City of Ice (6 page)

Every building was covered with icicles—belts of them fringed the roof edges and windowsills and band after band of icicles wound around the walls in several layers. With each frozen spike Mao's silvery rays sparkled and danced.

Glowing rectangles winked at them cheerfully from where the light found its way around the edges of the shutters and through the layers of ice to the cold night outside. And the hard angles of walls had been rounded by a coat of frozen water so that the smaller cottages seemed more like the crystal mounds where fairy folk lived. Scirye wasn't surprised when she heard music floating up faintly.

Bayang squinted as she tried to make out the shape of the buildings better under their coating of ice. “I'd almost swear someone took an old town from Denmark and plopped it down right here.”

“Nova Hafnia was founded by the great explorer Jens Munck, so most of Old Town dates back to his time in the seventeenth century,” Roxanna said proudly, and then proceeded to point out the landmarks in Old Town. The walls and gates curtaining Old Town were of a rich brick red. Nearest the docks rose the tall watchtower, JenstÃ¥rn, which thrust into the sky like a spear, and Rosenborg Castle looked more like a fort than the governor's palace.

Old Town had grown up in the bowl-shaped area formed between the curving mountains and the sea, covering the flatlands. In the last century, New Town had sprung up outside the walls, spreading up over the foothills. The houses and other buildings here were of wood and stone and would not have looked out of place in San Francisco. There were compact houses, larger blocks of tenements, inns, and restaurants. Even some large hotels were going up to cater to the cruise ships that would come through when the Arctic Ocean thawed.

“It's lovely,” Scirye said to Roxanna.

“Thank you.” Roxanna beamed as happily as if she had built the city herself and pointed toward the broad white plain stretching beyond the city. “In the spring, the sea melts and the ships can come through. And planes land on pontoons. But in the winter, the planes switch to skis. Usually there are lots more aircraft.”

“The freebooters must have been intercepting them,” Bayang said grimly.

Scirye followed Roxanna's pointing finger and drew in her breath sharply. Out on the frozen ocean were three small planes with long skis instead of landing wheels. She would have liked to have smashed them all. Overhead Mounties were circling about on their owls as they kept watch from the air.

“Which is the Ford Trimotor?” Scirye asked Bayang.

The disguised dragon frowned. “It's not there. The most any airplane there has is two engines.”

“I think,” Scirye said, turning to her friends in disappointment, “that we better go down to the docks and see if we can find out what happened.”

And the others nodded.

The last part of the journey was the most difficult because Roxanna's sled had to be lowered down the seaward slope, which was steeper than the landward side and even more prone to avalanches.

The oxen were unhitched from the wind sled and led back to other side of the hills. Roxanna's sled was then attached to a capstan by cables thicker than Scirye's legs. A team of trolls and giants strained against the capstan as they lowered the sled.

There was a separate path for the sled's passengers with huge flagstones, but since they were icy and it was twilight, the humans had to walk down with care.

“The days are so short and cold in the winter,” Roxanna explained, “that everyone's glad when spring finally comes. I just wished springtime lasted longer.”

“Doesn't the opposite get a little hard, though?” Bayang asked. “I mean, the sun's out for almost twenty-four hours during the summer.”

“It barely sets,” Roxanna agreed. “And that's hard too. But the farms can grow huge crops with that much sunlight.” She waved a hand behind her. “Part of the plain will be plowed up when enough soil thaws out.”

Prince Tarkhun must have sent word to the city, because wheeled wagons, carts, and even huge drays were lumbering through the snowy streets to pick up the cargo for their impatient owners, but at the moment the result was a monumental traffic jam. And yet even though the vehicles were tangled together, everyone seemed to be in a cheerful mood at the pending arrival of the caravan.

Roxanna frowned. “Excuse me, Lord Leech. I know you're in a hurry, but if I don't set things right, everything will back up and then it will be chaos.” Walking over to the nearest wagon, she climbed up the wheel and stood on the seat next to the surprised driver.

Shouting to get the wagoneers' attention, she began to direct them where to park their wagons and wait.

Roxanna carried herself with an easy authority that Scirye envied, expecting her orders to be carried out quickly and without question—which the tough-looking wagoneers did with respectful nods.

Clearly, she had handled this situation before, re-arranging the cursing drivers and their stubborn teams as calmly as another child might shift blocks around.

There were also several large drays with Sogdians at the reins. They were to take some of the cargo back to the caravanserai to be sold, picked up later, or shipped on by other means. These men she told to store her sled away with the other sleds.

Her task done, Roxanna jumped back down and returned to lead them down the slope through the slush.

“Who lives there?” Koko asked, pointing below them to a tavern doorway that was almost ten feet high. Lanterns had been lit against the growing gloom.

“That place caters to the frost giants,” Roxanna explained. “The Danes brought in different races to work the mines.”

At that moment, a tall creature stepped from the tavern into the street. His blond hair had been plaited in two braids as thick as ropes that hung down his back and his beard had been twined into a dozen little tails and tied with ribbons. He was dressed in regular boots and jacket, but on his head was a horned helmet.

He waved to Roxanna and said in stiffly accented English, “Caravan come?”

Roxanna smiled back. “Come to the caravanserai tomorrow and you'll have lots to buy.”

He grinned broadly and punched his fists up as if in victory. “Good, good!”

A few buildings down was another tavern. It was the same height as the other, but the doorway was barely four feet high. Several squat gnomes lounged outside. Their noses were bulbous and they hardly had any torso but seemed to be all arms and legs. They seemed just as excited as the giant as they called something to her and Roxanna replied in what Scirye assumed was Gnomish.

As they walked down the broad avenue, people came out of their shops and houses. Apparently, it had been a while since a caravan had made it to the city, so Prince Tarkhun had caused quite a stir. The prospective buyers eagerly asked Roxanna when her father would be ready to sell his wares.

“Tomorrow,” was Roxanna's stock reply in English and also Danish, French, German, Trollese, and several other tongues—the reply fitting the language in which the question was couched. It seemed as if the whole world wanted to shop at Prince Tarkhun's the next morning.

But if she looked as thin as the humans, Scirye would have been eager to buy food too. And she could understand the carnival-like mood that seemed to be filling the city.

Roxanna was always friendly and polite, never letting anyone stop them for long, but their progress slowed as they left the straight streets of the newer part of Nova Hafnia and passed through the gates into Old Town. Here the houses were jammed together and their upper stories jutted out over the paths, reducing the sky to a narrow strip between the roofs of the opposite buildings.

The roads, too, did not run straight but zigged and zagged and curled like the path of a wriggling snake. Intersections came up unexpectedly and side roads twisted off in surprising directions. They had barely gone three hundred yards before the companions were hopelessly lost.

“Watch out for falling icicles,” Roxanna warned.

Scirye scanned overhead. The icicles had looked so lovely from a distance, but now that they were this close she could see that they were as large and as sharp as daggers. She would not like having one of those drop on her from thirty feet.

Koko covered his head with a hand. “I wish I'd packed a helmet.”

However, Roxanna, who had grown up in the labyrinth, knew exactly where she was and where she was going. The problem was that the lanes became so narrow that it was difficult to step around inquiring folk.

They emerged from an alley and into a street that ran down to the docks themselves. They could see dozens of snow-covered de-masted ships, hauled up out of the water, resting in the shipyards with icicles hanging from the railings like frozen giant whales.

Before them stretched the glistening sheet of ice that was the bay. Hoping that she had made a mistake before, Scirye scanned the parked airplanes, but there was none with three motors.

However, there were a half-dozen Mounties on foot interrogating anyone on the dock. Two more patrolled up in the air on owls. Scirye assumed that Captain Lefevre's messenger had arrived with the warning.

Bayang gestured Scirye and the others into a doorway. “We'll wait here,” Bayang said to Roxanna, “until you find out what happened.”

She nodded at the wisdom of this. “Yes, we don't want to call any attention to you.”

Leech fretted. “We should have flown after Roland after all.”

“And have every Mountie trying to grab us as soon as they saw us flying?” Bayang squinted at the dockside as Roxanna went over to a gnome. “No, Prince Tarkhun was right. We'll wait until dark to sneak away. Don't worry. We'll pick up Roland's trail again.”

The dragon spoke with a confident patience that made Scirye shiver a little—as if she were catching a glimpse of how relentless Bayang the assassin could be.

Roxanna returned apologetically a short while later. “People saw a Trimotor fly overhead a short while ago, but it didn't land. Roland must have fuel supplies out on the frozen ocean.”

“Did you find out what direction it was going?” Bayang asked.

“That heading would take them straight to the Wastes,” Roxanna said, “but they'll stop or turn long before they get there.”

“How do you know that?” Scirye asked.

“Because no one goes into the Wastes,” Roxanna explained. “As long as the Inuit can remember, hunters who went into the Wastes disappeared. And every now and then some strangers come up here because they've heard tales of treasure.”

Koko perked up. “Oh yeah? What sort of treasure?”

Roxanna shrugged. “All kinds. We even had one pack of idiots hunting for the lost gold of Atlantis.”

“What happened to them?” Scirye asked.

“They said there were invisible phantoms that tormented them day and night until they gave up and left,” Roxanna explained. “And there are a lot of similar stories from over the centuries.”

Leech nodded up at the Mounties on their owls. “What do we do? We can't take off with them out there.”

Roxanna dipped her head respectfully. “Lord Leech, you can't go out onto the ice without the proper supplies and equipment. Come to the caravanserai where we can outfit you.”

As impatient as they were to be off, they had to concede that this was a better plan. Roxanna led them along another route until they came to the caravanserai.

They really couldn't have missed it, because the massive rectangular building dominated the wharf area, covering an entire city block and standing three stories high. It peered over the roofs of the other buildings as if watching them approach. Smoke rose from numerous chimneys, rising in the cold, still air like long locks of gray hair.

Lanterns shone on the caravanserai's sides so that, through the coating of ice, Scirye could make out blurred designs formed by different-colored bricks. The narrow windows were no more than slits. Scirye had been expecting some kind of princely palace, but this was a fortress that could have defied a thousand freebooters.

Cupping her hands around her mouth, Roxanna called out in Common, “Ho, the caravanserai! Open your gates.”

The great wooden gates of the caravanserai had been kept clear of ice and a panel slid back on a little window, but no face appeared behind the grill.

“Oh, it's you, my girl,” a woman replied in Common from behind the gates. Her voice was thin and wispy like the wind blowing sand across a beach. “We've been turning the place upside down looking for you.” There followed a quick string of Common words that Scirye did not recognize, but she suspected from the annoyed look on Roxanna's face that they were an insult and one too rude for her own nursemaid to have used when Scirye was small.

Embarrassed, Roxanna glanced at Leech and then shouted to the unseen servant, “Mother worries too much. And anyway, why are you playing gatekeeper, Upach? You're usually huddling inside the house by a fire.”

“I came to pass on a warning,” Upach said surlily.

“Well, you've given it.” Roxanna stamped a foot in vexation. “Now open the gates before I freeze outside.”

“You might prefer that,” Upach gloated, “to what your mother's going to do to you.”

“Thank Nana you're with me,” Roxanna whispered gratefully to Leech. “Mother can't do much too bad to me if I'm with guests.”

Scirye heard heavy iron bolts groaning as they were thrown back and then the thick doors creaked open. She blinked when the little woman waddled out.

She was about four feet high and wore so many fur coats that she was almost as wide. Boots as thick as elephant legs protected her feet. On her head was a fur hat as large as a melon, and a thick muffler hid her face except for a small slit for her eyes.

“You can't just go traipsing off whenever you feel like it.” Upach tried to wag a finger at Roxanna, but the glove on her hand was as big and clumsy as a baseball mitt. “You're off Nana knows where, and it's poor old Upach that has to take the blame.”

Roxanna threw her arms around the woman in an attempt at a hug. “I've missed you too, Upach. What would I do without you?”

Upach stomped one booted foot. “Don't try to honey-talk me, my girl. I didn't leave my lovely, warm home for this sort of silliness. I won't stand for it, do you hear? I just won't!”

“I ordered a foot warmer for you,” Roxanna wheedled. “That should leave your toes all nice and toasty. It should be somewhere in the caravan”—she indicated Leech—“that this hero and his friends saved.”

Before Scirye could even open her mouth in protest, Kles's paw had clamped down on her shoulder for silence.

Upach dragged one boot across the snow. “Humph. How am I going to keep the rest of me warm?”

Roxanna looked over her shoulder at them. “Upach's an ifrit from the desert,” she explained in English. “She's been my friend, my fussbudget and jailer, ever since I was born.”

“And nothing but trouble from day one,” Upach grumbled in thickly accented English. “I'm supposed to be the head housekeeper, not your nursemaid. Why, oh, why did I follow your mother here?”

“It was fate,” Roxanna said with an impish shrug.

“I don't suppose”—in the layer of furs, Upach's arm moved as stiffly as a statue's while she tried to give Roxanna a friendly pat—“you'd tell your old nursemaid how you…?”

Roxanna affectionately adjusted the servant's muffler. “I have to have some secrets, Upach. Otherwise, where would be the challenge for you?”

“I won't put up with this much longer,” Upach said, but heaved a heavy sigh that suggested she was actually resigned to her fate.

“Father also brought a thermometer to replace the one you broke,” Roxanna said mischievously.

“I did nothing of the kind,” Upach snapped.

“You pounded it every day demanding to know when it was going to get hotter,” Roxanna said. “Be kinder to this one.”

They followed the Sogdian girl into a huge open cobblestone courtyard that could accommodate a dozen large wagons at one time. This hollow square, Roxanna explained, was the center of the caravanserai, with workshops for smiths and warehouses occupying the ground floor of all four sides. The two upper floors held the Sogdians' living quarters.

As porters and clerks streamed out of rooms on all sides to help, Kles murmured to Scirye, “They're all armed.”

“If they don't have pistols, they at least have knives.” The girl noticed the magical charms pasted on the walls and doors. “And there are magical wards all over. Do you think it's the freebooters?”

“Probably. The freebooters must be getting pretty daring with Roland backing them,” Bayang said.