Through Ice

by Parker Jaysen

  Without the suits, she finds her unerringly. And Dorie’s ready for her, for anything.

  Jane nips at the skin at the apex of her thighs. She laughs when Dorie opens her eyes in alarm, and bites again at the flesh of her thigh.

  When she gets to the tenderest spots, she gentles. “I will never hurt you, Dorie,” she says. “I adore you.”

  The words alone nearly make Dorie come. Jane’s tongue lowers onto her, and she has one infinite second of self-consciousness and then she can’t think of anything. “What – ?”

  Jane has brought ice, somehow, into the bunk, and she holds it in her mouth while she touches Dorie’s clit with her tongue. Dorie nearly launches off the bunk.

  Turnabout fair play, all that, but all she manages to say aloud is “fuck.” Jane laughs without pulling away.

  “Come for me, sweet Dorie,” she says, pushing one of those tiny maddening fingers deep into her, up against her g spot as the ice and her tongue swirl around her clit, and Dorie keens like the ice plates when the sun strikes them.

  When Dorie opens her eyes, finally, Jane is above her. Her eyes look not at all playful. “I need you to know,” she says. “I mean it. I adore you.”

  Dorie can’t form words. This little angel like a tooth fairy that bites has come into her life and she needs Dorie to know that she loves her?

  If she could move, if her muscles functioned, she’d be flipping Jane over and teaching her in her own way that she is the most thrilling creature she’s ever known.

  Dorie knows now she never wants to be without her. She pulls her down to her and they kiss until Dorie’s muscles come back to life.

  There’s a conversation that needs to happen. Well, a million conversations. But the first one is about the fact that when the guild understands what Jane is, she will be permanently assigned to the ice run.

  Dorie would be thrilled.

  How will Jane feel, though?

  Right now it doesn’t feel pressing enough to break up their rhythm. They can’t let their guard down, even if the worst of Uther is past. Give the dogs their legs for a few hours in the best part of the day. Nights of pleasure under the bunk tent.

  And a worrying sound from the safe.

  It’s for guild leaders and the council to know what the cargos are. But they don’t send riders through hell to deliver mittens and lollipops.

  There’s something alive in there, and there’s no way of knowing if that’s a death sentence for it, the two of them, or all three.

  Dorie winces at the sound when it comes a second time. It’s the lightest tapping, a ticking perhaps.

  It’s not a machine. You don’t risk a pair of hellriders on mech. Jane curls up into Dorie’s lap, and they sit on the bunk and listen, until they are distracted by each other.

  Waypoint Kappa is ahead. Dorie and Jane are so used to the warmth they’ve been able to generate that the slow process of pulling dogs in and waiting for the sun to warm the depot enough to open its doors feels overcautious, unnecessary.

  Dorie’s afraid she’s been too distracted by her teammate. She pictures herself making a deadly mistake.

  The radio crackles to life while they’re waiting, which tells them the booster antenna in the waypoint’s roof is working, at least. “Glad to see you’re alive,” Maura says.

  Dorie gives the update on “Betty,” the sick dog, and pivots to the shielding protocol that has enabled them to better their time, even with a downgraded dog team. But she doesn’t volunteer details and downplays Jane’s role. Jane listens with a small smile. She knows as well as Dorie that there’s a conversation yet to be had.

  Maura asks for an update on rations, and they send those numbers, and then they sit tight while she runs some figures. Eventually she comes back and gives them the go ahead to check the depot for more antiparasitic and to stock up whatever else they think they need in case they’re not back to the full six dogs soon.

  “Also, one of my heat bolts hit the safe,” Dorie says.

  “Is it destroyed?” She doesn’t sound upset, but Jane sits up a little.

  “No, but we’re hearing sounds. A tapping sort of thing.”

  There’s another pause.

  “All right, there will be someone at station to evaluate when you do the handoff, but proceed as planned from this point.”

  “All right.”

  “And we’ll discuss team composition later.” She means the shield. She means Jane.

  Jane follows Dorie with her eyes as she suits up to go into the depot. She’ll stay with the dogs and keep them optimally warm, and the suits have comms.

  “I guess we’ll talk when you get back in,” Jane says. She snugs the entry door and Dorie feels Jane’s eyes on her from the viewport.

  Partway to the depot, Dorie sighs. Has she been evasive up till now? They’ve been busy.

  Not too busy for – other things.

  Dorie thumbs on the two-way. “We’re doing things quite differently, with our shield and bolt combo,” she says carefully.

  “I figured that much,” says Jane. “That’s not a problem, right?”

  “It’s not a problem.”

  But there is a problem, thinks Dorie. Jane will be stuck with Dorie from now on. She doesn’t mind now, but – what if she gets tired of it? What if Jane comes to despise it?

  Dorie stops suddenly. The depot is wrong. Has the sleigh’s extra warmth already had an effect here? Dorie tells herself it’s possible, but there are too many variables to know for sure. Or is it demon crud? Or just age?

  Whatever the cause, the depot is sloping, corroding, sinking into the ice.

  Dorie’s been standing still in front of the depot’s entry bay for too long. Jane’s voice comes over the comm. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know.” Dorie tries to keep her voice level, but she knows Jane knows her too well by now.

  What has Uther been up to?

  There’s no checklist for this. Is it some new trick? Letting her get fooled into thinking she’s in love, so he can bring a building down on top of her when she becomes careless?

  No. Dorie pushes back hard against this argument. Jane loves me. She said it. She’s not a liar.

  The depot tilts another degree with a shudder she feels under her feet. Icicles slough off the roof in miniature avalanches.

  Whatever medicine Betty needs, they’ll need to find it elsewhere.

  “Dorie,” the suit speaker squawks just then. “Dorie, listen. Come back inside. I love you.”

  It’s not telepathy, Dorie insists to herself. She always says the right thing at the right time.

  “I love you, Jane,” she says, and Jane’s intake of breath is not her imagination. It’s the first time she’s said the words.

  Dorie still weighs the decision.

  Go into a depot that is falling apart in front of her, risk her own life. In turn, risk Jane’s life, because solo is true hell, and she wouldn’t have Dorie’s knowledge or fire bolts.

  Don’t go in, Betty could die, or pass her parasite to the others, which leads to the cascade of death again.

  But how do those calculations change with the new heat shield method?

  Maura crackles in Dorie’s helmet. “For your ears only,” she says. She can’t flip to answer her, not privately.

  “We give the cargo a 20 percent chance of success. Make your decisions based only on team survival.”

  That’s it, then.

  Dorie stares at the dangerous beauty that is Waypoint Kappa. There’s another shudder, the great hydraulic doors gape, and she watches as a chunk of the roof breaks free and obliterates the inner space. The lake under her feet jumps, and any supplies cached there are lost in a cloud of ice and concrete dust.

  She could have been standing in there.

  “I’m coming in, Jane.”

  All right, it’s math time. Dorie is in her element. Skunk can rotate into the pack, spelling each of the other four in turn, including Molly. Rations, thanks to Jane, will last
even if the home stretch takes the usual full week from Kappa.

  So much is thanks to Jane. Dorie flushes.

  “It’s better if you don’t think about sex while doing math,” Jane says.

  How does she know? Dorie shakes her head, and Jane smirks.

  On paper, the mission is still on track to get the cargo to Marsh Station and Jess and Lucy. Five percent margin for error, as a matter of fact.

  One dog illness, a lost depot. Uther’s song fades. The sleigh is warm.

  Dorie would be no kind of mentor if she relaxed at this point. But still. She stretches and catches Jane’s eye.

  “Did that chocolate get tossed or do we still have it?”

  The dogs are quiet – until they all leap to their feet and start screaming.

  Something – what? Dorie plunges out of the bunk and turns on the exterior floods. Running from viewport to viewport, there’s nothing but ice as usual.

  “Dor,” Jane says. She’s staring at the safe.

  “Molly, quiet!” snaps Dorie, and thank goodness, she obeys and settles her pack.

  The safe is doing two things. One, it’s bulging, which is impossible. It’s magic-infused titanium, for god’s sake. It is unopenable by anyone but a guild leader. But the metal is squirming and writhing.

  Two, it’s chirping.

  It seems to be about to give birth to something. Dorie’s every hair is standing up with adrenaline.

  “Maura!” She cranks every comm gain to max, but Kappa is no longer relaying and the sleigh is either in a dead spot or their antennas are damaged. There’s no response.

  They’re four days from Jess and Lucy, at top speed.

  “I think we’ve warmed it,” Jane says. “Incubated it.”

  Great. Whatever was in there will probably think they were its mothers.

  If it is evil, it should die. Maura already seems to expect it to die, so no biggie. Maybe?

  But why would the guild be trafficking something evil?

  And if it is good, they owe it life. But not at the expense of the dogs, or themselves.

  Dorie decides, not for the first time, that for council eyes only is a terrible policy for hellrider cargo.

  They have no choice; they have to stagger their sleeping schedules. Something evil hatching out of there in their sleep could kill them all.

  It hatches on the third day, like some mythical prophecy.

  The dogs sense it first, slowing to a stop until they’re completely turned around in their harnesses and facing the sleigh. They should be feeling the call of the homestretch.

  “What the hell?” Dorie looks out the front viewport to see all four dogs slinking about, hackled, whining, whale-eyed. And of course the sleigh is at a standstill.

  At a sound, she turns to see Jane crouched down with her back to her, whispering urgently. “Dor.”

  “Dor!”

  It’s only then that she looks over Jane’s shoulder and sees it.

  It’s a dragon. On the deck of the sleigh next to the safe, which looks like a smoking slag heap because that is exactly what it is.

  A tiny dragon, but unmistakably a dragon.

  “Fucking hell,” says Dorie to no one in particular, and then to Jane, “why are you whispering?”

  Jane stays in her crouch and scrabbles with one hand behind her for something, anything – and comes up with her surviving pillow, which she holds out at arm’s length like a paladin’s shield. “It’s a dragon,” she hisses.

  Dorie scoffs. “So I see. Who’s doing the honors?”

  Jane hazards a glance backward at Dorie. “What, no – we can’t! Look at it! Look at the baby!”

  So Dorie acknowledges that it is the smallest, cutest, adorablest baby dragon anyone has ever seen. It’s a fair bet, since neither they nor anyone they know has ever seen a baby dragon. “Okay, it’s dead evil, yes, but it’s fucking adorable. Yes, Jane, I see the iridescent colors.”

  They’re trapped together in a tiny space with a three-inch-tall evil fire-breathing pissed-off dragon.

  “But mostly evil,” says Dorie.

  “I’ll figure something out,” says Jane. “You take care of the dogs. We can keep her safe until we reach station. Please?”

  The dogs! Dorie whirls, secures her hood, and heads out the main door, leaving it ajar behind her. It doesn’t matter if the dragon escapes onto the ice – that would solve a bunch of problems.

  First she has to have a chat with Molly about getting home to a nice warm kennel if only she can ignore her mortal enemy in the sleigh behind her.

  “Okay, ground rules.” Dorie tries to sound stern, which is difficult to do while watching Jane put a dish with a morsel of heat mash down for the thing to eat.

  “It tries to kill us, it goes out the chute.”

  “She.”

  “What?”

  “She’s a her.”

  Dorie sighs. “She goes near the dogs, she goes out the chute. If she looks like she wants to spread demon crud – ”

  “Out the chute. Yes, dear. Only she’s not a demon, she’s a dragon.”

  “You know the guild is picking her up in station, right?”

  “Yes, I know.” Jane stands up with the empty plate. “And we’re almost there.”

  Which sounds to Dorie like naive optimism, given the fact that the mission is a complete fuck-up. The guild will say she endangered the cargo and broke secrecy by misuse of her fire bolts. Having discovered a faster way over the long ice leg might gain her back some favor. Maybe.

  She glances over at Jane, who seems entranced by the dragon and its tendency to put little melty holes in everything.

  Not a complete fuck-up. Not by a long shot.

  Not having been able to radio ahead, there were a frantic few minutes upon their arrival in station. But they’ve handed over the sleigh and its contents, minus personal effects, and Betty is in isolation while the vet tech examines her anemia. Jane is off helping the crew get the dragon into some kind of pen while the guild decides how to proceed. Dorie is pretty sure that helping means tagging along to watch, but she fully expects the creature to have a name by the time Jane gets back.

  We’re only hellriders. They got the cargo, damaged or not, to the next stage, and that’s what matters.

  Dorie doesn’t envy whomever is briefing Lucy for the marsh run. Not only is her cargo a dangerous living creature, but apparently the other ley mage, Lucy’s partner Jess, died only yesterday in a freak event of some sort. Come to think of it, that might tip the balance. Without an available team, the dragon’s journey probably ends here. They’ll destroy it for sure.

  Dorie can’t even begin to imagine how that will affect Jane.

  She hopes it’s all worth it, to someone, to the war effort. Is that the value of a dragon egg? One dead rider, sick dogs, suspicion and rumor among the riders?

  Is there any way that adds up?

  Not with Jane in the equation.

  She can’t imagine losing Jane, for any reason, for any price. And it has nothing to do with their bolt-shield combo.

  Dorie drops her single duffel and wanders through the station’s darkened dining hall, now closed for the night. Wooden benches are turned up on tabletops.

  Some riders are attachers, she knows. They fall for their partners, every partner, because they love life so much and their partner is their whole life while they’re isolated together.

  Doesn’t that describe Jane? She was so delighted by the song of the ice. She loved the dragon’s scales. She loves light and color and laughter and sick dogs.

  Of course she’d say she loves her. It wouldn’t be a lie.

  A petite shadow falls across a shaft of light. Dorie makes her way back to the common area. “Oh, god,” says Jane when she sees her face. “You’re deciding I’m flighty.”

  “What? No.”

  Jane has changed out of her leathers and her station attire is even more colorful than her nightshirt, which can’t be possible. She has taken a note from the drago
nscale patterns, Dorie concludes. She has added shimmer. She looks brilliant.

  “Yes, you are. You’ve decided that I love everyone.”

  “Stop reading my mind,” Dorie says, but she doesn’t mean it.

  “Okay, I am flighty, yes. But us – that’s different.” She gives herself a little hug and bobs up and down on the balls of her feet. “I can’t believe I get to say us.”

  Dorie smiles. “Different how?”

  Jane meets her eyes directly. “I saw you here once, you know,” she says. “You don’t remember. I’d just come in from a marsh run. Have you done one? Very moldy. You were helping my partner check her boots.”

  Dorie doesn’t remember it exactly, but it’s easy to picture the scene. It’s an everyday sort of memory.

  “You checked her boots like it was the only thing in the whole universe that mattered.”

  Dorie half-shrugs. “Foot fungus – ” she begins, but Jane laughs.

  “Right.” Jane looks up at her, her eyes gleaming. “You’re right. Boot checks are vital.”

  Dorie wonders briefly if Jane is being sarcastic. She is feeling a little slow-witted.

  “That was when,” Jane says. “That was the moment I knew that I couldn’t imagine a world without you – a person who knows how important everything is. And who acts on that, every minute.” She shrugs. “And after a while, it got so I couldn’t imagine my world without you.” She takes Dorie’s hand. “So, no, I don’t mind.”

  The touch of Jane’s fingers starts a hot pounding deep inside Dorie. “What don’t you mind?” Her voice cracks.

  “That we’re going to be permanent partners.”

  Dorie feels like she can breathe again for the first time since debarking the sleigh. “Ice will get boring.”

  Jane threads her fingers through hers and tugs her closer. “Never.”

  “I’ll get boring.”

  She leans up like she’s going to kiss, and instead bites Dorie’s lip. The girl is such a biter. “I have a room here. Do you need to get your things?”

  Dorie mentally rips up a checklist and gives Jane’s hand a squeeze. “I have what I need.”