The City of Ice

by K. M. McKinley

  “She’s right you know,” said Tyn Issy, who had been watching their conversation from her travelling case upon the dining table. She sniffed ferally, a contrast to her ladylike appearance Garten still found disturbing. “This is Morfaan mist. They will make the crossing soon.”

  “Yes, well,” said Garten. “It is about time.”

  “HERE IS THE state coach, Goodfellow Kressind. Duke Abing will be with you in a moment.” Abing’s man pushed the door of polished red wood back into its housing. Everything on the train rattled and banged. Truckles jostled on the rails, beating out a frantic march tune as they hurtled down the line. Decanters on the tables chimed against each other. The pulls on blinds slapped against windows. Unsecured doors slid back and forward as the train crawled looping lines up Karsa’s many hills and sped down the other side.

  The man held out an immaculate white-gloved hand as invitation to proceed. Garten tugged the brim of his high secretary’s hat and passed from one carriage to the other. The door slid shut behind him, small hidden wheels rolling on fine rails. The catch clacking into place echoed the gentle bangs of rail joints passing under the train. Sounds nested in sounds, endlessly recursive, so that Garten felt like a ballbearing rolling down the track of some novelty machine, himself ticking and clicking as thunderous clockworks unwound all about him.

  The train slalomed from side to side. Garten’s fencing had trained his poise, and he remained steady. He did, however, swing out his arm to balance himself, momentarily forgetting the small rosewood box in his hand and knocking it against the wall.

  “Ow,” said Issy’s steely voice from inside.

  “Sorry,” said Garten. A couch tempted him to sit, but he did not wish to appear too comfortable when Abing arrived. Taking a seat at the meeting table dominating the end of the carriage would be presumptuous. There was a small half oval table bolted to the wall a third of the way down the carriage, furnished by two padded leather chairs. Judging that a fair compromise, Garten took a place there and set the box upon it. The box was tall and narrow, not unlike a lantern in shape but lacking panes. Carefully, he opened the front.

  Behind a delicate barred inner door, Tyn Issy sat inside on a cushioned bench, her ordinarily immaculate hair askew.

  “Ow, I say again,” she said. “Ow and ow and ow! Be more careful. Your brother was never such an oaf.”

  “Is there a geas against smacking you into a wall?” said Garten, attempting to make light of his error.

  Issy sniffed. “It is a common courtesy not to. I thought you a goodfellow! And this box! The one that scoundrel Trassan packed me off to you is small, but this... It is intolerable!”

  “The other is in my quarters. You see how this train clatters about. I cannot carry you in it.”

  Issy stuck her nose up at him. “So,” she said, and just that.

  “If you are with me, you are with me. You are supposed to be useful, so I shall make use of you. Unless you wish to sit out your days in your toy palace?” She ignored him, which Garten took to mean she did not. Garten adjusted his clothes, hitching his trousers to prevent creasing, unbuttoning a few of the lower buttons on his long Admiralty coat so that he might move his legs more comfortably, and settled a little better into his chair.

  “It’s too hot in here,” he said. There was a small iron stove in the corner of the room. The belly of it was stamped all over with a magister’s warding sigils against conflagration, helping to contain the fire inside and lessening the need to tend it. The stove belted out a deal of warmth. Garten loosened his collar.

  He yanked on the blind pull, and it went shooting up to the roller. The revealed glass of the window radiated a deep chill. Fog blotted out the night, a luminous gloom lit by unseen moons. From Karsa City the train had climbed up and out over the moors. Avoiding the deep valleys of the Lemio and Var’s many gushing tributaries, the railway headed instead across the spine of the plateau of the Hardenweld. The most direct route to the Neck was through the high wastes of the country.

  Garten sighed. Even were the fog to lift, the view up there was dismal, endless rolling hilltops of heather and yellow grasses fractured by peaty gullies, bogs and mean, dark little valleys whose brown waters raced to be off somewhere better.

  “So desolate a place,” he said.

  “There are worse,” said Issy. “I have seen them.”

  “I’d thank you not to tell me,” said Garten. “I have burden enough on my mind without you adding nightmare to the load.”

  Issy grinned. She enjoyed working on his nerves.

  “You don’t have to ride in the box at all. What if I were to let you out?” he said to the Tyn. “You could ride on my shoulder. Such a situation would be gentler on you. My brother Guis has a Lesser Tyn that sat on his shoulder. That was bound to him by a tiny chain, thin as two twists of hair.”

  “Of what kind?” asked Issy.

  “Bronze, I think,” said Garten.

  “Cretin! The Tyn, not the chain! What race was the Tyn?”

  “A Lesser Tyn,” repeated Garten.

  “And I am sure we look all alike to you.” Issy snorted at his ignorance. “It is a kind offer, but you cannot let me out.”

  “I could. All I must do is open the inner cage door, and you are free.”

  She narrowed her eyes in consideration, but she slowly shook her head. “There are geas against that, and for good reason. I like you Garten. Do not release me, for your own sake. I would not like to kill you.”

  Garten laughed; he did not believe the stories many did of the Tyn’s magic arts, and Issy seemed too ladylike. “You are tall as my thumb. If you pose me peril, I can stuff you back into the cage. You tease me.”

  “I do not,” she insisted. “I am deadly.”

  Garten sat back. The rocking of the train and its attendant percussion was less jarring now he sat. “It is strange that Guis has his Tyn, then you came to Trassan and now you are with me.”

  “There is nothing strange about it at all, dear Garten. Magic is in the blood of certain families. We Lesser Tyn are drawn to it, guided by the rivers unseen.”

  “Ah,” he said gravely. “Rivers.”

  “Do not mock me! You are dismissive for one whose brother is a Guider, another is a mage, and a third tinkers with engines powered by the universal spirit. Yes, rivers. Those of time and fate. You cannot see them, they are nevertheless there.”

  “I see.”

  “You do not see. Think. You cannot see your heart,” she said. “I am sure you have one.”

  “Well.” He tapped his fingers on the desk. “I maintain your coming to me was coincidental, the result of my brother, not unseen fate.”

  She shrugged. “How very human of you to think so.”

  Garten looked to her for further explanation.

  She widened her eyes and stared at him. “It appears you are somewhat dim,” she said slowly.

  “Because I don’t believe in child’s stories, and I know that Tyn are liars?”

  “Children learn stories for very good reasons. Tyn truth is different to human truth, that is all. You have much to learn, goodfellow. It appears I am forced to play your tutor.” She stuck her minuscule pink tongue out at him. “Get some tea,” she said. “I’m thirsty. Your stupidity bores me.”

  “I am not your servant,” said Garten. “You are the one in a cage.”

  “But you are the one getting the tea,” said Issy wickedly. “So who is the servant?”

  Garten gave her a hard look and pulled on a bell cord. A few moments later a man in admiralty livery appeared. Garten requested tea and cakes. The servant returned quickly, and they ate the cakes while they waited for Abing. By unspoken, mutual agreement they made small talk on matters of fashion and the weather.

  Duke Abing’s approach was like that of thunder. Nothing stirs in the sky, and then all is tumult. Yet it does not come unexpectedly. As surely as barometric pressure builds before the lightning, Garten’s anticipation of the duke’s arrival crested at th
e precise moment Abing shoved the door back with a bang. Several men accompanied him, waving papers over his shoulder and shouting for his attention.

  “Later goodmen, later!” bellowed the duke. He hurled the door closed, almost taking a petitioner’s hand off at the wrist. The shouting persisted, albeit muffled.

  “Damned fools, makes one feel pursued all the while!” shouted the duke. He straightened his tie as he came toward them, mighty as a thunderhead. Everything about the duke was solid, larger than life. He put Garten in mind of Eliturion, a notion he had harboured for some time but which he had never shared; Abing despised the god, and thought him a liability. But the chief reason Garten held his tongue was that Abing was one of those men who had an excellent sense of humour, until the joke was on them.

  Abing’s gut was large with rich living, his shoulders broad with muscles, his cheek marked with a scar won in war against the Oczerks. Deep into his fifties, his hair was still thick and black, and he wore it swept dramatically to the side in a younger man’s style. Thicketed brows dragged down his forehead into permanent glower. Deep, well-oiled muttonchops and a small triangle of beard at the tip of his chin completed the framing of his face. He wore britches and fine stockings, a thigh-length coat the same as Garten’s, but parti-coloured, one half Foreign Ministry green, the other the blue of the Admiralty, to denote his double posts. At Prince Alfra’s request, Abing was both Minister for the Admiralty and Minister of Karsa-of-the Hundred. Tall heels added to his already considerable height. His cloth was expensive, his uniform idiosyncratically adapted. A thick stack of the day’s broadsheets were wedged under one elbow.

  “Never a moment’s peace!” Duke Abing said everything forcefully, his voice complementing his nature as the booming of surf complements the tempest. “Damn!” he said. He went back to the door and opened it again. The men were still there, waving their papers. He reached into the scrum, and yanked out a thick folder bound with the green ribbon. Hands withdrew sharply as he slammed the door shut again.

  “Read this,” he said, coming to Garten’s table. “Correspondence from the Fifteen Preeminences, our chief embassies in the leading realms of the Hundred.” He dropped into the chair opposite Garten, shaking the table. “Damn continent’s dropping into the first hell as we speak, and the gates of the other ninety-nine yawn wide.”

  The duke put his newspapers on his knee and looked them over.

  Garten picked up the folder.

  “Not now man!” barked the duke. “I have—” he fished out a watch from his waistcoat pocket. Garten had laughed at Trassan’s watch when he got it, but it was quite astounding how quickly the devices had caught on. He had to get one for himself.

  “—four minutes for you,” finished Abing. He slid the watch back into its pocket and plucked up a cake. “You shall familiarise yourself with that when I am done here, not before.”

  Garten put the folder down, the duke slapped the papers on the top. He had been waiting to see the duke in private since the embassy train departed Karsa City that lunchtime, and had spent much of the time paring down his questions to the bare essentials.

  “Is there anything I should know about the situation I do not already, your grace?” asked Garten.

  “You tell me,” said Abing. “You’re the secretary.”

  “Your general impression will suffice, please goodfellow, if you would.”

  “Dire,” said Abing, spraying crumbs. “The Maceriyans have not yet chosen their candidate, and that is unprecedented, and bloody bad form to boot. There’s some sort of tussle going on between the Three Comtes. The one thing they do agree on is their adamance that their candidate be elected High Legate, no matter who he is. The Khusiaks disagree with the Maceriyans, but also disagree with us. They are pushing their own man. For once the Mohaci have put aside their differences with the northeast, and look likely to back the Khushashian candidate. Between them they have got the eastern kingdoms behind them. Maceriya can rely on the Maceriyan blok, as per bloody usual, but if the east can sway the middle kingdoms into line then the Maceriyans will lose and we absolutely cannot have that either. Khushashia has been getting too big for its boots recently, and if they and Mohaci throw in their lots together, it will not take a skilled demagogue to whip up imperial sentiments. Again. Damn thing’s a mess. It all depends on who the Maceriyans pick for their candidate. They’re being bloody tardy about it, let me tell you.”

  Abing kicked back and laced his fingers on his gut. Despite his girth, the muscles of his legs were clearly defined beneath his stockings and britches. “None of this would matter but for the Twin’s apsis, idiots agitating in the capital, talking of the return of the gods and suchlike called up by the perigee. It’s millenarianism, pure and simple. But simple ideas appeal to simple folk no matter the idiocy of the notion.”

  “I have been keeping note of the Church of the Return.”

  Abing sighed. “That’s a fart been brewing for a while, and riper for its gestation. The Church of the Return! Until now, they have not had much traction, but people are scared. All this balderdash in the archaeological journals has been snapped up, blasted out by the papers and that has given the church’s claims some momentum. Word has it they have the ear of Raganse, the second of the Three Comtes of Perus. He might only be second, but he’s a slippery bastard, and has built up quite the power base. What he whispers tends to come out the mouth of the Parliament in Perus very loudly. Perhaps a few months ago the Maceriyans would have conceded the vote to the Khusiaks. In those circumstances we could have isolated them from the Mohaci, but now? Raganse is pushing for a church nominee, and will fight to get him in the big chair. They need each other to fight this out. Damn legate died at the wrong time, a year before the Twin’s closest approach for four millennia. Inconsiderate bastard. Too much pride in Perus. Damn Godhome hanging over their heads day in day out, gives them a terrible case of the religious rectitudes. Gods and politics, never mixes! Never! Mark my words young man, that’s why we keep that blasted sot Eliturion in a glass box. They’ve never forgiven Karsa for Res Iapetus and the driving of the gods. He acted of his own accord, but...” He quirked his eyebrows. “They don’t see it like that, naturally. I’m just damn glad our pet deity is amenable to staying sozzled and staying quiet.”

  The torrent of “damns” ceased. Abing helped himself to a biscuit.

  “Please do not eat all my cakes, Duke Abing,” said Issy.

  The duke’s head snapped round. His bushy eyebrows shot up.

  “What the hells is this? I thought it a vanity case, which, by the way Kressind you were due a drubbing for. But a cage, with a... a Tyn! Listening in? Far worse than powdering yourself like a Perusian. Have you gone mad, Kressind?” blustered the duke.

  “She’s a gift of my brother’s, though I’d say an imposition. Vand gave her to him, he gave her to me.”

  “Can’t trust the damn things. Get rid of it. Immediately!”

  “I cannot, goodfellow. It is bound to me now, thanks to Trassan.”

  “Ah yes, your brother and his damn ship. Another fine dray’s mess he’s dropped in my lap too with his bloody expedition.” Abing rubbed his face and gasped. “On top of everything else, the drowned are displeased at his crossing of the Drowning Sea. I should never have agreed with Alfra and taken the foreign ministry in as well. Too much work, bloody thankless it is. Karsa-in-the-Hundred! A hundred pains in the arse, more like.”

  “You are the best man for the job,” said Issy. “For a man, and a human.” She curtseyed demurely. Somehow, her hair was perfect again.

  “Damned impertinence of the thing,” complained Abing. He turned to Issy. “Listen, imp. The correct phrasing is your grace, or goodfellow at the very least. I have my position by birth, but I earned the right to enjoy it by bloody hard work!”

  “I know the terms, Duke Abing,” said Issy mildly. “It is you whose etiquette is mistaken. I am of higher degree than you, a princess among my people.”

  “What sort of p
rincess lives in a box?” scoffed the duke.

  Issy looked around the frame of the lantern door. “I do live in a box. I like boxes. So who put me here—you humans, so sure of your power. Or did I?”

  “I do not enjoy riddles, goodlady,” growled the duke.

  “It is not a riddle,” insisted Issy. “It is a question. Riddles have no foil against ignorance, they tantalise but contain all that is required to answer them within themselves. Questions do not. This is a factual matter. You either know the answer, or you do not. “

  “What is the answer then, damn it all?” The duke banged the table with his fist, making the teacups jump in their saucers.

  “If you do not know, you will have to suffer in ignorance, and I shall remain an enigma.”

  “An irritation. Get rid of it,” Abing said to Garten.

  “She is harmless,” said Garten. He cursed Trassan inwardly for passing this curse on to him. Abing would be within his rights to replace him as secretary.

  “I am not,” said Issy.

  “Then she is useful,” said Garten.

  She grinned widely. “Now that I am.”

  The train swayed from side to side, shaking the contents violently.

  “The rails on the moors are warped with frost,” said Garten, keen to change the subject.

  “The ride gets easier once we come to lower altitudes,” grumbled Abing.

  “My father once bid for the contract. He did not win it.”

  “Your family has enough power, Kressind. The refusal was a deliberate check,” said Abing bluntly.

  “Were the priorities right in that refusal?”

  Abing gave him a hard look. “Do you question the cabinet’s judgement?”

  “If my father’s companies had made and laid the rails, they would not have warped. One must ensure that the correct priorities are taken into account.” Garten laid a hand on Issy’s case.

  “Damn you Garten, you are a sly one. Very well! The imp stays, but only if she proves herself. If she doesn’t, well, we’ll get a mage in and get your geas cut, and then I’ll sit on her myself.” Abing stood. “You better have something for me Garten. I need mollifying.”