A Cavern of Black Ice (33 page)

Ash moved around her chamber, checking
the body-shaped lump of cushions beneath the sheets, pulling on her
thickest, plainest cloak, and opening the shutters so that those who
eventually discovered she was gone would think she had somehow
managed to escape by lowering herself down the Cask's outer wall and
so misdirect the search. Stopping at the brazier, she raised the
brass lid and thrust a mitted hand into the black, powdery soot. The
soot was hot as she worked it into her hair, hot and itchy as sin. It
caught in her throat and made her eyes tear, so she scrunched up her
face until she was done. When she opened her eyes a minute later by
the mirror, she saw a strange girl staring back. Matt black hair did
not suit her at all, making her face look like something preserved in
wax. Abruptly she turned away. It would have to do.

What to take with her? What would she
need? She had thought everything through beforehand, thinking of
little else for the past six days, but for some reason she had
avoided thinking about what she would have to take. Everything in her
room belonged to Iss. Oh, he said it was hers and made a point of
giving her many pretty and inexpensive gifts, but when it came down
to it he took them back at will. She'd seen the truth of that herself
these past few weeks, as Katia and Caydis Zerbina plucked objects
from her room on his say. She wasn't Iss' real daughter at all; he
never let her forget that.
Almost-daughter
was what he
called her. Almost-daughter was what she was.

Foundling, Ash told herself. Left
outside Vaingate to die.

Angry now, she felt less inclined to
leave empty-handed. That silver brush on the dresser would fetch a
price at Alms Market, and the pewter cloak pin was set with some kind
of red jewel that might be worth something to someone. She snatched
them up and bundled them into her cloak lining before her resolve had
chance to turn. What else? Spinning, she examined her chamber. Horn
books bound with pigskin, their library chains still attached, would
be worth a good few coins apiece, but Ash quickly rejected them. Too
heavy. Too noisy. If she tried to sell them, the chains would surely
give her away.

Abruptly she turned toward the door.
She didn't have time to conduct an inventory of her chamber. It was
leave now or lose her chance.

If only I could be sure.

No. Ash shook her head so hard a cloud
of black soot wafted from her hair. She had to go. Stay and she would
be a fool, and anything that happened to her would be no one's fault
but her own. She was a foundling; no one would care for her but
herself. Penthero Iss did not have her best interests at heart. Worse
than that, he planned on taking her to the Splinter and… Ash
hesitated, took a breath. Truth was, she didn't know what her foster
father intended to do. She only knew that her belongings had been
taken to the Splinter, the second most powerful man in Spire Vanis
had been set to watch her door like a common foot soldier, and every
morning while she washed her face and dressed her hair, her maid
rifled through her underclothes, looking for blood.

Ash took a final look around the room.
None of those were the real reason she had to go, though. Whatever
was trapped inside the Splinter, aching with hate and need so great
that all she had to do was put her hand against the door to feel it,
was what finally forced her into action. Just the memory of the
thing's desperate, unspeakable misery was enough to turn her stomach
to lead.

It wanted what she had. And Ash March,
Foundling and almost-daughter, wasn't prepared to give it one whit.

Steeling herself, she pushed against
the door. Cold bit her like a snake, and she had to fight the urge to
step back. Weeks of poor sleep had worn her down, and little things
like the constant cold in Mask Fortress now affected her more than
they used to. Almost as if she were about to plunge into water, not
darkness, Ash took a breath, held it in, and stepped into the
corridor. It was deathly quiet. One greenwood torch smoked above the
stairs. No light at all reached beneath Katia's door.

Ash moved quickly. She had already lost
minutes to indecision, and she knew from observation how little time
it took Marafice Eye to do his business. He might step from Katia's
room any moment, hands tugging at the leather straps on his pants,
small mouth still wet with Katia's saliva.

Promise to take me with you when
you
go.

Katia's words made the heat come back
to Ash's face. It was the only serious promise she had ever made in
her life, and although she had chosen words to deliberately mislead
the little maid, she felt no better for it. After tonight Katia would
find herself back in the kitchens, and that was the one place in the
fortress she didn't want to be.

Better the kitchens than where I
go
. Hardening herself against emotion, Ash rushed down the
stairs. Tonight was Slaining Night, and the Rive Watch would be out
in force, patrolling the city and keeping order.
Brothers-in-the-watch would be thin on the ground within the
fortress.

Slaining Night was the oldest of the
Gods Days, and people celebrated it only after dark. Ash was not
really sure what the festival marked. Her foster father said it was a
celebration of the founding of Spire Vanis, marking the erection of
the first strongwall at the base of Mount Slain by the Bastard Lord
Theron Pengaron. It sounded reasonable enough, and people
did
warm rocks from Mount Slain in their hearths or charcoal burners, yet
Ash had heard other things said. Old servants in Mask Fortress talked
about death and sealing darkness and keeping old evils in their
place. Ash had even heard that the name Slaining Night had nothing to
do with Mount Slain at all and that in some cities to the east it was
called by its true name instead: Slaying Night.

Ash frowned into the darkness. What in
the Maker's name was she doing? Tonight was quite frightening enough
without digging up a lot of old nonsense to frighten herself even
more. Sometimes she could be as dim as a lamp trimmer. Tonight was
her best chance of escaping from Mask Fortress. She had spent all day
hoping Katia would lure the Knife from her door, and now that she had
gotten her wish and was well under way, she had to keep her mind to
the task in hand.

Setting her jaw in place, she
approached the last run of stairs. A graymeet bench and its
accompanying alcove created a trap for shadows on the landing.
Torches were sparse, as any flame without a Slain Stone at its base
was considered ill luck tonight. Ash shivered. Penthero Iss probably
hated that. He hated the old ways and the old traditions—anything
that spoke of Spire Vanis's barbaric beginnings and past.

Hearing footsteps below, she slipped
into the graymeet alcove to wait until whoever caused them passed.
The limestone wall was as cold as iron against her back. The stone
bench, with its hard seat and sculpted backpiece, couldn't look less
inviting to sit on. Funny to think that grangelords and their ladies
had once sat here and flirted, their golden wine cooling as they
stole kisses and slid their hands beneath silk. All gone now.
Penthero Iss had seen to that. He claimed to be a man who liked
culture and art and high things, yet although he tore down or put an
end to many things that had been common in the fortress in Borhis
Horgo's day—dances held in the barbaric light of a burning
pyre, death duels fought with broadblades in the quad, and the yearly
slaying of a thousand beasts to mark winter's end—he seldom
introduced anything new in their place. Penthero Iss seemed more
concerned with destruction than creation.

Chilled, Ash slipped from the graymeet
and took the last steps down to ground level. The footsteps faded
into the distance, and she guessed that a single brother-in-the-watch
was making his rounds of the Cask. That meant she had only a few
minutes before he appeared again.

The black oak door and its gate were
open and raised. Even though Ash knew brothers-in-the-watch used the
gate constantly throughout the night to move between the Red Forge
and the Cask, it didn't stop her from feeling relieved when her
booted feet sank into snow. Wind ripped the cloak from her chest,
driving the metal fastening against her throat. Tears stung her eyes
as she forced the door closed and stepped into the shadows close to
the wall. The snow was old and slippery, polished to ice by the winds
of Mount Slain.

It was not dark. The Red Forge was kept
burning through the night, and the red light from the forge fire
combined with lamplight from the three occupied towers to make the
snow glow like human skin. The Horn was especially bright. The most
intricately worked of the four towers, with its iron outwork and lead
cladding, was positioned due west of the Cask. Katia said that the
Lord of the Seven Granges was holding a gathering there tonight.
Wicked it is, miss. Right wicked! There'll be prostitutes and
shaven women and worse
!

Ash edged along the west gallery wall,
heading in the direction of the Horn. The faint, tinny sound of
muffled music grazed her ears. Singing followed, then high tinkling
laughter, then the wind blasted it all away.

Ash fought with her cloak. "Thirteen,"
she whispered softly to herself for no reason. Thirteen doors and
gateways led out onto the quad. As a child she had sat on the
practice court and counted them. She could recall a time when twelve
of the thirteen had been in use, but then Penthero Iss had shut down
the entire east gallery and sealed off the Splinter, and now only
eight doors were left. Eight. And the Rive Watch had keys to them
all.

Directly opposite, set deep within the
carved limestone facade of the east gallery, lay the boarded and
defaced Shrine Door. The door, which led down to a small crypt once
used by the Forsworn, was made of wood that had been ported all the
way from the Far South and was gray and hard as nails. It had defied
defacing by Spire-made chisels and blades and had been painted with a
grotesque likeness of the Killhound instead. The bird leered at Ash
from across the quad, its sexual organs red and swollen, not like a
bird's at all. Ash could not remember a time when the door was
unmarked. In Borhis Horgo's day the knights who named themselves the
Forsworn because they renounced all prior oaths upon entering the
order had moved freely about Spire Vanis. They had helped Horgo
defeat Rannock Hews at Hound's Mire; and forty years later Iss had
expelled them for it. Like everyone else, Ash had heard the tales
about the twelve old and infirm knights who had fled to the crypt
during the expulsions, sending messages to Penthero Iss, begging for
asylum. Iss had supposedly granted their request, commanding
carpenters to seal the Shrine Door and the crypt's three small
windows, interring the men alive.

Abruptly Ash took her gaze from the
door. Suddenly everything she looked at seemed to be warning her to
turn back, to return to her chamber by the fastest route and put all
thoughts of leaving behind her. It was unnervingly easy to imagine
herself in a room built of stone with no way out.

No. No. No. Ash fought the fear before
it came. Tonight or never, she told herself, deliberately increasing
her pace.

Ahead a pale slash of light marked the
stable door, drawn together but not yet closed for the night. Lying
halfway between the Cask and the Horn, the stables were her intended
destination.

As she headed for the light source, she
heard the Cask door creak open behind her. Not daring to look around,
she stopped dead. Her heart thumped like a cracked bell in her chest.
Remember the hares
, she told herself.
Only things that
move get hunted
.

Sounds were difficult to catch in the
wind. Ash heard nothing she could put a name to at first. It could be
a routine patrol, a brother-in-the-watch changing guard, servants
bringing spitted meat and kegs of black beer to the Horn. Surely the
fact that no one was shouting and running was good? Ash thought it
highly likely that news of her escape would be greeted by something
harsher than a softly creaking door.

Having waited for over a minute, she
risked glancing back. The Cask door was closed. No one was in sight.
The chains holding the gate raised were still. Satisfied, she carried
on toward the stables.

Sounds of music and laughter from the
Horn grew louder. A side door opened as she watched, and a fat man
dressed in shiny silk stumbled out. Bending double, he promptly
vomited against the wall. Ash didn't stop. The man was too drunk to
notice anything moving in the shadows behind his back.

A half-moon rode low over Mount Slain,
casting a well-defined shadow for the Splinter. Ash tried not to look
at the ice-bound tower, preferring to watch steam rise from the fat
man's stomach contents, ice crystals form on her boots—
anything
rather than the Splinter itself. It was foolishness of the worst
kind, yet she couldn't help herself. To look meant to think, and Ash
didn't want to turn any portion of her mind that way. Not now, while
she was this close.

Paces away from the massive crossbeamed
door of the stables, she stepped as quietly as she could. The dry,
sawdusty odor of hay and oats mingled with the stench of horse sweat
and urine. Ash was glad of smells that had names, rather than the
strange, slightly chemical odor that blew with the wind from Mount
Slain. Rubbing her eyes to clear away the last traces of wind tears,
she padded to the door's edge. All was quiet, and after a moment she
braced herself and peeked inside.

Master Haysticks and two grooms sat on
wooden crates with their backs to the door, drinking something hot
from pewter tankards and playing blocks with the hard focused
attention of men serious about their game. The stone floor was
brushed clean and all the horses were boxed. A pair of safe-lamps
hung from brass pegs on the wall above Master Haysticks' head, their
horn guards yellow as an old nag's teeth.