Fire & Ice

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

SOMEWHERE NOT FAR from the edge of the plateau, where the goat track snaked up the rock-strewn slope, the rain had turned to snow.

Cocooned in his cloak, his view restricted to the swaying back of the camel, Tandor failed to notice until a gust of wind pelted icicles into his face.

He whipped off the hood and shook out his hair. The breeze, crackling with frost, smelled of his homeland. Oh, for a bath to wash off the clinging dust and the stink of the prairie lands, steam trains and the bane of his existence: this grumpy camel.

To his left, the escarpment descended into the land of Chevakia, its low hills and valleys bathed in murky twilight. To his right, the dying daylight touched the forbidding cliff face that formed the edge of the southern plateau, accessible only to those who knew the way.

Something flashed where the ragged rocks met the leaden sky. A tingle went up Tandor’s golden claw, pinching the skin where the metal rods met the stump of his arm. Icefire.

Ruko?

He peered up, shielding his eyes against the snow. Golden threads of icefire betrayed the boy’s presence, flooding Tandor with feelings of relief, urgency, panic.

Wait, wait, Ruko, not so fast. Tell me what’s going on.

There was no answer, of course. Ruko conversed only in images, and Tandor needed to be close to the boy to catch those.

But Ruko’s emotions had spoken clearly enough. By the skylights, something had happened while he was away. He flicked the reins to jolt the camel into a faster pace. The animal grumbled and tossed its head, but did as it was told.

Ruko waited at a rocky outcrop to the left of the path, seated cross-legged in the snow: an ethereal form, his skin blue-marbled, his brooding eyes black as a low-sun night. His chest shimmered where his heart should be. A lock of hair hung, dark and lanky, over his forehead; he shook it away in an impatient gesture.

Tandor slid off the camel’s back.

He held out his two hands, one of flesh, the other a golden claw. Come.

Ruko rose, towering at least a head over Tandor.

By the skylights, did that boy ever stop growing? While Tandor had been away, he had discarded his soft childish look for planes and angles.

Ruko put his hand in Tandor’s. The intense cold of it made Tandor gasp, but he steeled himself and sent a jolt of icefire into Ruko’s arm.

The image of the two hands, the live one and the blue one, faded for a scene of chaos. Huge birds with tan wings, white heads and yellow beaks swooped down on the village, carrying Eagle Knights in their traditional red tunics and short-hair cloaks, the swords on their belts clearly visible. They landed their birds in front of the guesthouse, jumped into the snow and ran to the houses, banging on doors, dragging out occupants. Adults, children.

“What, Ruko? What happened?” All those children Tandor had saved. He thought Bordertown was a safe haven, no longer frequented by merchants, no longer of interest to the Eagle Knights.

Images flowed through Tandor’s mind. Snow crunched under his feet as Ruko ran from the village, while screams from women and shouts from men echoed. Trees flashed past. Crossbow bolts thunked into wood. And later, coming back to the main square, empty, except for deep tracks in the snow and a single child’s mitten.

Ruko’s shoulders slumped. There was a brief glimpse of the red-cheeked face of a girl, smiling, accompanied by shame and grief.

Tandor pushed Ruko’s chin up. “No, Ruko, it’s not your fault.”

If anything, it was Tandor’s. He had left the boy alone. But he couldn’t have done otherwise; he had needed to travel to Chevakia, and Ruko couldn’t leave the southern land. Across the border, where there was no icefire, Ruko would simply cease to exist.

“I’m sorry.”

Ruko batted Tandor’s hand away.

“Being angry with me doesn’t help. What can I do about it?”

Ruko’s fury burned inside him: his screams for his girl who was being dragged away by a Knight. His pounding on the Knight’s back with insubstantial fists. Without the presence of the master, a servitor was little more than a ghost.

Ruko reached towards Tandor’s belt for the dagger and the Chevakian powder gun.

“No—you’re not to kill anyone. Stay here. I’m going into town to see how many children they took.” There had better be some left, or his plan was in tatters.

Tandor swung himself back in the saddle. “Behave yourself.” In case the order wasn’t enough, he let icefire crackle from his clawed hand. Golden strands snaked around Ruko’s legs and then into the snow.

Ruko glowered at him.

“Behave, and you will get your revenge, I promise.”

He flicked the reins and the camel turned towards the town.

The southern plain spread before him, white, flat, the horizon bleeding into the grey sky. A gathering of low buildings lay in the snow like scattered bricks.

Smoke curled from the chimneys. Light radiated from the windows, golden rectangles that were the only spots of colour in the grey dusk, occasionally interrupted by the silhouette of a head: someone checking out this late visitor.

There was no sound except the squeak of the saddle and the croaking of the camel’s footsteps in the freshly fallen snow. The soft blanket had long since erased the signs of the events Ruko had witnessed in the town streets. How long ago had that been? A few days, he guessed, no more.

If only I’d come back earlier. Stupid Chevakian trains, stupid Chevakian bureaucrats not allowing the camel on the train.

At a house with a deep front yard which held a shed, Tandor tapped the camel’s shoulder. The beast sank stiffly to its knees, uttering a protesting howl.

Tandor slid from the saddle and led the beast through a creaky gate, through the yard to the shed which stood slightly apart from the house. He pushed aside the bar across the doors, dislodging clumps of snow which rained over his glove and golden claw, and went inside.

The plainsman had kept his part of the bargain. The box in the corner contained straw and a bale of hay, albeit a very dusty one.

He tied up the camel and left it to attack the hay, and ploughed through knee-deep snow to the house, a sturdy construction of rough stone. The top floor was dark, but warm light peeped around the frayed edges of a curtain in a ground floor window.

He knocked. Locks rattled; the door creaked open. It was the plainsman Ontane himself who stood there, unshaven, dressed in a loose woollen robe. For a moment, he squinted into the dusk, but then he shrank back into the hall, pushing the door half-shut. “No, no. She be not here.”

Tandor kept him from slamming the door with his golden arm, the points of his pincer-claw cutting gouges in the wood. “Where is your daughter?”

“Inside, but ye can’t see—”

“I can’t see her? Is that what you’re saying? Three years ago, I brought you the child you’d always wanted, and now I can’t see her?” Myra was one of the few children he’d rescued at that age; most he’d found abandoned on ice floes as infants.

“The man said—”

“The man? Most likely, he came from the City of Glass, didn’t he? Most likely, he rode an eagle, didn’t he? And most likely he told you to give up all your citizens with . . . defects.” With each sentence, he thrust his golden claw closer to Ontane’s chest. “Imperfects. Like me. Huh? Is that what he said?”

Ontane licked his lips and straightened his back. “He said we be punished if they found any such. They told us all to come out from our houses, and they ransacked any house where they thought we be hiding something. Then they lined up the children and took off with ’em.”

“To the City of Glass?” Please, let this not be true.

Ontane shrugged. “How should I know?”

“All of them?” Tandor clenched his good hand into a fist.

“Yes, except . . .”

“Except what?” Tandor almost screamed.

Ontane tried to retreat further, but he already stood with his back against the wall. “No, no. I can’t tell ye.”

“Except the one who was born since the others left, is that what you were going to say? Except your daughter and her child?” All those children he had saved over the last fifteen years. All gone?

“Not born. Not yet. But they said they’d not take my daughter in the condition she be in.”

“Let me see her.”

“No!” Ontane planted his hands at his sides.

“Why not? Would I pay for your daughter’s food if I wanted to harm her child?”

“Ye’ll do to the child what ye done to that poor boy.” He meant Ruko.

“That poor boy lived with an abusive family from whom I saved him. That poor boy is only poor because you turned your backs on him.”

Ontane muttered, “Not a surprise, that. He crackles with icefire, and the cold of him would freeze the kindest heart. Stupid as we be in your eyes, the villagers won’t be letting such in their houses as they don’t understand. Ye know ye can see through him? Here?” He put his hand on the position of his heart.

Of course you could. Ruko was a servitor. He had given his heart in exchange for his missing foot, and in exchange for never having to eat or be cold again. Tandor took a deep breath to calm himself.

“Have you spoken to him since?”

Ontane gave Tandor a what-do-you-take-me-for look.

“I have told you many times: he won’t harm you.”

“So ye say, so ye say. But many of us can’t see him, even; and to the rest, he looks to be a spirit.”

Unbelievable. The Imperfect children had lived here for as long as fifteen years; the villagers should be used to them. “I’ll be taking Ruko. There is no point in leaving him here any longer. I want my sled to be ready tomorrow morning with a bear and supplies.”

A look of business came to Ontane’s eyes. “Usual fee, then?”

Tandor nodded. “The usual fee.” He let a silence lapse and added, “Can I see your daughter?”

Ontane opened his mouth, but Tandor said, “No look, no business.”

A silence, a few shifty eye movements, before Ontane said, “Only a look, then.” Still eyeing Tandor suspiciously, he moved into the house. Tandor followed him through the hall, where a flapping candle cast long shadows over unpainted walls and a threadbare carpet.

They entered a dimly lit room with a blazing fire in the hearth.

In the chair against the far wall sat a girl, barely fifteen, propped up on pillows. Her face was pale and delicate, her hair dark but fine and straight. Her cheeks were red from the cold. A plain woollen dress stretched tightly over her distended belly.

Tandor breathed in deeply. The tingling of icefire snaked out from the child inside her: golden strands only he could see. Wild, untamed power. It called out to him, sang to him, like the voices of the mythical sirens said to be luring sailors on the iced sea.

He was sure: the child would be Imperfect. His life’s work had finally brought success.

The girl’s eyes widened. “Da, what’s he doing here? Take him away!”

Her father pulled at Tandor’s cloak. “Now leave, ye sorcerer. Ye’ve seen her.”

With regret, Tandor let go of that tingling and retreated into the hall. He forced his breath to calm. “See? I mean her no harm.”

Ontane said nothing; the suspicious look didn’t vanish from his face.

Tandor forced a smile. “I’ll let the child grow up with her, don’t worry.” After all, it was only in adulthood that the child would be of use to him.

Ontane snorted. “Let’s say I believe that when it were seen.”

He accompanied Tandor through the hall back to the door. When he opened it, an icy breeze blew in a flurry of snowflakes. Tandor stepped into the cold.

With his good hand, he dug in his pocket and flicked Ontane a silver gull. The coin caught the light as it spun through the air, before Ontane closed his fist around it.

The language of money convinces you easily enough. “My sled, with a strong bear. Provisions for six days.”

Ontane nodded once and shut the door.

In total silence, Tandor strode through the village, trying to ignore heads vanishing behind curtains.

All you shallow greedyguts. Took my money while it was available, but cared nothing for the lives of the children who lived with you?

In all these fifteen years, nothing had changed. In fact, nothing had changed since his mother had fled the City of Glass. Well, things were going to have to change now.

The front desk of the inn was unmanned, but Tandor’s ringing of the bell brought the matron hustling from a back room.

“Oh.” She hesitated in the doorway, her eyes wide. For a moment, it looked like she was going to comment on Tandor’s long absence, but she didn’t. Clever woman. Had a nose for business. “Usual room?”

Tandor nodded.

He followed her up the stairs where she opened the door to a musty room and bustled in the fireplace to light the fire.

He asked her to fill the bath with hot water.

“My maids be gone home, but I’ll see to it myself. I be always glad of giving the best to our best customer.” She winked at Tandor.

Once, he might have responded, but the villagers’ shallow bids to please him made him feel sick. The woman was about his age. Her face no longer held curves of beauty, but the lines of long, hard work. She cared nothing for him, or for the children. She only wanted his money.

“Ye be going after the children?” she asked when he failed to react.

“I’ll do my best.”

“Oh, it were such a disaster. My poor daughter lost her little boy as well. He be only four. Like a child, he were to her. Every day poor Poony be asking about her brother. What think ye they’ll do with the children?” Her eyes glittered by the lamplight.

Tandor shrugged. He truly had no idea. Most Knights were from the Pirosian clan who couldn’t even see icefire. They had been on a fifty-year mission to eradicate all remnants of the Thillei clan, but they wouldn’t have bundled the children onto sleds if they wanted to kill them.

“And that mean bastard Ontane gets to be keeping his Myra. You know what I think? I think he paid the Knights so’s he could keep her. He be willing enough to bargain with money. I think he—”

Tandor held up his hand.

“Yes, yes. The bath. I know. I be going.”

Soaking in the tub not much later, Tandor transformed himself. First, he rubbed dirt from his skin. He washed dust from his hair until it was once again golden. Then he ran his golden claw through his locks until the colour leaked from it like honey, leaving his hair deep, glossy black.

Standing in front of the mirror, he blinked his eyes, let icefire crackle from his fingertips onto his face, and blinked a few more times. With each blink his eyes faded from brown, to grey, to green to a brilliant dark blue. The colour of his birth.

Then the hardest part. He called up a ball of icefire and shaped it into two symmetrical curls floating in the air. The curls descended towards Tandor’s cheeks, one on each side. He closed his eyes and braced himself for the searing pain. The smell of burned flesh spread on the air. His mouth opened in a scream of pain, of punishment, of lust or satisfaction.

Panting, he opened his eyes, staring at his sweaty face in the mirror, where symmetrical curls of golden paint marked his cheeks, like the tattoos noble men in the City of Glass received when they became adults.

The Knights might have dealt him a blow, but he wasn’t defeated. The children were in custody, but they were most likely in the palace, exactly where he wanted them.

He needed to know if he had enough Imperfects to freeze the guards for long enough to get into the palace.

By the light of the fire in the hearth, he dug a heavy book from his luggage and set it on his knees. Let’s see, the guard level on the palace gates would be at a minimum because of the Newlight festival. He guessed there would be ten Knights. That meant he needed . . .

His pen scratched over the paper as he added up the numbers as he had learned from his grandfather’s diary. He divided body weight by strength. He added up himself, Ruko, the boy in the city . . . that was not enough. He did have one other Imperfect: Ontane’s daughter Myra. He crossed out the numbers and recalculated. Yes, that would give him enough power to take out ten guards, and once he was in the palace, he could draw on the fifty Imperfect children.

Yes, he could do it.