallized teeth, icicles clung from the porch. Snow smothered the shuttered windows.
Oblivious, Cody walked past me, eyes wide as the blackness between the stars he were waxing so poetic about.
He cleared his throat. “This it?”
I didn’t answer, frozen. No new footprints. I shook myself. What were I expectin? For this to all be a nightmare? For Bren to run out? For none of this to be real. I wavered ever so slightly on my feet, my hand catching on the cold wood of the fence.
With a snap, I forced myself forward. And ran right into Cody’s back.
“Don’t just stand there,” I growled as he righted himself, dusting snow from his pants where he’d fallen. “We go in that way.” I pulled rough at his sleeve, forcing him to stumble or keep up.
“Tell me this isn’t your house.”
“Maybe it ain’t what you’re used to, but if you’re done gaping like a fresh-caught carp, I’d thank ya to keep those delicate legs moving,” I snarled. “I don’t need no judgment from anyone. Let alone some spoiled stargazing nobody from the South.”
Cody looked at me, hurt flashing across his face.
“Come on.” I motioned for him to follow and marched away without him. Cause even though it weren’t much, this house was ours. Me and Bren and our parents. And it were everything I had left of them. No one got to make fun of it. No one.
The door to the body shed was cold under my gloved hand. I yanked hard, snapping the crystal film of ice over the metal. The door groaned open.
A waft of stale air curled out of the shed, mixed with the sharp tinge of sulfur. I stepped inside. Everything was a mess. I tiptoed over a large uncoiled length of blue-and-silver rope and kicked aside a small pickax. Cody followed in my wake.
I strode over to the bodies. He let out a small gasp. I smiled a little unkind as I turned a particularly rough-looking one onto its back.
“Bears gotta eat too.”
“Who—who are they?” he said, the warmth of his body at my side a flash of summer against the cold. I shuffled a few steps away, stiffening.
“Fools. Fortune hunters. People like you.”
“Like me?”
I gave him a long sideways glance, sniffing against the cold leaking down the back of my throat, and gripped the shoulder of the last body. “Yeah,” I said. “Men just… like… you.” I turned over the last of the frozen figures.
Only it weren’t who it was supposed to be.
CHAPTER 10 Bodies Burning Bright
No.”
I let Cody’s single word hang. Not cause he were wrong. But cause he was right. The body. It wasn’t the same. It weren’t his uncle’s.
I ran my eyes over all the others, counting, feverishly hoping there’d be one I’d missed. As if it might stand out, a blazing light against the frozen ground. But I hadn’t lost one, and I hadn’t miscounted. Walter Colburn were gone. Just gone. Vanished right and proper.
“What are you playing at, Jorie? Where’s my uncle?”
“Stars, I don’t know. This ain’t the body I drug inside. I—I ain’t never seen this man before. Never.”
Instead of blue eyes flecked with green, these ones was a deep russet brown, their covering not the milky white of a frozen death, but clear as glass. I took a deep swallow. This man ain’t died out on the ice. The man might’ve been new, but the coat… it were the same.
I suppressed a deep-down shiver. There were somethin real wrong here. Someone had put Walter Colburn’s coat on this body. A fresh body.
Cody took a step closer, bending down to my side. He gave a sharp intake of breath and shot back, rocking on his heels. I narrowed my gaze.
“You know him?” I asked, suspicion rising.
“I—I can’t be sure.” Cody shook his head.
“Ain’t sure or ain’t looked.” I crossed my arms.
Cody’s face hardened. “This is not my uncle.”
Obviously. I opened my mouth to say it, but Cody’s expression was all kinds of wrong.
“That means my uncle could still be alive, right?”
I snorted. He ignored me.
“Alive and lost. Alone somewhere out there on the ice…” Cody’s last words were near silent; he reached out and ran a hand along the collar of the dead man’s coat. Walter Colburn’s coat, I corrected myself. Though I suppose it didn’t matter who wore it now.
“Your uncle is dead, Cody.”
Across the body from me Cody’s eyes flashed with a painful sort of light. Frantic. Edged. The kind of look made me feel I were missing some link, some piece.
I surveyed the shed, looking for anything out of place, but the way the Rover had left it made it near impossible to tell. I looked at the body and then Cody, tilting my head. “You sure you don’t know him?”
“I might have seen him, once.”
I advanced on him. “Might have?”
“It was dark. I was not supposed to be there.”
“Where?” I asked, taking a step closer.
“With my uncle, I think. Only that was weeks ago. Before…”
“Before what?”
“Before he said he’d finally found someone to help. Before the Rover. Before he disappeared.” Cody’s expression were ashen. A look that were quick replaced by something distant. Slack. As if it were the first time he realized where he really was. In a stranger’s shed. Full of dead bodies. For the first time he looked as afraid as he should have been. And he wanted out. He took a step back toward the door.
“You stop right there, Cody Colburn. You ain’t leaving till I get what I brought you for. Cause whoever this man is”—I gestured to the body—“it don’t change the fact that your uncle’s good and dead. And it certain don’t do you no good to think otherwise.” I looked at the stack of bodies. “I may be many things, but I ain’t no liar.”
“But that is not my uncle.” Cody stared straight past me, eyes focused on the stranger. He crossed his arms. And if I weren’t mistaken none, jutted out his lower lip. At me.
“That might not be his body, but where do you think that coat came from? My closet?”
Cody shook his head, but slower this time, throat bobbing. I narrowed my expression. Closing the space between us, I slunk in behind him, blocking his exit.
Cody cleared his throat. Face careful neutral. “Where is my uncle?”
I tossed up my hands. “How the stars would I know? Ain’t
like I’m used to bodies just getting up and walking out of the shed.”
Cody turned, only half facing me. Lips pressed thin. “Let’s just say for the sake of argument I choose to believe you. That you’ve told me everything you know and that my uncle was here. Then what the stars is all this about?” Cody gestured at the dead man. The coat. The lack of his uncle. “Your idea of some joke?”
“My what…?” I followed his gesture and started. A lick of something white stuck out from the side of the man’s coat. I’d not seen that before. Moving swift round Cody, I bent down and pushed aside the torn flap of the coat.
And hissed in a breath. I jerked back. Stars above.
Nailed through the man’s chest right between his sternum and his heart was a note, bloodred wax seal unbroken. Fingers unsteady, I pulled out the piece of parchment from atop the man’s chest. The paper brushing rough against his cold flesh. A hunk of metal slid out from the coat, hitting the ground.
“That… that is my uncle’s watch.” We both blinked down at it. Silent.
But the watch, it weren’t what disturbed me. Frowning, I rolled the thick paper in my hands. Dev had been right. Whoever this man was—associated with Walter Colburn or no—whoever Cody were, they were as mixed up in this as could be. And the Rover were done tolerating it.
I cleared my throat and broke open the wax seal. Inside, a single demand hovered lonesome in a backdrop of white.
Bring it to Nocna Mora.
My body went stiff and I flipped the paper over, looking for more. But nothing. As I read the words again my heart gave a sideways jolt, buckling my knees.
Nocna Mora.
Bile filled my throat, hot and painful. Cause if any place was worse than Shadow Springs, that were it.
A once-prosperous mining town near to seventy leagues west. In the very heart of the Northern Territory. A place long ago swallowed by the winter-strangled mountains from which it had once been dug.
It weren’t a good place. And then there were the rumors. Told by the outlaws and Rovers that used it, ones that made even your bones go cold. Stories of hungry beasts of snow and ice, their teeth lingering in the expanse, just waiting. And of men too long gone mad with the cold to take care. My heart plummeted. Nocna Mora weren’t a place a sane woman went. I looked at the note. Someone had left it. And there it was. Right there. Resting in plain sight.
The Rover had come back. And I—all the air rushed out of me as the realization hit—I had missed him. To run after some nothing in town. I let the paper flutter from my hands.
I spun on Cody, cinching up the distance between us in one strike. Grabbing his arms, I began to shake him. Cody’s eyes went wide, his face drained of color. He ripped one arm free, putting a hand up as if to block a blow.
“No more bullshit, Cody Colburn. No more stallin. You tell me what that Rover wanted with your uncle. You tell me now, or you ain’t gonna live long enough to freeze when I toss you out onto the Flats.”
Slithering out of his coat and my grip, Cody skidded to the ground, leaving my white knuckles gripping nothing but his stupid, useless silver jacket.
I tossed the thing aside and reached for him. Cody dodged. Stumbling to his feet and near tripping on the mess of ropes and debris the Rover had tossed around at the base of the shelves. He put up both hands in front of him.
Panting, I stared, wantin to scream, cause his eyes, his face. It were like watching the tide drain a barren shore. He knew. He knew all along. The rotten, low-bellied…
“It is all true then. My uncle’s really gone. Dead. Murdered.” Cody leaned his head back onto the wall behind him, eyes downcast. “It’s all do with that cursed letter.. That’s when it started”
“What letter?” I asked sharp.
“An inquiry about an arcane book of sagas, one called Aurum et Glacies—the other Urbs de Aurum.”
“Aurum?” I frowned. “Don’t that have something to do with gold?”
“Indeed.” Cody gave me a tolerant smile. “Those are the texts my uncle had dedicated his life to, worlds and words he knew like the back of his hand.” Cody let out a long breath. He ran fingers through his hair. “And from them he made a map. That’s what the trade was for. My uncle might not have been used to the cold, but he wasn’t reckless enough to think we could make it out there alone. We needed help, and the man wanted the map.”
I raised brow. “Why would a Rover care two licks about some man’s moldering old map about the South?”
“Because it isn’t about the South, it’s about this.” Cody gestured. “All of this.”
“What this? Ain’t nothing up here but the dead and snow,” I snapped out reflexive.
“And exactly why is that? It’s because of what lives here.” His eyes shot to mine. “What waits in the lost city of Vydra.”
“Vydra.” And it’s fabled treasure. Was that what this was all about? My sister was missing because two soft-skinned academics from the South wanted to play heroes? My lips curled. “Vydra don’t exist, except in children’s stories and snow-fever dreams. Nocna Mora isn’t some great hiding place built atop a lost city of gold. Those mines collapsed and ran dry generations ago. Nothing left out there but desperate men telling desperate tales.”
A flicker of an old memory, of Ma and me and Bren gathered round a fire warm and happy, Bren drawing and Ma spinning stories from her own childhood. Before Ma had gotten so sick and—I shoved it back. Didn’t do to dwell on what I couldn’t change. No matter how hard I dreamed it otherwise.
And besides, I’d stopped putting stock in those tales long ago. I weren’t about start now. Certain not for some untried boy from the South and his delusional dead uncle.
“What of all those stories? They cannot all be false, surely? Even in the tallest tale there is something of the truth. Some piece of history waiting to be uncovered. To be learned.”
“There’s nothing out here to fill your dreams but nightmares, Cody Colburn. And the screams of dying men to tell you about theirs.”
“Surely all those people cannot be liars.”
“Why not? If you don’t think a man will lie when it serves him, you’re more a fool than you look.” I scoffed.
“But what then of all the recorded accounts? Generations of them, passed down from parent to child. And the chronicles in the Library—”
“I can tell a tale about killing a rabbit, but that don’t mean I ate supper.”
Cody were undeterred. “The creatures then, even you’ve seen one of those.” I opened my mouth to protest, but he held up his hand. “That picture I drew. Massive wolves too large to be real, more snow and ice than tooth and fur. Or the winter maiden who lures men to an icy death, and if caught scatters to nothing but snow. There are more, too. Recounted and complied in book after book. Each of them a warning of what lies waiting in the Flats. Guarding the golden city of Vydra and the Ice-Witch.” His went eyes bright.
“Only real monsters I know about out here, Cody Colburn, are men.”
He waved me off.
I scowled. It were like tryin to reason with a snow bank. “Belief is all well and good for some people, but no matter how hard you pray out here, ain’t no god gonna save you from the blood freezing in your veins when you fall through the ice. Fill your belly when you run out of food.” And no gods to bring your parents back to you, no matter how hard you’d been taught to believe.
“But the map is real. My uncle had the pieces, but he needed a guide. Someone who knew the Flats, who could help him find it. Our first attempts had all been dead ends. People would listen, agree, and then simply take the money and never show their faces again. He was getting desperate, I think, to get out there.”
I snorted. “Seems about right.”
Cody grimaced. “So this time he didn’t just offer money to the next man who said he had been that far north. I think—I think he showed him the map, or the part of it he had with him. The man agreed to help. Only, I could tell something was off. The more they met to plan, t
he more nervous and secretive my uncle became. Said the man would only meet him if he was alone. So I followed him, just the once. And I didn’t see the man, but I saw that…” Cody trailed off. He cleared his throat. “And that is why we are here. To get to Vydra. You asked what the Rover wanted from my uncle. It was that map. Only if the Rover doesn’t have it, and neither you nor I have it…,”
“Then where is it?” My heart fell.
“My uncle had it with him the night he disappeared. I guess it could be out there, somewhere in the ice.” His voice trembled.
He looked earnest. I wished he didn’t.
“I would give it to you if I had it, I swear. I know what it is to lose the people you love. What’s some piece of paper compared to that?” he said, looking at me and then the dead bodies. Then quick away. “Family is always worth fighting for. Always.” He near to whispered it.
A stillness filled the room that had nothing to do with the cold. The lure of treasure, or at least the lure of swindling a pair of rich Southerners and leaving them to die out on the Flats? That did sound mighty like a Rover. Cody began to pick through the things on the shelves—his uncle’s things. Only trouble is the Rover, he didn’t get what he wanted. And now he thought I did. And he had taken Bren for it.
“So, Nocna Mora,” Cody said. I started.
“What about it? It’s real enough, but it ain’t like you need to worry about going out there with me. Unless you’ve plans to turn outlaw I don’t know about, which would be as like to get you killed as anything else. Rovers ain’t exactly the asking kind.”
“You believe that and you’re still going?” he asked, surprise written clear across his face. “Even knowing you don’t have what he wants?”
“Belief don’t got nothing to do with it. And I don’t see as I got no other choice. Unless you happen to have the map right handy?” I asked. Cody crunched his brows. “No. I don’t suppose you do.” Hand slipping into his pocket, Cody pulled out his uncle’s broken watch, fingers tracing the swirls on the surface.
