The Icefire Trilogy

by Patty Jansen

  “Hey, relax,” Nolan said. His hand wandered down Carro’s chest, to his belt.

  Carro jerked away.

  Nolan withdrew his hand, and raised himself on one elbow, meeting Carro’s eyes.

  “It’s all right,” he whispered. “We never hurt each other.”

  But . . .

  The firelight played on Nolan’s face. His eyes were sincere. He’d taken off his shirt. There was a bulge in his pants.

  Carro stared through the haze of confusion. Were they all male lovers? Was he one? Whenever the Knights had violated him, he’d always become aroused. He’d had Korrine, but he hadn’t really loved her, had he?

  Long moments passed. Nolan reached out again, took Carro’s hand and placed it on his bare chest. “Feel it.”

  Nolan’s heart thudded under his fingers, through the warm and sweaty skin. He bent closer, his breath tickling in Carro’s neck. Carro wanted to give in, wanted Nolan to fuck him. But that was what the Knights did to apprentices for punishment. It hurt. Nolan nibbled the skin under his ear, and ran a hand over Carro’s shoulder. His lips moved up Carro’s jawline.

  Men don’t kiss.

  Carro jerked back.

  “Does it scare you?” Nolan asked.

  Carro nodded. He disengaged from Nolan’s touch and rolled on his back.

  “It’s all right,” Nolan said softly. “I can wait.”

  Carro nodded again. But he was rock hard and wanted to go somewhere private to relieve himself. No, he wanted someone else to do it. He lay there, looking up at the stars, his heart thudding.

  “Look,” Nolan said.

  A short burst of light tracked through the sky.

  “Quick, make a wish.”

  They were silent for a bit.

  Then Nolan asked, “What did you wish?”

  “I’m not saying. It’s supposed to stay a secret, otherwise it isn’t a wish.” But Carro didn’t know what to wish. He would have wished for himself to do well so his father would love him. He might have wished for his hallucinations to stop, but they seemed to have stopped of their own volition since crossing the border. Now, he just wanted to be free of the guilt he felt about his hot, naked desire.

  “Well, I wish I had loads of money and a big palace with swimming pools and all that stuff they have in Chevakia.” Nolan pushed himself up. “Better go and check the food.”

  Before he could stop himself, Carro raised his hand, as if he wanted to say, wait.

  Nolan hesitated, and sat back down, and leant over Carro. “So you do want it?”

  Carro panicked. He wanted to scream, No! But he was so hard it hurt.

  Nolan whispered, “About your wish.” The skin around his eyes crinkled with his smile. “You didn’t happen to be thinking of me? You’ve been ogling me for days.”

  Nolan reached up and felt for Carro’s hand. Warm flesh met warm flesh. Something connected. Nolan shifted closer and as if it was the most natural thing, folded Carro into his arms. His curls smelled like saddle oil and unwashed hair, but very male. Nolan lifted his face, and the next moment his lips met Carro’s. Moist, hot and eager.

  Carro had never been kissed like this. He’d forced himself on a girl, he’d been forced to kiss when he didn’t want to, and had other boys force themselves on him, and there was that incident, in the Eyrie where he had felt compelled to punish his patrol, that he didn’t even want to think about.

  None of those times were anything like this.

  Nolan’s hands were tender and questing. His callus-hardened hands warm under Carro’s shirt. Breath was heavy in the gathering darkness. Nolan took off his shirt, but Carro shied away when Nolan reached for the fastening on his pants.

  “What?” Nolan whispered. His lips glistened with moisture.

  Carro shook his head.

  “Why not? I want to fuck you.”

  Carro shook his head again.

  “There’s no need to be scared. Although . . . I was scared, too, the first time. Everyone tells you it’s wrong.”

  Carro said nothing. He was breathing deep, panting breaths. His heart was thudding against his ribs like crazy, but his cock was hard as rock and dribbling slime into his pants. “I’m not—”

  “A male lover? No, we’re not. Those words are for men who are too scared to do what their heart tells them. We call ourselves wolves. We move in a pack and if ever we need to be with the wolverines, we fuck them fast so they can get on with the breeding and don’t bother us anymore.”

  Carro grinned. Wolves. He liked that. Moving in a pack, no obligations to nagging women, and their parents wanting payment for offspring. No need to let himself become trapped in a marriage for the sake of appearance. He’d be independent, like his real father, and not a limp dishrag like the merchant.

  “All right,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “Show me.”

  Nolan did.

  They were beyond the reach of the glow of their fire and found each other purely by touch. There was nothing Carro hadn’t seen or done before, but Nolan was gentle, and Carro forgot his doubts. He even forgot what those doubts had been.

  Some time later, when the sky had gone black as midwinter night in the City of Glass, he lay in Nolan’s arms in the grass staring up at the flicker of firelight on the tree trunks. The branches made ghostly shadows which jumped about like a bunch of those other horrid things Chevakia had and the City of Glass did not: bugs.

  Farey called out into the night, “Hey, you two, stop clowning. Look at this!”

  Nolan let go and raised himself, pulling up his trousers. Carro pushed himself up and scoured for his pants and shirt on the forest floor. He shook leaves off and jumped about on one foot while getting into his pants. He stumbled into the clearing a bit after Nolan did.

  Jeito pointed at the horizon.

  “What is it?” asked Nolan, staring where Jeito pointed.

  “There’s . . .” Jeito’s eyes were wide.

  They all stared at the horizon, which, as far as Carro could see, looked just as it had before. But a cold chill went over him with a breath of icy wind. He heard faint echoes of voices in his mind. If he couldn’t see it, but he could hear the nagging voice of his stepfather, then it could only be . . .

  Nolan whispered, “Icefire.”

  Icefire here in Chevakia?

  Chapter 12

  * * *

  SADY SPENT most of the next few days talking to fellow senators, mostly in factions, because there wasn’t the time to do it individually. Four trains had left for Fairlight, and he needed a decision before they could return. So he was going to challenge at the next session, because the authority to send trains wasn’t his to make, unless he won.

  Over the years, the doga senators had developed a ritual for these canvassing meetings. It meant he announced his visit to the owner of the office some time in advance. The faction leader or senior senator would call in all the faction members, and the potential challenger would sit at the senator’s desk while everyone else stood around the perimeter of the room. Sometimes, there would be food.

  Over all his years in the doga, Sady had attended several of those canvassing sessions. They happened with disturbing regularity. He had always been in the audience, always somewhere at the back, closest to the door. He had always disliked the backstabbing and had often wondered why the backstabbers couldn’t just get on with their work and leave the leadership to do theirs.

  He saw that attitude in quite a number of his listeners, those who leaned against the wall, arms crossed over their chest. They were probably happy enough with Destran’s performance and saw no reason for a challenge, or they didn’t care. They thought a challenge was a waste of time and resources. He knew; he’d
thought the same so often.

  But this time was different. This time, the country was at stake.

  Then again, as he sat down in the next meeting, and especially if someone heckled him, he wondered if those challengers hadn’t thought exactly the same things every time they challenged. With all the abuse for not much of a stipend, certainly senators did this for the love of the country, and they challenged because they believed the current Proctor’s hold on the situation was broken.

  Some challenges had been successful, some not, but all challengers had believed they were doing the right thing. And for all of them, life had never been the same. There was no way he could go back to being a quiet senator after this.

  So he watched the preliminary votes, or intention-to-votes, in a detached numbness. Destran still had many supporters. Too many, if he had to be honest.

  He spent a long time before the meeting staring at his account balance, as if the action of staring at it would somehow increase it to a level high enough to pay for the sending of the trains if he failed to gain office.

  * * *

  “So what happens after the meeting?” Viki asked, in a low voice, when walking through the corridors to the doga session where he had planned to make his move.

  Everyone knew it was coming, and senators scrambled out of his way, or gave him pitying looks.

  “I win or I lose. Either way, you will be the Chief Meteorologist.” Sady felt tight as a wound spring. If he won, funding for his projects would be a battle, but if he lost, he’d have to cut Viki’s stipend to pay for the trains, before resigning in disgrace.

  Viki nodded, his face determined.

  Sady hurt inside. He could cut short the young man’s career as meteorologist, just now that Viki had become a lot more confident at handling requests, and no longer fell apart when a senior senator asked a tricky question.

  “You’ll surely win,” Viki said in that disarming way of his.

  “I don’t think so. I don’t feel confident at all.”

  “But if you lose, what will you do?”

  “I can’t go back to being a quiet senator. There would be constant distrust surrounding me.” At least he had never taken up the offer to live in doga-owned accommodation, but still, his stipend would be gone, and he’d need another way to pay for himself, never mind the staff. He could teach meteorology at the Scriptorium, or maybe in Arania . . . “I might join my brother on the farm.”

  He’d said it as a joke, and he tried to convince himself by laughing, but it came out wrong. Mercy, he was tense. It wasn’t just his situation that worried him. He worried about the consequences to the country if he lost.

  They arrived at the hall, Sady in front and Viki walking behind him, clutching his notes with more worrying meteorological data. No one had been able to raise Fairlight on the wire. Communication with Mekta was patchy at best. There was too much crackle on the lines so that not even the automated barygraph readings could be trusted. Because of the line outages there had been no reports of sonorics measurements, which had to be taken in person by the local meteorology officer. Sonorics in the border might well have spiked, but there was no way of knowing.

  The senators at the hall’s entrance stepped back to let Sady and Viki through into the richly wood-panelled hall. There was a broad stairway leading down into the hall, with the senator’s benches on both sides. Men and women who had been talking to each other on the stairs stopped and watched Sady and Viki walk past. Others, already seated, stopped talking, too, and by the time Sady sat down in his usual bench, almost every senator was looking at him, including Destran, who sat on a chair behind the dais, nervously shuffling through his notes.

  Sady pretended to ignore the attention. He made a show of studying the meeting’s agenda, in an outwardly calm way. Inside, his nerves raged. He had never imagined what Milleus had felt when he took over, although he remembered that day well. It was in the middle of the Aranian war, when senator Milleus had taken up his former position as army lieutenant, and he and his balloon squads had taken the first victory against the western invaders.

  Proctors were rarely elected at term. The Chevakian people usually re-elected whoever was in charge until that person’s colleagues staged a coup. The challenges were the subject of much gossip and street theatre. Tomorrow, his name was going to be all over the gossip circuit. He’d heard some rumours already. Who did you say was going to challenge? You have to be kidding. Tiverians were said to be staid and calm, but they loved their political bloodlettings.

  Everyone in the hall took their places.

  Destran rose from his seat and opened the meeting. He listed the agreed agenda points and asked for emergency items to be added. This was a formulaic requirement normally read without much enthusiasm. It was also an invitation for a challenge.

  At this point, everyone fell quiet and looked at Sady, and Sady rose, as if in a dream, a very bad dream.

  “I have a point to add.”

  Destran glared at him. Standing here in the spot of light coming in from the ceiling, he looked very old and tired.

  “I want a vote of no confidence.”

  The entire hall broke out in cheers and shouts.

  Destran hammered the dais and eventually a semblance of silence returned. He continued glaring at Sady. “And why do you think that the doga will vote against me?”

  Destran had been challenged a few times before, and had always won comfortably. If nothing else, he was surprisingly tough to unseat. Because he divided his opposition.

  Sady ploughed on. “A good number of senators have become distrustful of your handling of the sonorics crisis. By pretending it doesn’t exist, you—”

  “And Alius continuously confirms that there isn’t half as much a crisis as you say there is,” a senator yelled at the back of the hall. “You’re all making this up for your own advantage.”

  “Alius is not coming forward with any kind of solution about this, even though I’ve asked him, even though he promises that we will have medicine. But that aside. Alius is not a meteorologist. He does not see the large patterns and the looming food shortages. We cannot wait any longer. We don’t like this situation any more than anyone else here does. Ignoring the facts does not make them go away. I want this country to survive. I want every person in Chevakia to be safe.”

  He looked all around the hall. “Destran continues to play down the danger. The truth is, the earlier reprieve we had from rising sonorics has been brief. The truth is that levels are rising rapidly. The last-measured level of sonorics at Fairlight was seventy-three motes per cube. Last measured. We have lost contact with Fairlight. These levels may well pour so much energy into the barrier plates that they will shatter. The truth is that a massive low-pressure cell is building over the southern plateau. The will be a snow storm like none of us have seen in our lifetimes. I have taken it upon myself to send four trains for the evacuation of Fairlight. The drivers have risked their own lives to volunteer for this job. I have risked my life to visit the border regions. There are as yet unconfirmed sighting of eagles in the region. My sources report civil unrest in the City of Glass. That is what we’re facing, and this situation will not go away by ignoring it. Are you willing to go on with a Proctor who stands by and does nothing?”

  The hall descended into shouting and yelling, until Destran hammered on the dais, and by the time a measure of silence returned, a group of senators at the back of the hall were chanting, “Vote, vote, vote.”

  They were mostly Sady’s supporters, and he noted with unease that a lot of other senators didn’t yell support.

  “Senator Sadorius han Chevonian, are you challenging?”

  “I am.” Never had two words meant more for Sady, not when Milleus said them, not when Destran said them. A trickle of sweat ran do
wn his back. “I am challenging for the sake of Chevakia, because I want our land to survive and defend itself.”

  A lot of senators cheered.

  “So, we vote.” Destran’s voice had gone flat and emotionless. “All those in favour of the challenger, Sadorius han Chevonian.”

  Hands went up. Not as many as Sady had hoped. He noted several of the senators who kept their hands down had stood at the back of the room during canvassing meetings. Destran’s support was still strong.

  People started moving around to lobby others to change their vote, both ways. The arbiters shouted for people to stay seated, but still, there was so much chaos in the hall that counters had to recount three times before the result was announced.

  “Sixty-three in favour.”

  This was followed by shouts from the audience.

  Any vote for Proctor needed a two-thirds majority, which he clearly didn’t have. Which Destran didn’t have either.

  Senators already lined up to negotiate with him. More money for alternative industry to reduce the central region’s dependency on mining. Sady could agree to that. There would have to be the revival of a lot of military industry, which would benefit the central region, because of the mines.

  More money for education in the south. That was harder to promise, because no one knew what the immediate future would bring for the south. He sent Viki to the telegraph office for the latest news. The response was erratic, with reports that would take a lot more time to appreciate, and still no news from Fairlight. The wildly fluctuating sonorics levels prompted some to say that the barygraphs were broken.

  While this was going on, factions were convening on the floor, and changing their votes to stand in blocs. Message boys delivered their requests to the rival candidates.

  The north demanded its railways if they were to vote in favour—Sady cursed at that. But he desperately needed the north’s support, so he made some sort of half-hearted promise on the damned train lines.