Coldmarch

by Daniel A. Cohen

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Shilah asked.

  ‘Where’d you get that tattoo?’ Leah said, reaching out a hand towards Shilah’s arm before she got caught by the manacles, as if forgetting she was still chained.

  Shilah let her sleeve fall, gesturing to the Coldmaker bag with her head. ‘I made it. And it’s not the only thing either.’

  ‘Is she okay?’ I asked, pointing to the last Domestic, who still hadn’t woken up. I couldn’t tell if her chest was moving.

  Leah frowned, the poutiness of her bottom lip making me shudder. It wasn’t just the looks of these Domestics that was spinning my gears; there was something so dreamy about the way they moved.

  ‘We don’t know,’ Leah said, rattling her wrists, her fingers dancing through the air. ‘She’s been like that since they locked her in. And I want to check, but …’

  I reached into the bag and pulled out one of the four remaining Abbs, rolling it in my palm. I bit my bottom lip, wishing I had anything other than piss to cool.

  ‘Wassat?’ Ellia said. ‘Your master has you carrying gold beads? Pretty stuff, but not worth much.’

  ‘Shilah and I don’t have any master,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, boyfriend!’ Ellia said, licking her lips. ‘Don’t think yuh got a master? Just wait an’ see where we’re headed!’

  ‘We’re free Jadans, wherever we are, from now on,’ I said, standing up and wandering across the cart, stepping over the yellow puddle. I reached out and put my fingers on the sleeping girl’s slender neck, pressing gently. Abb had only taught me rudimentary techniques when it came to healing, but I at least knew how to check a heartbeat.

  And hers was fading.

  The cart was too hot.

  I slammed my palm on the wall, trying to catch the attention of the muscled Jadans outside who were pulling us along, the chains slung over their knotted shoulders. ‘Hey! Stop! She’s dying!’

  My words were rebuffed loudly in my ears, and the Jadans either couldn’t hear me or didn’t seem to care. The Sun was searing now, the box so hot that I needed to take a deep breath in order just to gather another shout. In a moment Shilah was by my side, slamming palms against the wooden walls, but the Sun-bitten Jadans outside kept pulling the cart. I pressed my eye against one of the bigger cracks, trying to see if I could spot Split or Cam nearby, but the caravan was long and spread out along the Khat’s road.

  I put my lips up to the crack instead. ‘Get Camlish Tavor, please! Get our Nobles! Hurry!’

  ‘Thought yuh didn’t have no masters,’ Ellcia said from behind me.

  Shilah waved her quiet, her expression deadly.

  ‘They won’t stop,’ Leah said from her sitting position, biting her bottom lip. Her fingers careered through the air as if she was testing the resilience. ‘We’ve tried … to lure them before.’

  ‘Dammit, she’s on fire,’ I said, stepping back and returning my fingers to the girl’s neck. The sleeping Domestic was completely motionless now, the edge of her tongue hanging out, dry and crusted over.

  I had no idea what to do. How to help.

  All of a sudden I heard Split’s dark laughter in my head.

  Meh-shu-ah.

  Regardless of a tattered blue book with my name on it, I wasn’t some prophesied saviour. I wasn’t sent from the Crier to battle Noblekind. But that didn’t mean that I couldn’t do right by my people.

  I forced myself into action and searched the cart for something suitably dense. The bloodied stone would have been another big help here, but we’d left that back at the shore. I couldn’t use the Coldmaker itself as a battering ram, for fear that I break the only Frost I might ever get. The only things in the cart were girls, chains, and mounds of boilweed. The Inventor in me knew I needed more options, but the Jadan in me knew I had no choice.

  Then I spotted the bucket.

  I looked up at the roof and smiled. ‘Always with your jokes, huh?’

  ‘What you going on about?’ Ellcia asked, pursing her lips. ‘You try-na talk to the Crier, you daft man-priss?’

  I turned to Shilah, hope rattling my heart. ‘You still have your knife?’

  The blade was out before I could swallow another breath of stifling air.

  ‘That’s how thum got out of thum chains!’ Ellcia said, nudging her sister with an elbow. ‘I knew she was hiding out! I’m gonn break all them pretty plaything fingers.’

  Shilah gave a cool shrug, wiggling her untethered fingers towards Ellcia’s face.

  ‘Quit it,’ I said, quickly slicing the Abb in half. Then in half again. If a full Abb could conjure an Ice bridge out of boiling water, then it was far too potent to use in such tight quarters.

  ‘Remember my Cold Wrap,’ I said to Shilah, cutting up strips of the lumpy boilweed that I’d been sleeping on. A scarab crawled down my arm, but I quickly brushed it away. ‘How the chamber crushed the Wisps.’

  ‘Of course,’ Shilah said, watching me carefully.

  ‘And your Shiver that started all of this? The one you threw at the Vicaress.’

  Shilah shot me an unreadable look. ‘You mean our Shiver.’

  I wrapped the boilweed strips around my hands just in case. Then I went over to the bucket, dumping out its contents behind one of the boilweed mounds, not letting my nose stray too close. Sludgy wetness splashed against my toes, but I’d dealt with much worse things than that in my youth when pillaging for treasure in the boilweed mounds.

  The sisters’ fury crashed down on me in an instant.

  ‘Foul!’

  ‘Idiot!’

  ‘Break your fingers!’

  ‘Make you lick it up!’

  ‘Foul!’

  ‘Man-priss!’

  Leah only laughed, angling away from the oozing puddle. The tittering sound from her sumptuous lips made me wish I had another bucket to dump out, if only that would keep her laughing.

  ‘Where’d they pick you two up!’ Leah asked with a halting smile.

  ‘You won’t believe me if I told you.’ I crouched beside the dying girl and placed the quarter piece of Abb on the floor, making sure not to set it off in one of the wet spots. ‘Well actually, maybe you will. Shilah, you’re in charge of naming whatever is about to happen.’

  ‘Micah,’ she said.

  I hesitated with the bucket, looking over. ‘Yeah?’

  She backed into the wall, and I could feel the affection in her nod. ‘Yes.’

  I raised the bucket in my hands. ‘You might want to close your eyes, everyone. I don’t know what this is going to do.’

  ‘Foul boy!’ Ellcia’s face was flush with confusion. ‘What yuh thinking you doing with—’

  I slammed the bucket down, crushing the piece of Abb.

  Everything happened so fast.

  I was tossed on my back by a divine gust of Cold, the bucket hurled out of my hands. A crash sounded against the roof. The whole cart shook as the Cold air had nowhere to escape, golden waves pressing against the walls like a thousand heavy fists. Storm winds bounded around inside, jostling everyone against their chains. The pressure from the burst forced the Cold down my lungs and settled Cold behind my eyes and even thrust Cold in the cracks under my fingernails. It was all-consuming. I wasn’t equipped to experience such a thing. Pain registered all across my skin, especially in my left hand. The snaps of wood were deafening as the floor splintered with Ice crystals beneath where the Abb had been, spidering out and climbing the walls. Waves of Cold wind expanded to every corner of the cart, the walls creaking and buckling outwards. My eyes were hazed with Cold.

  I nursed my hand against my chest as the frozen winds made everything flail about. The bucket came crashing back down on my head, but it glanced off without doing any real damage. There was shouting, but I couldn’t make it out. I was lost in the Cold sensation, gone in the cloud, paralysed by the divine temperature sweeping me inside and out. For the first time since its creation, I was afraid of the Coldmaker.

  The unconscious girl sat up wit
h an inhuman gasp, her hands grasping at her throat. She looked around in a state of complete and utter shock. Cold wind brushed through her short hair, causing the locks to stand up at bizarre angles.

  She croaked something unintelligible, sucking in another gasp.

  The floor gave a final clamour and fell open where the Abb had been. A spot the size of my head completely dissolved away, the ragged edges rimmed in Ice. I could see the road beneath us, but we were no longer moving.

  Pain continued to bite my left hand. I tried to unravel the boilweed strip, but the old grey plant had Iced over as well, locking me in from wrist to knuckles. Slices of wall had cracked under the strain and began to snap outwards. Waves of Sunlight now spilled into the cart, filtering through the frosty gold mist, making it hard to see all the damage.

  I could just make out Shilah getting to her feet, pressing a hand against her face. Her cheek was leaking red.

  ‘Holiness,’ Leah said through the crystalline fog, coughing. ‘Eyes.’

  The sisters were silently holding each other closely, both of them shaking.

  I went over to the short-haired girl, trying to ignore the throbbing in my head. ‘Are you okay?’

  She sucked in another breath, her face going pale. Then she passed out.

  ‘Crap!’ I said, the pain in my hand all I could think about, needing to get the boilweed off right now. I started hitting my fist against the wall, the pain monstrous, but the frozen plant wouldn’t budge.

  A hand grabbed my shoulder.

  ‘Micah!’

  I flinched at the touch and accidentally elbowed Shilah in the chest, my bone sinking into her flesh. She stumbled back, falling on the mound of boilweed which had absorbed all the piss and shit from the bucket. The pile made a crunchy sound as she landed.

  ‘Sorry! I didn’t mean—’ the pain in my hand was searing now, and I let out a groan of agony. ‘Ah!’

  Just then the door to the cart was flung open, revealing the face of a bewildered Noble. Cold air spilled outside and rushed past his light red hair, causing him to make a sort of eeek sound.

  ‘Weapons!’ the man shrieked loudly enough to be heard all the way back in Paphos. ‘Bring weapons! Kill them! Kill them! The slaves have—’

  And then his head slammed sideways, struck by something blunt and fast. His body collapsed.

  Rows of scars on a giant arm loomed where he had stood.

  ‘Meshua!’ Dunes yelled, putting his hooked blade on the bed of the cart and ripping the door clean off its hinges. ‘Are you hurt? Are you in trouble, Crierson?’

  ‘Micah,’ I said. ‘My name is Micah.’

  I was still in complete shock. The pain in my hand had suddenly disappeared, and now I couldn’t feel my wrist or fingers at all. I could see the caravan guards amassing through the gaping holes in the walls, dozens of swords and whips and cudgels coming into view. Horns were sounded. Nobles hopped off their camels and dropped their goods carts and parasols, all of them grabbing daggers and shouting to one another. There were perhaps fifty enemies tensing up. I still couldn’t make out Cam or Split, only the petrified and angry faces of those coming our way.

  Shilah grabbed the Coldmaker bag and flung it over her shoulder. ‘Come on!’

  ‘What demons yuh bring on us?’ one of the sisters shouted through the haze. ‘What sort of trick is this? Ka’in did this!’

  ‘Take me with you, Micah!’ Leah said, squirming in her chains, holding out her wrists. Her fingers were twitching wildly. ‘I’ll do whatever you need! I can play music and sing to you! I’ll do anything to you! Take me with you!’

  ‘There’s no time,’ Shilah shouted, grabbing a handful of my shirt and pulling me out of the cart. ‘They’re coming!’

  The horns were blaring now; the whole caravan was closing in.

  Dunes pointed out into the sands beside the road, the horizon full of barren hills and crags, and even mountains of rock. ‘Behind me, Crierson!’

  ‘What about Cam?’ I asked, my voice breaking. ‘And Split!’

  ‘No time!’ Dunes said, his body tense and deadly. He picked up his blade, slashing it through the air in the direction of the mob, looking as menacing as a pit of vipers. ‘I can track them later.’

  I glanced back inside the cart at the Domestics still chained down, their faces full of fear and awe. Leah was begging me with her eyes.

  ‘But—’

  ‘We can’t let them get the Coldmaker,’ Shilah said, grabbing me by the shirt and wrenching me off the road. ‘It’s all that matters!’

  Chapter Sixteen

  Unless I cracked the secret of flight on the spot, then there was no way to get past these fortifications.

  The walls were a hundred hands high, and I could barely make out the top, my neck straining as it bent backwards. Far above, encircling the looming rim, was an unending series of Closed Eye statues. They were all different styles and textures, some small and thin, some stout and menacing, but they were all infuriating. It was curious that the walls of the City of David’s Fall had a higher number of the Closed Eyes than I’d ever seen in one place.

  Wind whipped around the stone walls. The fortifications were smooth and long, without any visible break. There were no obvious ways into the city other than by the few heavily guarded gates and doors, of which we’d kept out of sight. The entrances were manned by stern-looking clerics, all of whom were checking and re-checking every traveller’s face against a pile of the Wanted Scrolls. I had to squint to see, but there was no denying: Shilah, Cam, and I were the prominent faces in the stack.

  Dunes might have been able to get us through the gates on his reputation as a Hookman, but his betrayal meant he might have a Wanted Scroll of his own.

  I held out my good hand, brushing my knuckles across the impenetrable stone. Tightly stacked bricks were gently interspersed around the entirety of the City of David’s Fall, meeting up with natural rock formations that careered even higher. Some bricks were old and a bit crumbled, but mostly the whole place was sealed.

  The city’s layout was perplexing to say the least, raised in a series of long plateaus, dozens of staircases carved directly into the land, with not many buildings or streets visible from our vantage point outside the walls. I could just make out the shine of a gleaming dome and the scorched limestone roofs of what was surely a massive Cry Temple.

  One of the defining features of the City of David’s Fall was an extended plateau on the southern side, higher and more thrust out than the other precipices, its abrupt cliff ending in a completely vertical drop. I tried to follow the rock face down, but the land at the bottom was hidden by yet another wall.

  All of a sudden I understood Leah’s words about outsiders not knowing much about what went on here. It would be impossible to witness everyday life unless from inside.

  We were currently hiding by the eastern walls of the city where it seemed the least populated, trying to figure out a plan. I continued to brush my knuckles along the grey brick. A trickle of dust and pebbles fell out at my touch, the walls more decrepit here. ‘It’s old.’

  Dunes nodded, taking his hooked blade and picking out some of the ancient mortar. ‘It looks very old. I have no idea how old it might be, Meshua.’

  Shilah grunted. ‘Of course it’s old. This was the first Jadan stronghold after the Great Drought,’ Shilah said, adjusting the strap of the Coldmaker bag on her shoulder. ‘The final stand for our people. Besides Langria, of course.’

  ‘I think I knew that,’ I said, trying to recall the particulars of the stories Mother Bev used to tell us in my barracks’ common area. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about the history of the City of David’s Fall,’ Dunes said, continuing to pick at the mortar. There was something odd about his tone, distant and forlorn. ‘It’s probably a horrific history. Hamman knew all sorts of those horrific things. I’m glad he’s gone.’

  Shilah touched my left hand, which was now wrapped in new boilweed, freshly picked from the
bubbling stream we’d stumbled across while fleeing the caravan guards. I had plucked a whole handful of weeds from the shoreline, as many as would fit in my bag. The pain was excruciating, and I was probably going to need to change the wrap often.

  Shilah moved her fingers up to the spot where I’d knotted the boilweed closed. ‘Let me see it.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I lied.

  She kept her face even. ‘Spout.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ I pulled my hand away, too mortified by the fact my own creation had betrayed me. It seared me to the core with shame, and I was glad Shilah was now carrying the machine.

  I hadn’t checked the damage to my hand since wrapping everything, but if the increasing pain was any indicator, then the wound was getting worse.

  Dunes nodded, letting his head fall. ‘May I see it, Crierson? I don’t know much about healing, but perhaps I can—’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I repeated, perhaps a little loudly. ‘Dunes, what’s with the Closed Eyes up on top of the walls? Why do they all look so different from one another?’

  Dunes kept picking at the mortar. ‘I have no idea. I don’t know anything about this place.’

  ‘You’re a Hookman,’ Shilah said in accusatory tones.

  ‘No, I’m not,’ Dunes said, putting a hand over the Closed Eye scar that had been carved into his forehead. ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Fine, you were a Hookman,’ Shilah said. ‘And I thought they would know everything about the Khatdom. Otherwise how would they find all those menacing runaways.’

  ‘I wasn’t a Hookman,’ Dunes said. ‘Hamman was a Hookman. And Hamman is gone.’

  Shilah gave a heated sigh, looking as though she might burst from frustration. Her hand slipped into the Coldmaker bag, resting on the bronze. ‘Okay, fine, but—’

  ‘Shilah,’ I said, giving her a stern look.

  She shrugged. ‘Well, if he doesn’t know anything about anything, why are we even keeping him around?’

  Dunes slumped into himself, which almost wasn’t possible considering the stacks of dense muscle.