Crossing the Black Ice Bridge
Page 19
“If I’ve taken anything it’s because it doesn’t belong here,” she replied. “I’m looking for the Collector.”
“Well, you’ve found her.” The woman took a cigar from her pocket, lit it, and drew on the end so that the tip glowed red-hot. “Scarlett Sauvage,” she said, exhaling smoke, “at your service.”
The sea-gremlins began to grumble. “We can’t capture you if you keep moving, Miss Sauvage,” one of them said.
“Oh, you must have finished that blasted thing by now!” Scarlett responded. “I’ve been sitting here for hours. You’ll just have to fill in the blanks with your imagination.” She glanced at Stella. “It’s a stupid tradition, so far as I’m concerned, but every member of the Phantom Atlas Society has had their portrait hung on the wall of this house, and sea-gremlins do love their traditions. So here we are.” She waved her cigar, leaving a trail of vanilla-scented smoke in its wake.
“But I… I don’t understand,” Stella said, trying to think through the pulse of her headache.
“Why don’t you take a seat and I can explain it to you?” Scarlett suggested, waving toward a table over in the corner that had been set for afternoon tea. “We’re both ladies,” Scarlett went on. “So I assume we can do this in a civilized manner. What happened to your friends, anyway? Daphne told me there were four of you.”
“They’re trapped in a room downstairs,” Stella said. “An alarm went off—”
“Oh yes, when the gargoyles took the heart snow globe. It’s one of the few that’s alarmed. Not that I give two hoots about it either way, but a few of my predecessors were rather preoccupied with the snow queen. I suppose in the early days she was necessary to stop explorers from wandering over the bridge and poking their noses in where they didn’t belong, but people seem to know to leave the bridge well enough alone now, and the ones who somehow miss Queen Portia come upon the sea-gremlins or those warning signs about the giant.” She gave Stella a close look and said, “You’re the first visitors we’ve had for ages. Don’t worry about the alarm—I entered the deactivation code a few minutes ago. It will stop anytime now.”
Indeed, the alarm ceased to wail before she’d even finished the sentence.
“There,” Scarlett said. “The gates will open automatically after fifteen minutes or so.”
She walked over to the table, pulled out a seat, and sat down. Not sure what else to do, Stella followed her. Scarlett didn’t seem as if she meant any harm, but there was something in her eyes that Stella didn’t much like. It wasn’t quite the soulless look she’d seen in Eli Sauvage’s portrait, but it was a hard sort of ruthlessness that made Stella think this was a woman who didn’t allow anything to get in her way.
“If you’ve come to murder my father, then I’m afraid you’re too late,” Scarlett went on. “But I can offer you tea and cake. Is tea all right? I’m afraid I’m not too sure what children normally drink, and I could hardly offer you firewater.”
As she spoke, she reached for the bottle of firewater at her elbow and filled her teacup to the brim. Felix kept a bottle of firewater in the liquor cabinet back home. He never drank it himself, but it was brought out sometimes when other explorers were staying with them and wanted to toast the success of their next expedition. Stella had once tried a sip when none of the grown-ups were looking, and the amber-colored drink had almost blown her head off. Yet Scarlett took a deep glug of it like it was no stronger than fairy-water.
She raised her dark eyebrows over her teacup at Stella. The teacup was a beautiful object—dark green and black, painted with the crest of the Phantom Atlas Society. “Well?” she said.
“I’m sorry—I’ve forgotten the question,” Stella replied.
“Dear me, you are on your last legs, aren’t you?” Scarlett replied. “I don’t think a fight to the death would have gone in your favor, if I’m honest. I was asking if you would like tea?”
“Oh. Yes, please,” Stella said. “And I really don’t want to fight anyone to the death. I’ve only come here to take back something that was rightfully mine all along.”
“The Book of Frost, I suppose?” Scarlett asked, reaching over for a tall green teapot and pouring tea into Stella’s cup. It didn’t steam, and Stella heard the clink of ice cubes from within the teapot.
“I thought you’d prefer iced,” Scarlett said. “Being an ice princess.”
Stella frowned. “How come you were expecting me? And knew who I was?”
“Daphne told me you were coming,” Scarlett replied. “You met her on the bridge, I believe? And made quite an impression too, from the sounds of it. As for knowing who you are—well, everyone knows, don’t they?” Her eyes gleamed slightly. “The first female explorer in history. You know, I’m the first female Collector, so we actually have something in common. Do help yourself to sandwiches. Or would you prefer cake?”
The cake did look good, but Stella waited until she’d seen Scarlett bite into one before she took one of her own. The mixture of cream, jam, and sugar was delicious, and she could feel some of her energy returning after eating just a few bites.
Then she looked at Scarlett and said, “Why would you think I’d come here to hurt your father?”
“Oh, well, he was an absolute villain, you see,” Scarlett said. “And you’re an ice princess, so I expect he murdered your parents, or your auntie, or your granny or something. He picked off quite a few of your kind while stealing all those Books of Frost.”
Stella frowned. “But what did he want with them in the first place?”
“There was a particular spell he was looking for,” Scarlett said. “He never did find it, though he hurt a lot of people in the search.”
“Your father was Eli Sauvage, wasn’t he?” Stella asked. “I saw his portrait out on the landing.”
“That’s right.”
“But I thought Jared Aligheri lived here. I thought he was the Collector.”
“He was,” Scarlett said. “Two hundred years or so ago. He was the first Collector, but he’s long since dead. Nobody lives for two hundred years, not even a sorcerer. He had to find someone else to hand his magic down to. Someone sympathetic to his cause. And it’s gone on in a chain like that ever since.”
“So… does that mean you’re a sorcerer, then?” Stella asked.
Scarlett frowned. “Technically speaking,” she said. “I have the staff.”
She flicked a hand in a lazy gesture toward a staff in the nearby bay window. It was made from twisted white wood, with a glowing red stone set at the top, and it had the unmistakable air of something magical and powerful. Stella couldn’t help noticing that for all Scarlett’s apparent relaxed civility, she had left the staff in a place where it would be easy to grab.
“But I’m also an inventor,” Scarlett went on. “In fact, I’ve finally succeeded in creating a one-person submarine that’s actually serviceable—after many failed attempts. I’m also an aviator. And a scientist. We can be more than one thing, can’t we? I imagine you would know all about that yourself.”
She looked closely at Stella, and just for a moment it seemed like here was someone who might actually be able to understand how it felt to be seen only as an ice princess—a villainous caricature rather than an entire person made up of a whole bunch of strengths and weaknesses, dreams and talents, faults and idiosyncrasies, yearnings, hopes, and fears.
“Oh, yes,” Scarlett said, perhaps reading Stella’s thoughts on her face. “I understand how it feels. That’s why I thought perhaps you might like to become partners?”
“Partners?”
“How much do you know about the Collector and the Phantom Atlas Society?”
“Hardly anything.”
“Just as I thought. The society is meant to be secret, you see. It’s easier to carry out our work that way.”
“What is it exactly that you do?” Stella asked.
Scarlett rested her elbows on the table and steepled her long fingers together. “We’re conservationists.”
“Someone who dedicates themselves to protecting the planet,” Scarlett replied. “Someone who concerns themselves with the greater good. Jared Aligheri and Queen Portia were the first. It began with endangered species, I believe. Queen Portia noticed that the snuffle bear was dwindling to dangerously low numbers, so she created these magical snow globes to contain a few of them and keep them safe. Then there was the occasional island where a volcano was about to erupt and destroy everything. Imminent natural disasters and catastrophes—that sort of thing. They saved those places by putting them inside snow globes, where they would be protected until some solution could be found. Animals, and people, go on living inside the snow globes, you see, but time stands still, so they don’t age. For a while, Jared and Queen Portia worked together harmoniously on this.”
“And then they had some kind of disagreement?” Stella said, remembering what the gargoyles had asked.
“Indeed,” Scarlett replied. “Queen Portia’s view was that their collecting should be kept to a bare minimum, whereas Jared felt that their responsibility to the world exceeded that. He began to collect places that weren’t being cared for properly. The Hanging Gardens of Amadon, for example. People didn’t respect it. They left rubbish. They polluted the waterfalls. They disturbed the wish-fish in their greedy desperation to have all their selfish wishes granted. Jared felt that if people couldn’t look after a place, then they didn’t deserve to keep it.”
“So… he just took it?” Stella asked. “But he had no right to do that. The wonders of the world belong to everybody.”
“Do they?” Scarlett replied. “Even if no one cares about them? People are lazy, and selfish, and stupid. Sooner or later, they spoil everything.”
“That’s not true,” Stella protested. “Some people might be like that, but not many. And not everyone.”
“It’s certainly the case that some people are not stupid,” Scarlett replied. “But then they’re clever, and violent, and cruel, and that’s even worse.” She met Stella’s eyes. “I think that’s a lesson my dear departed father taught us both. But he was right about one thing, and that’s that people don’t deserve the world and it’s our duty to collect as much of it as we can before it can be spoiled. That’s why we moved on to places that hadn’t actually been corrupted yet—like the Islet of Gentleman Flamingos.”
“You took it even though there was nothing wrong with it?” Stella asked, thinking of Melville.
“There was nothing wrong with it yet,” Scarlett replied. “But why wait? If we’re going to try to preserve and protect the world, then surely it makes more sense to do so before it can inevitably be spoiled or tarnished in some way. There is less value in saving a broken thing, after all. So, yes, for some years now the various Collectors have been trying to collect our most treasured places and natural wonders. But there was a problem—there was only a finite number of snow globes because Queen Portia refused to make any more when she and Jared fell out. And those were all filled a long time ago. If we wanted to collect a new place, then we had to put somewhere else back. For years we’ve been trying to work out how to make new snow globes.”
“Couldn’t the Collector have just forced Queen Portia to do it?” Stella asked, recalling how the queen had been compelled to guard the bridge.
“Not without giving her heart, and therefore her powers, back,” Scarlett replied. “And then they would have been right back to where they were before—trying to kill each other on the bridge. No, the Collector thought it was safer to try to track down the spell and perform it himself.”
“That’s why he took the Book of Frost,” Stella realized.
“That’s right.”
“And did he find it?”
Scarlett shook her head. “Unfortunately not. None of the books contained the spell. The books are all slightly different, you see, but all quite worthless to us. You’re welcome to have yours back, with my sincerest apologies.”
She got up and walked over to one of the lacquered cabinets. When she pulled open the door, Stella saw it was filled with more than a dozen different Books of Frost, their icy spines turned out toward them. Scarlett picked up a thick pair of gloves lying on the nearby shelf and peered at the volumes.
“Let me see… which one was it?” she murmured. “Ah, yes. Here it is. Queen Jessamine’s.”
She selected the book, which was so large that she had to carry it over to Stella using both hands.
“The book is freezing cold to the touch,” she explained as she set it down in front of Stella. “If an ordinary person touches it, it gives a nasty ice-burn.”
Stella gazed down at the book in front of her. It was a majestic tome with intricate ice swirls adorning its cover, along with detailed, complex snowflakes. The entire volume glittered in a coat of sparkling frost that was indeed icy cold to the touch, although it didn’t burn Stella when she rested her fingertips against it.
When she flipped the book open, she found the inside cover inscribed with her birth mother’s name.
“I am sorry for what my father took from you,” Scarlett said quietly. “He was an evil man, and that’s all there really is to say about him.”
Stella looked up. “Do you… do you know how he managed to kill my biological parents?” she asked.
It was a question that had always been there in the back of her mind. She did not know much about snow kings and so had no idea whether her birth father had possessed any powers of his own, but Queen Jessamine certainly should have been able to defend herself with ice magic.
“Well, sorcerers derive their power from fire,” Scarlett replied. “Rather like snow queens use ice.” She gave a small shrug. “And fire melts ice.”
“Are you… are you saying that he burned them?”
“I wasn’t there, so I don’t know for sure,” Scarlett replied. “Although I saw him use fire magic to kill people with that staff at various other times. It was not a pretty sight, and not something I would recommend you dwell on.”
“It doesn’t matter now,” Stella said. “He’s gone, and so are they, and my life has been the better for it. My biological parents were cruel people that I never knew, and I don’t mourn them.”
“Well, then,” Scarlett replied. “That’s another thing we have in common.”
Stella looked back down at the book and turned the thick creamy pages. Inside were dozens and dozens of spells describing how to perform various types of magic, from making poisonous snow cookies to freezing someone’s heart. Or unfreezing it. Stella saw that this was the spell she had come all this way for—the one that might be able to save Shay. It clearly described what she needed to do, and she felt her breath catch in her throat with excitement. She and the other explorers had risked so much and come such a long way to get this book back, and now that it was really in front of her, she could hardly believe it.
“I’d happily return the other books,” Scarlett said, glancing at the cabinet, “but most of them were stolen years ago and I have no idea where to take them. None of them were any good to us. The only book that contained the snow globe spell was Queen Portia’s.”
“But I thought Jared stole her book from her,” Stella asked, recalling what the gargoyles had said.
“Oh, he did,” Scarlett replied. “It’s over there in the case. But I suppose Queen Portia must have suspected that Jared might do something like that because she ripped out the page containing the snow globe spell and destroyed it.” The Collector looked at Stella and said, “I mentioned a partnership earlier and I meant it. With an ice princess on board, we could really do extraordinary things. If you could find some way to re-create the snow globe spell, then we could save the whole world.”
“But we wouldn’t be saving it!” Stella exclaimed. “We’d be stealing it from everyone else. And that’s not right! The world belongs to us all.”
Scarlett raised an eyebrow slightly. “If you really feel that way,” she said coolly, “
then why on earth did you march straight past those signs warning about the Land End Giant?”
Stella felt like she had walked into a trap. “Well, I… I didn’t know for sure that there actually was a Land End Giant there—” she began.
“You didn’t know there wasn’t, either,” Scarlett pointed out. “We always want right and wrong to be clearly defined, but that’s not the way of things, is it?”
Stella couldn’t think of a defense. Her desperation to save both Felix and Shay had made her behave recklessly, but she couldn’t regret it—not now when the Book of Frost was sitting in front of her, containing the spell she needed.
“I suppose being an explorer has rather corrupted your perspective,” Scarlett went on. “Explorers have always been the most terrible bother to the Phantom Atlas Society, you know, bringing the world’s attention to places that did not need to be discovered—places that should have been left alone. That’s why we have, historically, been enemies, even if you have been unaware of us. Nothing seems to keep you away. We even gathered together all those shipwrecks—in order to block the path beneath the bridge as much as we could and hope that it would put off any explorers thinking of sailing farther. And the sea-gremlins have come in handy too. They do an excellent job meddling with machinery and thereby stopping anyone foolish enough to try to venture past the wrecks.”
“That’s been done on your orders?” Stella couldn’t hide her dismay. “But it’s so dangerous! Many people have died as a result, and many more have been hurt.”
“Boo-hoo,” Scarlett replied coldly. “Sometimes you have to make sacrifices for the greater good. Hopefully you will appreciate that one day when you’re older—once your heart has frozen over—and then you might think of what I’ve said and reconsider.”
“I’m never joining you,” Stella said, standing up. “I think what you’re doing is wrong. Even if I knew how to do the snow globe spell, I’d never help. The idea of it… It’s against everything the explorers’ clubs stand for.”