The City of Ice

by K. M. McKinley

  The clip was another device he had invented for this adventure, completed after consultation with the polar explorer Eustache Antoninan. Lines of thin, strong rope ran along the ship port and starboard, passing through cleats attached to railing posts every forty paces. Two more were situated either side of amidships. The clips were springloaded, easy to open and close to allow men to unhook themselves and move between lines or over their supporting cleats. The system was, in its small way, revolutionary and would do much to safeguard the lives of his sailors in the tempestuous ocean of the Sotherwinter. Yet though his brothers often accused Trassan of being pleased with himself—unfairly in his estimation—when faced with even a minor failure Trassan took no satisfaction in his ingenuity. He was fixated on the ice growing around the funnel. Ice was already everywhere. Patches of it gleamed on the superstructure. Ice thickened the hawsers and rigging on the masts into heavy tubes. For reasons that he could not account for it was worse for the forward stack, and at the moment only the forward whistle was jamming. For the time being the deck itself was largely free of ice, kept clear by the tremendous heat of the glimmer engines working below. But already it encroached from the sides, making small inroads along decking planks. Small icicles grew from the railings. Layers gathered on the edges of bulwark drains, building the ice incrementally with each wave sluiced away. At twelve below freezing, Trassan was sufficiently warm in long oilskins and woollens, but the temperature would drop, affecting man and vessel. As they went further south, it would get colder and colder, and the ice would become a danger to the ship’s stability. If one of the funnels could ice up, well...

  It was a problem. Furthermore, it was a problem he had anticipated, miscalculated, and so failed to adequately engineer for.

  Trassan swung forward with a reeling drunkard’s walk, angry with himself. He passed the forward hold cover, tightly battened against the weather, and on past the tarpaulin covering the steam-winch, tied up with criss-crossed ropes as tight as a ham, all but the tall winding wheel unrecognisable under its swaddling. He made the funnel with a final stagger as the ship pitched down a wave, giving him a stomach-churning view of a long drop misted with spray.

  The team of men were all clipped to the lines. Two were up on the staples welded to the funnel itself. The other two hacked at a runnel of ice running from the whistle assembly to the deck.

  “Hey!” called Trassan as he approached. The wind was surprisingly light, the mountainous seas having been born in some more violent place, and Trassan did not have to shout loudly.

  The team leader turned to face him.

  “Bannord?” said Trassan. “What are you doing out here, lieutenant?” He unclipped himself from the starboard line and aimed for the line running right amidships. He stumbled and Bannord caught him.

  “Thank you,” said Trassan, snapping his clip home.

  “You want to be careful out here,” said the marine officer. “No place for a wrong step.”

  “You should be inside. This isn’t your work.”

  “Nothing like a bit of fear to get the blood racing.” He slapped Trassan’s shoulder. “A life soldiering gets you hooked on the rush. I’d go cross-eyed with boredom without it. We’re the Maritime Regiment, but some of my men are saltless lubbers, and need the practice. So I thought it best if we tackle the ice rather than the sailors.”

  “It is not a problem yet.”

  “Aye,” said Bannord, that infuriating twinkle to his eye. “But it will be, won’t it? That’s why you’re out here. Besides, I’m running out of money to lose to Redan up there, so I figured we should do something other than play cards.” He pointed to the man fourteen feet up, hacking at the ice gathering round the whistle bell with a short-handled pick. “Mind you, I’m regretting my decision. It’s fucking freezing out here. Best be bored than frozen, that’s my new motto. I’ll be sure to stick to it in future.”

  “Get him down,” said Trassan.

  “You’re not going up there are you?” said Bannord. The lieutenant was a canny man, and unafraid to speak his mind. “If Redan falls in, big deal. As much as I love his cheeky little ways, he’s only a marine, and I could blunt my mourning by reminding myself that I won’t have to pay his contract out. But if you fall in, that would be bad news all around.”

  “Get him down, Bannord.”

  “No. What’d I tell your brother if you died in front of me?”

  “I could tell someone else how to do this,” said Trassan. “But it’d take twice as long. Now, I’m ordering you. Get him down.”

  “That’s the spirit,” said Bannord, slapping him on the shoulder again. “I wondered if you’d back down or not. Oi! Redan!” The marine looked down. “Yeah, you. Come on down, it’s your lucky day.”

  Trassan grabbed his clip, fingering the release impatiently as he waited for Redan to descend, red-faced from the effort of holding himself steady against the motion of the ship while hacking at the ice. Despite the chill, Redan was sweating and his breath was short. He nodded at Trassan as he made the deck and clipped himself to the port line. Trassan handed his bag and pennant to Bannord, unclipped himself from the midline, and onto the safety rope running up the funnel. He motioned to Bannord to open the satchel, fished out an adjustable wrench, and took back the flag. He tucked both into his belt.

  “Here we go,” he said, and began to climb. It felt good to be working again.

  Trassan was fit and strong for a monied man. Others of his class preferred to draw up the plans then sit back and shout at someone else to do the work, but Trassan liked to get his hands dirty. A matter of trust, a desire to see the job done himself, and a need to expend the generous amount of nervous energy that coursed ceaselessly around his system.

  Climbing up the staples on the side of the funnel while the ship lurched from one extreme of inclination to another was among the hardest things he had ever attempted. The cold of the metal bit through his gloves, even though the staples stood a mere five inches from the skin of the funnel. Five inches, it turned out, was more than enough distance to chill the metal deeply. The swaying of the ship became pronounced as he climbed. Obviously, he scolded himself, I’m climbing an inverse pendulum. The wind grew in strength up there, unimpeded by the swell. Trassan’s hood blew down. Spatters of sleety snow mixed with freezing sea water hit his face, burning it with cold. Fourteen feet was a height of no consequence under normal circumstances. On rough seas it felt far higher. When he looked down, he could see over the side of the ship to the churning paddle wheels, and that was significantly further still.

  “Gods shit on me,” he cursed. He reached the whistle. A braced steel arm jutted out from the stack there, with a ring rattling from the far end. With some difficulty he fished the attachment for his harness up and reclipped it to the ring. Now he could sit back, bracing himself on the ladder staples with his feet, freeing his hands to work. At least that was the idea. The Prince Alfra plunged down another twenty foot wave, and Trassan came loose, swinging from the arm. He flailed for the ladder with arms and feet, his heart dropping in his chest, heavy as a plumb bob. Panic ambushed him, and would not retreat for a minute after he had grabbed the ladder again.

  “Are you alright up there, goodfellow Kressind?” said Bannord. He was laughing at him. Too familiar by half, but social convention demanded he put up with it. Bannord was a close friend of his eldest brother, Guis, and had known Trassan since he had been in child’s dress. The Bannord family was dirt poor, but still aristocracy, and their title was older than the Kressind’s. His ancestors had crossed the Neck with King Brannon, some even said the similarity of the name denoted kinship. Not for the first time Trassan wondered why his brother Guis had recommended Bannord and not his other friend, Qurion. Trassan found Qurion much less annoying.

  “I’m just fine up here, thank you,” shouted Trassan back. Gritting his teeth, he drew out his spanner.

  There were steam whistles on each of the Prince Alfra’s stacks. Different bell sizes on each gave
it a powerful, polyphonic voice, a fancy Trassan wondered now had not caused the problem. They were fed by subsidiary steam pipes coming off the boilers. Besides sounding the whistles, the vents allowed excess steam to be bled free at a steady rate to keep the pressure stable. The steam vent had a separate opening—a governor—that could be employed to blow steam without sounding the whistle, and that vent was currently clear, although a ring of ice caked the base of its tubing. Trassan poked at the vent hole with his finger, and the glove came away wet with warm water, so the problem was with the whistle.

  He thought a moment. By being forced into the whistle bell, the steam had time to cool and condense. By the time it came from the sounding orifice and hit the cold air it was close to freezing. The water dribbled off the whistle and coated the governor vent. The cooler water froze the vent intermittently shut and prevented it from opening properly half the time. As the vent and the whistle were part of the same mechanism, some steam always went into the whistle bell, so simply not using the whistle was not an option.

  “And so the vent water backs up, and also gets the chance to freeze,” he said quietly to himself. “Blast Heffi and his Ishmalan insouciance, I was right to come up here.” He forgot the swaying of the ship, the heaving water, and his precarious position. Invested in the problem, he became oblivious to the world around him.

  He pushed back with his legs, tensing them alternately to deal with the swell, and leaned back to better look at the funnel. The smaller whistle bell size did not completely explain why the forward funnel was the worst affected. He had taken into account the sea spray it must bear, but there was more to it than that. The wind, most probably. The wind’s power to snatch away heat outweighed its inhibition of the formation of ice. The other two funnels were sheltered by rest of the ship against headwinds if not from all sides. Could that be it?

  Trassan narrowed his eyes. In an instance like this, there must be a short-term fix and a long-term solution.

  After a moment’s thought, he locked the spanner to the nut on the whistle assembly. His fingers were numb, and the tool felt unreal. The nut would not budge, and he had to smack the fist closed around the spanner handle with the palm of his other hand.

  After four painful strikes, the nut shifted suddenly to the left. Trassan undid it quickly, removing the bell assembly. He took out the lead compression seal and washers, depositing them in his bag with the nut and bell, then descended the ladder.

  “It’s a problem with the steam,” said Trassan to Bannord. “The exhaust is too cold. There are no gasses from combustion in the exhaust to keep the temperature up. If this were a coal-fired engine there would be.”

  “Right,” said Bannord in a manner that set Trassan’s teeth on edge. “So, can we fix it, and what do we do if we can’t?”

  Trassan would not be dissuaded. “I blame my own frugality.” By which he meant genius in saving money. His crew were becoming used to such pronouncements. “The steam passes through three racks of condensing chambers to recycle the water through the boiler system. We draw a lot of residual heat from the water to heat the ship. By the time it leaves the funnel it’s not very warm. The vapour may look impressive, but it’s mostly down to the condensation of the moisture load as warm air hits freezing rather than actual steam. The venting you see from the stacks is pressure release, and glimmer residue disposal. By the time the steam leaves the vessel, it’s barely above evaporation point. A few moments in the steam bell is all that it takes to condense half of it, this is dribbling out, freezing the overpressure valve shut.”

  “Right,” said Bannord again. “The steam is too cold. You have cold steam.”

  “Bravo!” said Trassan. Now he clapped the soldier on the shoulder. Bannord pulled a face at him. “You are correct. The steam is, in effect, too cold.”

  Trassan retrieved his flag, looked to the bridge windows, and waved. The steam whistles hooted. The pipe Trassan had removed the whistle from sent up a giant plume of vapour.

  “See,” said Trassan. “It turns to ice the moment it leaves the ship.” He continued waving the flag. The other two whistles moaned loudly, the spray of ice crystals sent out from the partially disassembled fore-whistle became a freezing fog that settled onto the ship’s iron. He flourished the flag one more time, then let it drop and rolled it up. “That should have cleared the steam vent enough.”

  “You hear that Redan? You don’t have to go back up now. Get up on the other side. Once we’ve cleared that, then we can all go indoors.”

  Trassan was energised by his success, eager to get to the root of the problem. “We are going to have to come up with a longer lasting solution.”

  “Are we now,” said Bannord sceptically. “If you don’t want something shooting, count me out. We’re only doing this because it seemed like a good idea. It wasn’t. Come on Redan!” he snapped. “I’m getting sick of the cold.”

  “Yes lieutenant,” said Redan.

  “Hey!” said one of Bannord’s other marines. “Can you hear that? I can hear another whistle.”

  “What are you talking about, Drannan?” said Bannord. “There’s not one ship within a thousand miles of this place.”

  “I heard it too, sir,” said another.

  “Well, that’s just fine,” said Bannord. “I can’t hear a bloody thing.”

  “Shh!” said Trassan, grabbing his arm. “Listen!”

  Through the moan of the wind and the singing of the ship’s metal came a shrill cry.

  “I hear it,” said Bannord.

  “That’s not a whistle,” said Trassan.

  Bannord’s attitude changed completely. “Leave the ice. Get inside. Fetch your ironlocks. Roust the others from the barrack,” said Bannord to his men. Whatever Bannord’s faults, Trassan admired his professionalism. “Redan, get me my gun.”

  The cry called again, nearer. A shriek similarly polyphonic to the ship’s whistles, but rawer.

  “Best fetch the magister and the mage too,” said Bannord urgently. “Guns won’t be enough.”

  “Yes sir,” said Redan. The marines scrambled away down the deck.

  “It came from the east,” said Trassan. He and Bannord unclipped themselves and hurried to the port side of the ship as quickly as they could, ducking under the midship safety lines. Trassan gripped the rails, eyes sweeping the hillocks of dipping water.

  “There!” he shouted, pointing at a spout of water several hundred yards away. A thin jet arced over the white caps of the swell, the top broken into spray by the wind.

  Bannord reached inside his oilskin and pulled out a short eyeglass. He snapped it open and aimed where Trassan pointed.

  “Hard to see,” he said, steadying himself against the rail. Another spout lofted upward. “Hang on. Uh-oh.”

  Trassan saw nothing but the spout and a brief roil of seafoam at its base. “Uh-oh?” said Trassan. “What by the hells is ‘uh-oh’ supposed to mean?”

  “Here.” Bannord gave him the glass. Trassan set the cold metal against his eye. “Watch. Watch. There!”

  “I don’t see it,” said Trassan. He lacked Bannord’s experience at sea, and the telescope image bobbed sickeningly about between grey sky and grey sea. Bannord grasped the glass and steadied it for him. “Don’t try to bring it to bear. Keep it steady. Follow the motion of the ship.”

  Trassan twisted the focusing ring, bringing a sleek, reptilian head into sharp focus. He got the briefest glimpse before it dived down, a long, frilled tail flicking after it.

  “As I thought, sea dragon,” said Bannord. Men shouted; Bannord’s marines were spilling out of the doors of the superstructure, some still struggling oilskins over their woollens. All were carrying their long ironlock rifles.

  “Five up on the tower!” shouted Bannord, pointing to the wheelhouse. “The rest of you range up on the rail.” Redan came running, agile on the pitching deck, and tossed Bannord’s gun to him.

  Tullian Ardovani came after the marines down the midship safety lines, more cautious
ly perhaps but still nimble. All of them had had time to become used to the sea’s constant motion. His strange weapon was slung over his shoulder. From afar it appeared as a bulky rifle, closer to it was clear the brass barrel was studded with crystal, and lacked an aperture.

  By the time the magister reached Trassan and Bannord, all the marines were in place, clipped to the safety ropes, their rifles secured to their waists by chains running from a loop on the stock. They trained their weapons on the ocean.

  Ardovani joined them. He was young for a man of his calling, little exerted by his walk down the rolling deck.

  “Where’s Vols?” asked Trassan. “We might need him.”

  “Ah,” said Ardovani apologetically. “I am afraid our goodmage is indisposed. This sea is not to his liking.”

  “Typical,” said Bannord. “He must be the only one left who’s still puking his guts up. Scion of the God-driver! Useless piss-bucket.”

  “It is not easy for him,” said Ardovani gently. “Mages are of a rare sort. The iron of the ship is difficult for him to bear, far more so than it is for me. The sea makes it worse.”

  “Can you banish a dragon?” asked Bannord.

  “A dragon?” said Ardovani. “No, why, I have never seen one.” He adjusted his parka hood thoughtfully. “I suppose I might given time, and the correct formulae, but—”

  “Shut up then,” said Bannord. “Dragon rising!” he shouted.

  The face of the wave they approached broke apart near the crest. A short muzzle erupted from the sea, the head following, carried high on a long, serpentine neck. Brine streamed from its horns and the frills around its mouth. The dragon let out a hooting cry. Watery breath blasted from the nostrils atop its head. It dove beneath the water’s surface, surfing below the wave face a little way as a rippled, flattened image of itself, before vanishing deeper into the water.