Maximum Ice (28 page)

Light flickered ahead.
Wolf, Wolf’s flashlight.

The visions of children in the doorways disappeared. They couldn’t hold on against reality

But reality was not an improvement. There, standing before her in the hallway was a woman in a gown. Snow Angel, returned.

She held a torch, and blocked Zoya’s advance.

“Huhhh” came the creature’s voice. “Huhhhhh,” a softer but not a nicer sound than the bird screech of the gallery

Irrelevantly, Zoya thought, Be careful of fire around that filmy dress.

The woman approached, in a slinking step as in a ceremonial procession.

Zoya determined that when she ran, it would be forward, to the ladder, not back, deeper into the preserve. But that meant moving past the witch and the flame.

Snow Angel was close now, her face flickering in the
torchlight, the skin mottled, but the eyes soft gray, the hair flickering in the torchlight like it was already on fire. Zoya moved to one side to position herself to slip past. Mistake. With her free hand, the witch brought up a fist and slammed Zoya in the temple.

Her head filled with light and pain. Very strong, that one, she thought as she fell.

She woke from a momentary stun. The nightmare wasn’t over. Though her eyes were closed, she knew the creature was sitting on top of her. She could feel the heat from the torch against her face. A finger was tracing down from Zoya’s forehead to her chin.

Zoya opened her eyes.

Snow Angel straddled her. Golden hair stuck out in all directions like an exploded halo. Thin to starvation. Her face was dotted with old scars, stretched tight over a perfect skull and high cheekbones. Zoya’s mind was now racing in place. The creature’s skin seemed to rearrange the pockmarks into patterns, giving her face a kaleidoscope effect and making her expression hard to read.

Testing her muscles, Zoya found herself weak and nauseated. In her half-dazed state, it was easy for her assailant to pin her down.

The woman held up a finger, as though getting ready to say something important. Then she slowly lowered it to point to Zoya’s left ear.

“Lost,” Snow Angel said. The word came out overenunciated, as though she wanted to get it right. An expression of profound sorrow gripped the woman’s face. She nodded with slow exaggeration, as though the two of them shared some awful secret.

Snow Angel held up two fingers. “Two,” she said, nodding again. “Lost.”

She had said two words. The snow witch could talk, if barely.

“Ice,” Zoya whispered. Her voice sounded strange, like that of a little animal coiled and frightened in her throat. “Ice—did this to you. Ice ruined you. Help me to stop it.”

Snow Angel brought the torch closer, examining Zoya’s mouth. Zoya let the woman touch her lips. “Help me,” Zoya mouthed. It might have been the wrong thing to say

The creature lifted up her head, opening her mouth. Zoya knew what was coming. She was going to howl. Zoya wished to God she wouldn’t.

When the wail came, deafening and sustained, it sent a jolt through Zoya’s nerves.
Run. Now
, a primitive part of her mind commanded.

Obeying, Zoya hoisted her body, throwing Snow Angel to one side. She scrambled away, but then she was dizzy, so dizzy.

She slumped to the floor again, leaving her mind elsewhere.

Wolf was bending over her. He helped her up and, as she leaned on him, they made their way to the ladder.

When they emerged into the tower, he guided her into a sitting position against the tower wall. She counted his harpoons. Some were missing. “Is she dead?”

“Yes,” Wolf said. “But she got away.” He managed a fragment of a smile through his beard, and Zoya realized he’d just told his first joke.

He inspected the wound on her head. “You’ll live,” he said.

“Good.”

“Snow Angel spared you,” he said, with what might be tenderness.

“Maybe.” Zoya remembered the flickering light, rippling over the creature’s gown and skin. The gray eyes peering
closely at Zoya’s own face, tracing her finger down from hairline to jaw… a finger hot as a firebrand.

She began to shiver, hard.

Wolf left the tower, returning in a few minutes with a pack from the sled. He brought her water, and, when she had drunk, he wrapped her carefully in blankets.

“We’ll stay here,” he said, settling down nearby

The blankets were frozen stiff. “Come closer,” Zoya said, trembling still. “That would help, I think.”

He sat himself next to her. Around her shoulders came his arm.

The door to the tower was closed, and the trapdoor in the floor as well. They were as safe as they were likely to get. Still, she shook.

She leaned against his barrel chest. The arm cinched tighter around her.

“Is it still snowing?”

“Yes.”

“I’m glad.”

They sat for a long while in the dark. Zoya thought she could hear the sweep of wind outside, flakes of snow skittering over the rock tower. She was so tired, so awake.

“You should sleep,” he said.

“I am asleep.”

Just to nestle with another human being was a fine thing. It was no good, no good at all, to sleep alone, though God knew she had plenty of practice at it. She snuggled closer to Wolf. His strength felt like a benediction. She closed her eyes. Perhaps she could sleep. But she lay in a man’s arms—a good man, though not a gypsy—and damned if she was going to waste it on sleep.

“Tell me about her,” she whispered.

Maybe it would be a bad story. She was pretty sure of it. The
wind gusted outside, buffeting the tower. If it weren’t for the snow and wind and dark, she thought the story would never come.

But it did.

“Snow Angel,” he said. “That’s not her name.”

She felt his voice rumble in his chest. She inched closer.

“Marja was her name, before. After, I called her Snow Angel. She killed my children.”

Zoya’s hand came up to his chest. She wanted to say something, but she held on tight instead.

He continued, his voice even: “She had been gone for a year. When she returned, she found Bella and Andre at my camp. They were four and six years old the day they died. I only left them for a moment.”

“When I came back, Marja was devouring them.”

Zoya moaned. His hand stroked her shoulder, comforting her, though it should have been the other way around.

“In those days I traveled with a small group. We all had children and partners. But that day I had been off hunting on my own. She must have followed me. Later I figured out that she came to—visit us. But things got out of hand.”

After a moment he said, “She was their mother. My wife.”

Oh, worse. So much worse. This Wolf told a terrible story She was sorry, for his sake, to have asked him to tell it. But he went on.

“I lost Marja the year before, when a snow witch took her. Sometimes they take people, to make more like themselves. After a year, maybe two, Ice births them. When it’s time for them to come out, they can talk to Ice. By touch. That’s another way to tell a snow witch.”

Zoya didn’t interrupt.

“By her condition when I saw her again, I knew she had
traveled a long distance. She was in rags, and starving. Witches are always hungry. But she hadn’t eaten in weeks. Until that day.”

“When she saw what she had done, she begged me to kill her. She couldn’t talk, but she bared her throat for me, and cried out. I was kneeling by my children’s bodies. In a rage, I struck her down. But when I drew my knife, I couldn’t use it. The more she pleaded, the weaker I became. I was weak that day.”

“Not weak…” Zoya whispered.

“Still weak,” he said. “That I love her so.”

Hard indeed, Zoya thought. Oh, Wolf.

“Ice is her master, but she fights it. She comes to me so I can redeem myself. Most of her isn’t human anymore. But the part of her that is, I will set free. Like I should have done that day.”

He took a deep breath, then let it escape. “I came close tonight. I think she was surprised to see you, maybe angry Maybe she thought you were my new wife.”

After a pause he said softly, “She should know better than that.”

Zoya thought of Marja and the two missing diamonds, the two missing children. Perhaps it wasn’t anger she felt, seeing Zoya. Maybe it was only pain.

Wolf leaned his head against the wall of the tower. His story was spent. Perhaps it was good for him to tell it. She wondered if before tonight he ever had.

“How long ago, Wolf?”

“A few years,” he said. “Not many years. Long ones, though.”

The wind moaned around the tower, but it was a good sound. It filled her with mysterious comfort like old, hard stories told by people you love.

“Someday, Wolf,” she whispered, “you will marry again.”

“Always married,” he said.

His devotion shamed her. She had almost abandoned him, stolen his sled. Her eyes burned, and she held on to him. “I’m sorry, Wolf.” It was a blanket statement, covering so much. Things she’d done, and almost done. Things she’d assumed, judgments made.

He patted her shoulder. “Sleep now, Ship Mother.” She fought it, but to no avail. Sleep took her.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Kellian stood at the open doorway to the dormitory. In the center of the room, Nit was sitting on a small footstool, trying to eat her lunch while crouching over a meal tray on the floor.

Hilde, who’d been lounging on her bunk, swung her legs to the floor and sat up, regarding Kellian with an amiable gaze.

“Good afternoon, Top Kellian,” came the chorus of voices.

Kellian flicked her gaze around the room. Hilde’s gang kept their faces averted, trying not to draw attention to themselves, now that Kellian was the
other
white robe in the dorm.

“Nit,” Kellian announced, “you’re to come with me. I have work for you.”

“She’s not done with her penance,” Hilde said, rising up from her bunk.

“She’ll do penance, don’t worry.” Kellian waved Nit over to her, but Nit sat as though nailed to the stool. “What was her transgression?”

“Lost a shoelace.” Top Hilde looked around the room, trying to summon support, but the postulants remained studiously neutral.

“Hard to lose a shoelace when it’s laced into a shoe,” Kellian observed.

Hilde shrugged. “She’s not very bright.”

But a safe target, isn’t she?
Kellian thought. She and Hilde regarded each other across a room grown profoundly silent.

“Nit?” Kellian commanded. The girl finally extracted herself from the stool and hurried to Kellian’s side.

Hilde sank back onto her bunk, affecting nonchalance. “Take her, then. We don’t need any more disruptions of our routines.”

“You need a lot more disruptions,” Kellian said.

Out in the corridor, Kellian steered her charge to the sanctuary. They had another twenty minutes until lunch break was over, and the sanctuary was a favorite place, now that Kellian’s white robe allowed her to
have
a favorite place.

Backlit stained-glass windows shed a jeweled brilliance over the pews and altar. It was here that Kellian came to be alone, and at times, to pray silently to her god Jehovah, the private god of her family.

“What about my penance?” Nit asked as they settled into the front row.

Kellian squinted at her. “If you must, go polish a candleholder.”

As Nit scurried to her task, the image of a nun bloomed in the air above the chancel. Kellian would have been more reminded of an angel if the nun wore white, but her habit was black. This holo was of Mother Superior Mary Carmelita, sixteenth Mother Superior of the order, short, doughy, and maternal-looking. Her smile was bittersweet, as though she pitied those who still wallowed in meaninglessness. Kellian was studying the laureates. She knew this one was no technologist, but a philosopher, philosophy being the preferred road to elevation.

“How are laureates chosen, Nit?”

Nit was tackling a candelabra as tall as she was. “They vote. But no one’s been elevated in a hundred years.”

“Who votes?”

A deep voice whispered from behind Kellian, “The sisters.”

“Don’t turn around,” the voice added.