Maximum Ice (38 page)

“This must have been a good breeding year,” Sister Helene observed.

Again, Solange nodded. Her attention was fixed on the tracker and his sled speeding directly into the leading edge of the swarm. He was giving his passenger time to run. But he himself was out of time.

“That was a man who provided us witches,” Solange murmured.

“Yes, Mother. He was an excellent tracker.”

A woman was dashing for the Keep. She seemed to be yelling something at them. That wouldn’t be imprecations, one could hope. Zoya Kundara had nothing to blame them for. They didn’t control the pack.

The tracker’s sled plunged into the mass of rats.

Solange had a sudden, unworthy thought. That it might be best if Zoya Kundara met her end now, on the barrens, with her driver. There was no guaranteeing, not even very good odds,
that Zoya could be won over to the order. It might be best not to extricate her from the predicament she’d gotten herself into. Ship would never know the truth of her demise.

Sister Helene looked at her superior, a slight furrow of worry between her eyes. “Shall I have the doors opened?”

On the other hand, Solange thought, Why create a martyr? The woman’s moral authority could outlast her.

“The doors, Mother?”

Solange watched the dark-haired woman run, the pack close behind. It was a moral dilemma.

One could argue both sides.

Zoya’s legs were weary already. Behind her, the ocean of rats was flowing, flowing. She heard the chittering of rats, the buzz of Wolf’s sled running to meet them.

She was within shouting distance of the Keep. She raised her head at a steep angle to see the black figures massing there.

“Help us!” she called. “Help him!”

She could see they were black-robed nuns. But they stood on the ramparts without moving. They observed her.

Now she could make out the great door between the pillars. The door was closed, and she ran toward it, willing her legs to pump under her, though all their strength was gone. She was under the massive portico. She stumbled toward the doors. Beat against them with her fists. She turned, slumped against the doors. The rats were swarming out there, but not closing on her.

They were boiling around Wolf.

Zoya cried out to the doors, to the battlements, “Help him! I beg you, help him!”

Then the sled was overrun. The brown sea swept over it.

Zoya beat on the door; her hand felt broken. She was beating on the swarm of rats, beating them off, crying out.

A phalanx of rats peeled off the main mass and rushed toward her, as the door opened the barest fraction. Hands were pulling her inside.

The door slammed shut with the sound of hell closing for the day.

Zoya looked up into the face of a Sister of Clarity. The sister flinched as the rats hit the door with full force.

“Just in time,” the nun said.

The words skittered off Zoya’s ears.

Ice. All she felt was ice.

PART III
Burning Bright

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Swan lay on his belly and peered over the top of the rise, watching as Zoya Kundara disappeared inside the fortress. An undulation of rats rolled up against the great doors and back again.

The whole tundra bore a coat of brown fur, and resounded with chittering. A writhing mound in front of the Keep marked where the sled had overturned. Swan hoped the fellow had died quickly in the crash.

Deprived of half their hoped-for meal, the army of rodents swarmed and milled on the plain. They were still hungry. He could empathize.

He scanned the impressive edifice before him. Solange had a showy residence. She might have been a powerful ally. It might well have been a partnership to contend with, he and she. He did like the look of her retreat. Clean. Permanent. Strong. But the two of them no longer shared a common vision. She wished to preserve Ice, and he no longer cared.

A motion to one side caught his attention. It was a rodent. It had crept up on him, and now crouched a half meter away, frozen in surprise, whiskers quivering.

In dread, he looked around him. But the creature was alone. Beady eyes regarded him with intense interest, the interest of an animal accustomed to thinking of people as food. Well, he
could
turn the tables on the beast… But he began moving away from the rat, back down the hill toward his sled.

It was time to leave. Mounting the sled, he took a last look at the rise behind him. The rat was still there, watching him.

The loss of Zoya was only a temporary setback. He didn’t need her specifically. He would bargain with the ship, if they were loath to share. They wanted to dissolve Ice. He didn’t know how to do that, but he could program Ice to think about it. Ice could give over the whole of Error’s Rock to the question of dissolution. That was fitting. Plan your own demise, Looking Glass.

The ship’s crew was coming to a meeting with the nuns. This Lieutenant Jozsef Mirran was meeting with them for the handover of the children, up near Ancou preserve. Yes, it would suit.

He drove hard, putting as much distance as possible between himself and the brown hoard.

It was a bad way the sled driver had died. Swan did wonder how the gypsy woman convinced the driver to do it. Perhaps this Zoya Kundara was a persuasive woman.

Between the gypsy and the nun it might be a very good contest. For himself—from what he’d seen of both of them—he’d put his money on Solange.

“You are Sister Patricia Margaret.” Pulling on her boots, Zoya glanced up at the woman, the nun whom she’d met at the preserve, the one with a fondness for Seneca.

The sister nodded. She dropped the key to Zoya’s quarters into a pocket in her voluminous robe.

“What time of day is it? How long have I slept?” No windows, no clocks.

“It’s dawn. You slept a day and a night.” She said it as though it were a weakness, to sleep so hard.

You haven’t seen anything, if you think
that’s
a long time. She found her anger returning, against this nun, against all of them. For watching from the ramparts as the pack struck.

Her eyes must have hardened, because Sister Patricia Margaret said, “Shall we cremate his remains? He would have wanted that. It was his custom.”

Zoya rose, straightening her jacket. “I don’t think you know his custom.” She was surprised her voice was so even. “I’ll take his remains, if you’ll bring them here.”

“We will not bring pack-kill inside the Keep.”

A beat. Zoya wouldn’t waste time on this woman. Mother Superior waited. Leader of the pack.

The sister led her into the corridor of the palace. Zoya didn’t stare at the overscale luxury. This was earth. Even under duress, it could bestow grandeur and embellishment. If you were a Sister of Clarity

Sister Patricia Margaret murmured, “There was nothing we could do, you know.”

They were conversing in New English. Zoya judged it politic to offer that courtesy. It might be one of the few she felt inclined to offer.

They approached the great hall where she had first entered, staggering, freezing. Hating them. “You watched him die. From your safe roof.”

“The vermin horde has ever been our first line of defense. But we don’t control them.”

“You hesitated to open the doors.”

“We didn’t know who you were. We have to be careful.”

Zoya allowed herself to look the sister in the eye. “Careful of two people on a sled?” Mother of Christ, that was the very reason she’d arrived by sled and not by shuttle. And now the price
was paid. Oh Wolf. It was a price I never would have willingly paid.

The corridor ballooned into a cavernous entrance hall, with a scattering of robed women in black, brown, and gray. Younger women had shaved heads, downcast eyes. Cowed and miserable, the lot of them. And a few were men, hooded, but male, she thought by their build.

Great doors flanked one side, leading onto the barrens. On the opposite side were smaller doors—though still massive— leading somewhere else. Overhead, a graceful dome peaked in a circular window lit with sun.

The sister’s cane cracked a steady beat across this floor of marble tiles. Noting Zoya’s gaze, she said, “We call it Ice’s eye.”

Zoya thought that Father Donicetti would hate that parody of a cathedral’s God’s eye. But he no doubt disapproved of the sisters entirely

Amid the bustle of the foyer, Zoya saw a figure in brown rushing toward them.

A dark young woman, no more than fifteen, pushed close. “Please, Zoya Kundara, help us. She’s to be excommunicated.”

When Sister Patricia Margaret spoke, the girl flinched. “That will do, postulant. Join your group before I call Hilde.”

“Who?” Zoya asked the shaven girl.

“Kellian. She’ll die.” Her eyes flashed darkly to the sister. “You abandoned her. Everyone’s abandoned her, the smartest and best of us. You know she is.”

Sister Patricia Margaret’s cane came up into the air, and a man in a brown robe hurried to her side. At her gesture, his hand clamped around the girl’s arm, restraining her as Zoya and the sister continued across the rotunda.

“Kellian Bourassa?” Zoya asked, keeping her voice even, hiding her sudden alarm. “I never knew excommunication was execution.”