Our Lady of the Ice

by Cassandra Rose Clarke

  “That’s too kind for her,” Eliana said. “Sending us away to live someplace warm. Feeling the real sun.” She sighed and rapped her fingers against the desk. “Luciano showed me a rainstorm. Did you know he could do that? Share memories?”

  Marianella nodded.

  “He showed me a rainstorm, and now I remember it like it happened to me.” Eliana gave a hard little smile. “I’d like more memories like that. I’d prefer they be real, though.”

  Marianella didn’t respond. The room was freezing, even with the radiator rattling away in the corner. Past Eliana’s head was a window that faced a cold gray building that grew, Marianella knew, out of a cold gray sidewalk. She thought about those years before she’d met Hector, when her life had been on the mainland, out in the countryside in a big white stone house, with gardens and horses. The wind had swept down from the mountains, smelling of rain.

  She missed it. God, she really did miss it. She’d always thought moving to Hope City had been a way of starting over, and maybe it had been, twenty years ago. Maybe the amusement park wasn’t what she needed to start over again. Maybe the answer wasn’t with Sofia after all.

  “I forgive you,” Eliana said abruptly, jerking Marianella out of her memories. “But not Sofia.”

  Marianella nodded.

  They sat for another few moments. Then Eliana dragged the typewriter back in front of her.

  “So tell me about this job.” Eliana took up typing again, her gaze fixed down on the paper in the typewriter. “If it is for Sofia, do you think she’ll get me a one-way ticket to the mainland on one of those icebreakers of hers?” Eliana peered over the edge of the paper, and Marianella realized she was serious.

  “Yes,” Marianella said. “I’m certain of it. But only in the summer, when it’s safest—”

  “No.” Eliana went back to typing. “I want out sooner than that. The city’s already delaying me for my visa application, even though I’ve got the money. If she wants me to help her, she can put me on one of her ships before the docks open up.”

  Marianella gaped at Eliana. “You can’t be serious,” she said. “Ships capsize all the time—”

  “That’s my deal,” Eliana said. “If she can get me out of here before the city can, I’ll do it for her. But I’m not getting caught up in whatever she’s planning. I know it’s not shipping us away to the mainland.”

  Marianella sat for a moment. She needed Eliana’s help, but she didn’t want to put her in that kind of danger.

  But if Eliana was right, if Sofia was planning on harming the humans of the city . . .

  “Fine,” Marianella said. “I’ll get you a place aboard one of the shipping liners.”

  “Thank you.” Eliana typed out another few words, then pushed the typewriter aside. “To be honest, I’ve been looking into something that might involve you—might involve Alejo Ortiz, anyway.”

  “Really?” Marianella frowned. Her chest twisted with a slight break of anxiety. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t really know. It’s a bit of a strange—connection.” Eliana thought for a moment. “It’s about the man who hired me to investigate Sofia. Remember him? When I came to the park the first time?”

  Marianella nodded.

  “He showed back up here a few days ago, asking for the same thing. Any information I had about Sofia.” Eliana’s voice pitched forward in urgency. “I told him no, but then I went by his house. He didn’t live there—no one did. This neighborhood kid told me it was a place where the AFF meets up. Not in so many words, but reading between the lines, it seems fairly likely. So I went looking for who really owns the house, thinking this guy’s name was a fake. And it turned out—turned out the house’s owner is Alejo Ortiz.”

  All the energy drained out of Marianella’s body.

  “Now, I’m not accusing you of anything,” Eliana said quickly. “I was just wondering—the connection with Ortiz—” She shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s so goddamned weird.”

  “Weird that Alejo has connections with terrorists?” Marianella laughed. “Not exactly.”

  Eliana looked up at her. “You mean he does?”

  Marianella leaned forward, keeping her voice low. “He does. That’s why he hasn’t reported my nature, because I know that he took a significant portion of his campaign funds from the AFF.”

  Eliana’s eyes widened. “I fucking knew it!” she said. “Christ. So I guess if I report him—”

  “He would reveal my nature, yes.”

  Eliana rubbed her forehead. “What does he want with Sofia?”

  Marianella shook her head, but she was thinking about the culling, and the men who’d killed Inéz. Alejo’s men.

  Why would Alejo care about culling robots?

  Why would Alejo want to investigate Sofia?

  “The man who hired you,” Marianella said. “What was his name?”

  “Juan Gonzalez. I figure it’s a fake.”

  Marianella nodded. No Juan Gonzalez worked for Alejo, but that didn’t mean anything. “What does he look like?”

  “Pretty unremarkable, I guess. Youngish. Black hair. Always wearing a gray suit and gray hat. Really light brown eyes, though. They’re practically golden.”

  Marianella went cold all over.

  She thought about the day Inéz had died.

  “Andres,” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “His name is Andres Costa.” Marianella looked Eliana straight in the eye. “He’s one of Alejo’s aides.”

  “What!” Eliana pushed away from her desk and paced back and forth across the room. “One of Alejo’s aides came here asking about Sofia?” She stopped, looked over at Marianella. “He knows about her taking the city over. He has to.”

  Marianella shook her head. “No, he couldn’t possibly.” But he clearly knew something. He’d told her Andres was in the park for city business, but why would a city man need to hire a private investigator to look into Sofia? To gain access to her schematics? Alejo was doing something, but Marianella couldn’t see it.

  Marianella shivered and wished she hadn’t taken off her coat.

  “So what were you coming to see me about?” Eliana said. “This job, what was it? Did it have to do with Ortiz?”

  Marianella shook her head. The mysterious code had almost slipped her mind. “I doubt it.” She took a deep breath and explained to Eliana what they had found in the damaged maintenance drone. Eliana listened, nodding, her brow furrowed with concentration.

  “The blackouts,” she said. “You found what’s causing the blackouts.”

  Marianella nodded.

  “And you’re sure a human had to program that in? It’s not some robot—”

  “Yes!” Marianella threw up her hands. “I’m sure. It’s not the maintenance drones. They like to brag—well, maybe that’s not the right word exactly, but they’re always open whenever they do something—destructive.” She thought of the burning power plant, the twenty-six dead from the whims of the maintenance drones. “And I don’t know what this is. That’s what we wanted you to do. Find out.”

  Eliana started pacing again. “It sounds like AFF work, doesn’t it? At least the code does. But I don’t know why they’d want to mess with the power.” She sighed. “The city’s always blaming the AFF, which tells me the city’s responsible. I bet they’re trying to make it look like the AFF’s done it, but my money’s on the city.”

  “Why?” Marianella said. “I think it’s entirely possible the AFF could be responsible.” She paused. “You aren’t as familiar with them as I am, working with Alejo.”

  “But the city wants to root out the terrorists.” Eliana paused by the far wall, then made her way back across the room. “If the terror­ists are putting our livelihood in danger, that makes the common folk not want to join up with them, you see? So the city makes the
blackouts look like AFF work, and people start seeing the AFF as terrorists and not freedom fighters.”

  It made a convoluted sort of sense, Marianella had to admit.

  “How about this,” Eliana said. “Let’s look into this Andres Costa first. He’s got ties to the AFF, and we can see if that leads us to anything about the code. If not, we can start looking into the city.”

  “Yes,” Marianella said, after a pause. “Yes, I think that sounds good.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  ELIANA

  Eliana met Marianella at a café near the center of the city. Marianella was a few minutes late, rushing in through the door with her hair wild from running. Eliana lifted one hand to greet her, keeping the other pressed firmly against the folded-up piece of notebook paper she’d gotten from Javier.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Marianella said.

  “It’s fine.” Eliana slid the paper across the table to Marianella, who read it over without expression.

  “You found it,” she said. “Andres’s address.”

  “I’m a licensed PI, so the city gives me access to their records.”

  “It’s an apartment,” Marianella said, frowning. “Is this going to work?”

  “Were you able to get a car?”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “Then it’ll work. Come on.” Eliana stood up and tossed down a couple of bills to pay for her coffee. Marianella handed her back the address, and Eliana slipped it into her pocket. They left the shop together, stepping back out into the cold air. Marianella led Eliana down to an old-fashioned mainland-style car that was parked at the meter. It was so wide, it seemed to take up the whole street.

  “You got this from the park?” Eliana stared at it. She wished Marianella had picked something smaller.

  “I didn’t have much choice.” Marianella frowned, a line appearing between her eyes. “I could see about calling a friend, if this won’t work.”

  “Nah, it’s fine.” There were plenty of cars like this one in the city, left over from the park days; it might be enormous and bulky, but it wouldn’t stand out.

  They climbed in, and Marianella pulled out into the street, both her hands on the steering wheel, her eyes fixed firmly on the road. Eliana remembered that story from her childhood, about the cyborg who was found out when he got into a car accident. She wondered if Marianella knew that story too.

  It didn’t take long for them to arrive at Andres’s apartment. It was one of those garden apartments, locked up behind a gate, all the doors facing into a courtyard where the management usually planted loads of gaudy, bright flowers. Eliana knew these sorts of places. They were a step up, a halfway point between the tenement buildings and an actual house.

  “What should I do?” Marianella asked as they cruised past the apartment.

  “Park a ways up. We’ll have to check from the sidewalk to see if he’s home.”

  Marianella nodded.

  They parked in front of a row of tall narrow houses and walked to Andres’s apartment complex. There was a sign out front, announcing the name of the apartment in the bright colors Eliana imagined filled the garden. But when they came up to the wire gate, she saw that the garden was a tangle of dead, yellow plants.

  “The cold,” Marianella said suddenly. “All the power failures. They haven’t kept it warm enough. Not even here.”

  Eliana frowned. The truth was, some small part of her had hoped to see flowers.

  The gate wasn’t locked. Marianella pressed close to Eliana as they walked into the courtyard. They had a story planned, if Costa showed up—a sob story Marianella had prepared earlier, about how she desperately missed working with Alejo and would Andres please put in a good word for her? But looking into his apartment windows, Eliana didn’t think they needed it.

  “I’m going to go look around the back,” she said quietly. “You stand next to the gate like you’re waiting for someone.”

  Marianella nodded. Eliana left the courtyard and ambled around along the side of the building, counting the windows until she came to those that belonged to Andres’s apartment. They were dark too. Good sign.

  And she didn’t see another soul out. That was a good sign too.

  She walked back into the courtyard and nodded at Marianella, who turned and joined her in one seamless motion. They walked up to Costa’s door. Eliana stood off to the side. Marianella took a deep breath. Smoothed down her blouse. Knocked.

  No one answered.

  Eliana gave a short nod, and Marianella knocked again, this time angling her body so that Eliana could make quick work of the lock. The timing wasn’t exactly right, but the courtyard was empty and she didn’t notice any movement in the windows.

  The door popped open.

  All the lights were off. Marianella stepped into the doorway and turned her head back and forth, listening. Eliana followed and pulled the door shut.

  “I don’t hear anything,” Marianella said in a normal voice. “No breathing. There’s no one here.”

  Eliana let out a sigh of relief. “Move quickly,” she said. “We don’t want to be here when he gets back.”

  Marianella nodded. “Anything suspicious, yes?”

  “Anything that can explain what the hell Ortiz is up to, yeah.” Eliana and Marianella split up, Marianella disappearing into a short hallway leading, Eliana assumed, into the bedroom, and Eliana heading toward the kitchen. The living room was sparse, just a sofa and a television set, nothing hanging on the walls. The kitchen was even emptier. One of the cupboards contained two each of a plate, a bowl, a knife, a spoon, and a fork, and in the refriger­ator Eliana found only a mostly empty package of wintertime coffee. She opened up each of the drawers in turn. Empty, empty, empty.

  And then one wasn’t.

  It was the drawer closest to the telephone, which sat haphazardly on the counter like it had been forgotten. Inside the drawer, Eliana found a blank notepad, an assortment of pens, some paper clips, old receipts, and a business card. Eliana pulled it out. It belonged to a city man, the familiar dome logo stamped on the front.

  Above the dome logo was the name Pablo Sala.

  Eliana stared at the business card for a long time. Costa had Sala’s business card.

  “Marianella!” she shouted.

  She flipped the card over. There was a message scrawled on the back: Give him the information. Best way to be rid of her.

  “What is it? Did you find something?” Marianella appeared in the kitchen. “I didn’t see much in the first bedroom. The second bedroom’s locked, but—” She stopped. Her shoulders slumped. “What’s wrong?”

  Eliana held up the card. “I found this. It’s Pablo Sala’s card. He was the one who stole your documents.”

  Marianella walked over to her side and plucked the card out of Eliana’s hand. She stared down at it, her face hard.

  “There’s a message on the back.”

  Marianella read it. She was quiet for a long time. Then she set the card down on the counter.

  “That’s Alejo’s handwriting,” she said.

  Eliana hesitated. She wanted to choose her words carefully. “Are you sure? It can be hard to tell—”

  “I’ve read enough of his memos to know.” Marianella turned away, her face a cold mask. “He knew he had to ensure he wasn’t connected to the authorities finding out my nature, because I know about his involvement with the AFF.” She smiled cruelly, her eyes glittering. “He did this on purpose. It was Alejo from the beginning. Probably found someone desperate—”

  “Sala had access to the new drone types,” Eliana said. “That’s probably why Ortiz chose him. Someone who could break in easily.”

  “Well, at least Sala was stupid. Stupid enough to take the information to Ignacio instead of the police.”

  Marianella marched out of the kitchen, her heels clicking agai
nst the tile.

  “Marianella, wait!” Eliana snatched the card off the counter, reconsidered, dropped it back into the drawer. Then she ran into the living room. Marianella disappeared around the bend in the hallway, back into the open bedroom. There wasn’t much there, just an unmade bed, a chest of drawers, a pile of dirty clothes. Marianella stood next to the window with her arms crossed over her chest. At least the curtains were drawn.

  “I’m sorry about Alejo,” Eliana said.

  Marianella reached up and wiped at her eyes. “It’s not your fault.” She looked over at her. “It’s mine. I was so wrapped up in trying to prove I was human, I didn’t see that he was using me.” Another tear dripped down her cheek. She let it fall, and it left a trail of mascara behind. “I guess I was using him, too. But that he would have me destroyed—that’s too much. Too much.” She shook her head.

  Eliana walked over to her. Marianella kept her head held high despite her tears, and she still looked regal and sophisticated, more so than Eliana could ever hope to be.

  “My mother used to say this city was a prison,” Eliana said. “She said everything was different here, the way people treat each other—”

  “No,” Marianella said. “It’s not. The mainland’s just as cruel.” She turned around, and the curtain rippled with her movement and let in a beam of white dome light. “But this place fools ambitious people. People like Alejo Ortiz. It makes them think they have more power than they do.” A smile flickered. “And people like Alejo think people like me are easy to control.”

  She strode out of the room.

  Eliana stood in the silence of the apartment, listening to her pulse echoing in her ears. And then—

  A crash, wood breaking, splintering, falling into pieces.

  “What the fuck!” Eliana charged out into the hallway. Marianella had pulled the door to the second bedroom from its hinges. Bits of wood scattered all across the carpet. She looked over her shoulder at Eliana and shrugged.

  “It was locked,” she said.

  “I could have picked it!”

  Marianella tossed the door aside. Eliana’s heart raced. This was bad. This showed they’d been here. This meant the police, meant Eliana losing her license—