Of Ice and Shadows

by Audrey Coulthurst

  “Your feet are sloppy,” he said. “Fix them.”

  I adjusted the angle of my stance and practiced the lunge again. As usual, he was infuriatingly correct. A dangerous white-hot rage ignited in my chest at the thought of his involvement with the Sonnenbornes.

  “Lunge, then remise,” he said, taking a defensive stance and waiting for my attack.

  I let my anger carry me forward, only to be blocked with ease. I’d had plenty of instruction from Alek but had never parried with him before. It felt as productive as fighting a brick wall. He wasn’t going to be like Kerrick and make an occasional mistake I could take advantage of. I tried to calm down, reminding myself that I would fight better if I were focused, not angry.

  He held up his blade again, and I mirrored his position. The moment I did, something shifted. The sword felt like an extension of my arm, and my feet adjusted themselves of their own accord. When I moved to attack, my body moved with unfamiliar catlike grace. Alek barely had time to block me before my remise. Without thinking, I gave myself over to what felt right, and suddenly Alek and I were locked in true combat. My anger flowed into the weapon and I stabbed at him with a flurry of blows he could barely block, finishing with a low swing that caught him in the leg and ripped a hole in his pants.

  His expression changed from surprise to stone, and he launched an assault on me that should have immediately knocked me flat. I dropped to the ground in a controlled tumble, and no one was more surprised than me when I popped back to my feet and straight into an attack. Everyone else in the salle had stopped to stare.

  “What are you doing?” Alek asked, his voice dangerous.

  “Defending myself,” I said.

  He attacked again, this time anticipating the low swing of my cutlass. What he wasn’t counting on was the thrust of my hilt upward into his jaw on the rebound. He staggered, and I dropped into a defensive position.

  “Enough,” he said, backing into a surrendering stance. I’d never seen him do that before.

  I kept my sword aloft a few moments longer, not sure if he was trying to bait me with a trick. Once I was assured he meant what he said, I carefully lowered my weapon.

  “What is that sword?” he asked me, his voice sharp. “Let me see it.”

  I flipped my grip on the blade and held it up with the blue gems facing Alek.

  His expression hardened even further. “Who gave you that?”

  “Laurenna,” I said, keeping my chin up. He might as well know I was on his kingdom’s side even if he wasn’t.

  “That sword wasn’t meant to be yours.”

  “Well, it is now,” I said.

  He turned on his heel and stalked off. “Get back to practice!” he barked at the other trainees.

  The sight of his retreating backside sparked an uncontrollable wave of anger in me, and I stormed after him.

  “Why do you hate me so much?” I accused him.

  He turned to face me, his gaze dangerously calm. “I don’t hate you.”

  “I know what you did,” I said.

  “What in the sarding Hell are you talking about?” he asked. I’d never seen him so furious.

  “The list,” I said, lowering my voice. “I know Eronit and Varian stole it and gave it to you. Laurenna and Zhari know, and whatever you’re plotting is about to be stopped.”

  He grabbed me by the arm, his grip like steel.

  “Get your hands off me!” I said, jerking away.

  “Come with me quietly, then,” he said. “I didn’t do what you think.”

  “I saw you at the Broken Cup,” I said. I knew exactly what I’d seen and heard there.

  “Just come with me, will you?” He exited the salle through a back door, and I followed him into a room filled with armor and weapons in various states of repair.

  I crossed my arms and stared him down. “What, are you going to kill me in this back room? It’s too late. Everyone already knows what you did.”

  “You shouldn’t interfere in things you don’t understand,” Alek snapped. “This doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

  “It has everything to do with me and my kingdom,” I said, my voice rising to match his. “The Sonnenbornes attacked us first, and I tried to warn you Zumorda was next. Too bad I didn’t know you were a traitor to your own people.”

  “I am not a traitor!” He looked like he wanted to smash me through a wall, and I barely cared if he did. “Yes, Eronit and Varian stole the list of names for me since I don’t have access to the records room. They did it so I could compare the list with the names of young people who have been reporting missing.”

  “Sounds likely,” I said, my voice heavy with sarcasm.

  “My sources let me know there’s a slave train departing later today,” he said. “I needed the names and Affinities to see if I could determine if anyone outbound there was on the list. If they were, that leads me to believe that Laurenna is giving names away as targets. She’s the one evaluating the children—she’s the one who would know how powerful their gifts are and who is worth turning over to the Sonnenbornes.”

  “Why in the Sixth sarding Hell would Eronit and Varian help you work against their people?” I asked. His story didn’t add up.

  “Because not all tribes believe the same things.” He threw up his hands in frustration. “Roni and Varian are opposed to slavery, opposed to the factions of Sonnenbornes who believe reintroducing magic to their kingdom is the way to solve their problems. They want to stop those tribes as badly as I do.”

  “Prove it, then,” I said.

  “Fine. Come with me to the city and see for yourself.” The challenge and disdain in his gaze said he didn’t believe for one moment that I actually would.

  “I will,” I said.

  We stared at each other with pure hostility for a few heartbeats before Alek finally broke away.

  “Then let’s go.” He grabbed a cloak from a hook near the external door, swinging it onto his shoulders on his way out. “Meet me outside the court gates in twenty minutes.”

  The bustle of the city was just as I remembered it from other times I’d been to town, but instead of heading for the familiar areas I’d been through on my way to get drinks, we walked downhill toward the southern part of the city closer to the trade road and the river. The modest buildings of merchants and tradespeople gave way to simpler structures, some of which seemed to house goods while others served as residences for many families.

  “Pull up your hood,” Alek said, and followed his own advice.

  I did as he instructed, then nervously touched the hilt of my sword, hoping I wasn’t going to have to use it. Whatever magical properties it had, I wasn’t sure how to get them to work. I hoped it would defend me against Sonnenbornes as well as it had against Alek in the salle.

  Soon the warehouses were interspersed with livestock pens, and the reek of animal excrement gusted over us with every breeze. Alek walked between a fence line and a building toward a warehouse that didn’t seem to be in use, but he extended an arm to hold me back from passing around the far end of it. Not far beyond him, the hill dropped off into a cliff. If he was going to kill me, there probably wasn’t a more perfect place to do it.

  “There,” he said, pointing over the cliff.

  I leaned forward until what he was pointing at was in my line of sight. The cliff had to be about fifty feet high, tall enough that it was hard to make out the individual features of the people below. However, it was abundantly clear what they were doing. A huge train of covered wagons had been set up along the base of the cliff on a crude road, cleverly concealed by trees that sheltered it from the rest of the city. The wagons were being loaded with people chained to each other who moved slowly, stumbling often, as though they were drugged.

  “Are those magic users?” I asked Alek.

  He gave a sharp nod.

  “We have to tell someone,” I said in a panic.

  “Who, the people who sanctioned this?” Alek said, his voice mocking.
>
  “It doesn’t look like anyone sanctioned this,” I said. “Why would they be hiding if it was sanctioned?”

  “Because Laurenna isn’t stupid,” Alek said. “Zhari cares about protecting her kingdom. She would never allow this.”

  “But why would Laurenna be involved with this in the first place?” I asked. What did she possibly have to gain?

  “She’s the guardian of a city run on commodities,” Alek said. “She’s always been ruthless, so it doesn’t surprise me that she’d find a way to make her own people the merchandise.”

  “You have proof of that?” My eyes narrowed. “Transaction records?”

  “Eronit and Varian are working on tracking them down now, since they have a place at court,” he said.

  “If Laurenna was working with the Sonnenbornes, it makes sense that she might open up to them,” I said. It made too much sense.

  Alek grunted. “You’re at least halfway to a right answer for once.”

  It was probably the closest thing to a compliment I could ever hope to get from him. Perhaps I’d misjudged him all along. He’d had me fooled into thinking his dull life left no room for uncovering schemes or tracking down the missing children of Duvey. I’d seen him as a soldier, not the shrewd tactician that he clearly was. And I’d trusted Laurenna because she’d given me a magic sword and I liked her daughter, but maybe that had been a mistake just as grave as misjudging Alek.

  “If your theories are correct, Kartasha could be in immediate danger,” I said.

  He nodded. “This train looks full. Once it hits the horizon, we could find ourselves bracing for an attack. The Sonnenbornes will take advantage of having purged so many magic users from the city.” It was going to be like Zephyr Landing all over again, this time on a catastrophic scale. I wished I’d already called my brother’s cavalry, though there wasn’t any way I could have done that without alerting Laurenna to what I’d done—and it sounded like that would have been the worst mistake I could have made.

  “I have an idea about how we could get this information to the queen,” I said, saying a mental prayer to all Six Gods that Hornblatt was sober today and that the honeyshine vendor still had some in stock.

  “How?” Alek asked incredulously.

  “I know where Hornblatt is.”

  As we made our way through the city, I worried that we were already too late. People spoke in hushed whispers, and business seemed slow at every shop we passed. We caught the liquor vendor on her way out the door, closing shop early, and were lucky to get a bottle of honeyshine at all. I saw magic used less frequently than I’d become accustomed to, and Alek kept his hand on the hilt of his weapon all the way to Hornblatt’s front door.

  When a polite knock on Hornblatt’s door got no response, I tested the doorknob. It didn’t budge, so I banged on the door. “Open up!”

  “Quit yer squalling!” someone shouted from a window on the opposite side of the alley.

  I ignored them and pounded on the door again.

  Finally, it cracked open. I tried to shove my way through, but a chain held the door so that it opened only a sliver.

  “What is this fuss about?” Hornblatt asked with great indignation.

  I pulled the honeyshine from under my cloak. “I need to talk to Denna. Now. It’s urgent.”

  He eyed the honeyshine. “It’s not a good time, but I’ll take that honeyshine if you aren’t going to need it.” His tone grew wheedling.

  “You aren’t getting this unless you let me speak to Denna right this minute,” I said.

  “It’s too late. It’s already begun.” He paused for a moment as if listening to something on the wind, then slammed the door in my face.

  “Damn you, Hornblatt, open this sarding door!” I unsheathed my sword. I would get him to let me talk to Denna if I had to hack down the door myself.

  “Stop,” Alek said.

  The wind shifted direction, bringing a whiff of smoke. Distantly, I heard a faint roar I didn’t know how to decipher. “What the Sixth Hell is that sound?”

  “Probably what Hornblatt heard before us, thanks to his Farhearing,” Alek said.

  I heard the familiar snap of a bowstring from a nearby rooftop, and then an arrow embedded itself in Hornblatt’s door barely six inches from my head. I dropped the honeyshine bottle on Hornblatt’s stoop, and it shattered.

  “Sard me in half!” I said. Who was shooting at us?

  A quick flick of Alek’s fingers made a bubble-like shield appear in front of us just in time to stop the next arrow. “Run,” he said, and I didn’t wait for further instructions.

  I half expected our way to be blocked when we exited the alley—the classic move favored by most groups of thugs or would-be assassins. Instead, I was shocked to see that the city had erupted into total anarchy. No one was after me and Alek specifically; all of Kartasha was under attack by Sonnenbornes. Everything I’d feared had come to fruition—this was Zephyr Landing all over again on a much larger scale. If the Sonnenbornes succeded in taking Kartasha, they’d have the largest city in Zumorda under their control, as well as the biggest trading hub in all four Northern Kingdoms.

  We hurtled through the streets dodging flying fists and weapons. A building had caught fire near the tower, and the riot intensified the closer we got to the Winter Court. People transformed right and left, trying to escape their attackers by taking their manifest forms. Bears, boars, snakes, rabbits, and all sorts of other animals flooded from every alley, many of them being chased by packs of savage dogs.

  “Are these Tamer dogs?” I asked Alek as we hid behind a building, trying to catch our breath.

  “Could be.” He drew his broadsword and hurried into the fray.

  I followed his example, hoping my blade and what training I had would be enough to keep me alive. Now that we were closer to the Winter Court, everywhere I looked there were Sonnenbornes with weapons flying and Zumordans desperately trying to defend themselves. Soon we were in the midst of it. I took out Sonnenbornes left and right, but even with the sword’s help, I could feel my body swiftly weakening. There was only so much it could do with exhausted muscles, and the fighting was only getting worse.

  A Tamer’s dog burst from behind a wagon and went for Alek’s throat. I barely caught it with the flat of my sword in time to knock it aside. A crow swooped toward us, and I put my sword up into an overhead defense.

  Instead of attacking, the crow landed on a vegetable cart ahead of us and transformed into Kerrick.

  “Oh, thank the Six,” I said.

  “You have to run,” Kerrick said, his expression grim.

  “But we need to get back to court,” I said. “My horse—”

  “What of Zhari? Laurenna?” Alek asked sharply.

  “Fadeyka?” I added.

  “The three of them have been taken hostage and are imprisoned in the tower,” Kerrick said. “The Sonnenbornes have already won the city. There are too many of them. We can’t fight back.”

  My stomach churned. Flicker was still trapped at the Winter Court, and so were the people in power. And had we been wrong about Laurenna? It didn’t make sense that the Sonnenbornes would take her hostage if she was on their side. I wanted to fight back, but I was already more than half spent. I looked to Alek for guidance, surprised to see an expression of genuine unhappiness on his face.

  “I have to warn as many people as I can,” Kerrick said. “Go north to the base of the next mountain. We are planning to set up a camp there.”

  Before I could ask any more questions, he was already a crow and back in the air again.

  “We have to keep moving,” Alek said, his voice grim.

  I nodded my agreement and we turned away from the Winter Court. Half a sunlength later we hit the edge of the city, and the fighting was no longer audible behind us. A plume of smoke rose high over Kartasha behind us, turning the sun an eerie red.

  In just one afternoon, the city of Kartasha had been taken.

  Once we were outside of
town there was no point in hurrying—everyone heading in the same direction as us was equally defeated. People and animals walked with their eyes downcast. Children sobbed in their parents’ arms. The Kartashans were refugees in their own kingdom. Our group of a few hundred was growing fast, and curls of dust still rose from the road to the south. How many had escaped the city, and how many were working with the Sonnenbornes? How many had been sent off in the slave caravans now with no one to stop them? There was no way to know.

  The camp Kerrick had mentioned was nestled on a slope at the base of a mountain north of Kartasha, atop the remains of an abandoned homestead. Though it was colder there, climbing to the highest foothills put a sheer cliff to our backs that provided both a shield from the northern wind and a preventative against attacks from behind. The house had holes in the roof and a fair few wild animal nests underneath, but it hadn’t taken long to fashion it into something resembling a headquarters for our meager camp. And the animal pens around it were easily, if crudely, restored with branches cut from nearby trees, so we had a place to keep the livestock some of the refugees had managed to get out of the city.

  My body was shaking with exhaustion by the time Alek left to help chop wood and I sat down to rest, but sitting still didn’t last long—I felt like I couldn’t. Not with more people coming in, not with shelters to be built and food to hunt for. How long was it going to be sustainable to live here like this? Maybe magic could help in some ways, but it still couldn’t nourish a camp of this size. We had a stream nearby, but thousands of people couldn’t subsist on what little food there was to hunt. Rations were going to be short, and it wouldn’t take long for tempers to shorten with them. The minute we turned against each other, all hope would be lost.