The City of Ice

by K. M. McKinley

  The bishop’s voice was thick with anger and humiliation. “Juliense, Comte of High Perus, asked us to greet you, as was proper, as it was in the old times before the driving of the gods.”

  “We are not the emissaries of your gods nor have we ever been,” said the female. “As long as there have been comtes, it is they who have greeted us, not the priesthood. They attended us, welcomed us in the name of those Y Dvar who had taken residence in the Parrui.” She gestured to the sky, in the direction of the fallen Godhome. “A politeness, nothing more.”

  The Morfaan conferred with each other. They were not so alien or so far away that Garten could not see their concern.

  “The Three Comtes were accompanied by the Primate of Omnus,” said the bishop, losing his composure. “We seek to honour the gods in the proper way. It is written in our histories that the primate was present, that it was his role to relay the substance of the meetings to the lord of the eleven, that—”

  “Where is Juliense?” interrupted the female. “He was first of the Comtes upon our last visit. He was not old by the measure of your race. Is he still the First?”

  The crowd’s sense of awe was slipping. Confusion took its place. If the priests had been invited by Juliense, then the Church’s influence had grown great indeed. Garten knew nothing of the rituals involved in welcoming the Morfaan two hundred years ago, but it was not so far in the past. Why did the bishop’s version run counter to that of the Morfaan?

  “Well, this is awkward,” said Issy.

  Trumpets broke the tension. A troop of soldiers jogged around the base of the crag, surrounding the Three Comtes who were brought down in pulpits upon palanquins. The group stopped before the Morfaan. The soldiers parted, and the palanquins were carried forward by matched pairs of tall, pale brown Fethrians, beautiful in their androgyny.

  “Welcome to the World of Will,” said Juliense in archaic High Maceriyan.

  “Your welcome gladdens our hearts,” said the male, stifling his laughter.

  “What is the meaning of this, these priests?” said the female in bewilderment.

  The Comte of High Perus made no attempt to lower his voice.

  “A theological error,” Juliense said. “This is a time of omens, the bishop assured me that this was the correct etiquette before the Driving.” He held up a powdered hand at the bishop, a questioning look on his face. “I am sorry, he must be mistaken. Forgive us for our mistake. We shall note it in the chronicles.” He regarded the bishop directly. “So that it might be remembered.”

  Josan and her companion bowed.

  A hand clapped Garten on the shoulder.

  “There you are, Garten. All this business with the Church, eh?” said Abing.

  “Not a good sign, your grace.”

  “No, indeed not. There is more to all this than meets the eye. I’m going to need you tonight. We have to formulate a plan. I had not expected the Church to wield so much influence that they could appear here, of all places, to make fools of themselves in front of the Morfaan.”

  “Maybe that was the intention,” said Garten. “Maybe Raganse put pressure on Juliense to allow the priests to greet these ‘heralds of the gods’. He might have agreed in order to undermine them, knowing full well that they would appear foolish.”

  “Well read,” said Abing. “Mandofar has been filling me in. The Church have the total support of Raganse and half of the Perusian nobility. I doubt any of them are believers, but the Maceriyans do so love to bet both ways,” he said. “However, if Juliense was forced to play such a risky game as to humiliate the bishop in front of the crowd it does not speak well to his current position. The Lord Comte has the power of veto over the other two. Why get drawn into such a dangerous play?”

  The Morfaan returned to their coach. The soldiers came down from guarding their lords and were pushing the crowd back for the carriages of the Perusian lords. Now the greeting was done, the mob was looking forward to the more serious business of getting drunk. Celebration reasserted itself. Music started up again, fireworks joined the noise. More traders with handcarts and wagons were arriving, most carrying barrels.

  “Because the people are beginning to believe,” said Garten. “Did you see the support they had from the crowd? What was notable about all that was how many of them were quiet. How much stronger is that going to get as the Twin comes closer? If we are troubled by major earthquakes and aberrant weather as we often are around the greatest of tides during the Twin’s regular perigees, then it would exacerbate the situation. The election summit starts in two days, once the Morfaan have had time to rest. Juliense needs to silence Raganse now.”

  Abing nodded. “Could be, could be.” He slapped Garten hard on the back. “This is not the place for this discussion. Too public. Attend me in my rooms after dinner. Steel yourself, my boy, you have a long night ahead. Not least because of that fellow Mandofar, not the sort of decisive chap we need in a situation like this. I’ve wrung what little use out of him I am going to find, and it’s barely enough to wet my hands. He knows the scene, but he’s a damn ditherer.” He spat “ditherer” as if it were a curse. “I’ve had nothing else but objections from him all evening. A good choice for a diplomat in ordinary days, but he is hardly dynamic.”

  “Thank you for drawing him away from myself and the countess. Without him, I think we have been able to look more objectively.”

  “Hah! Noticed that did you? Good chap. I knew I made the right choice for you as secretary.” Abing was behaving so much like a pleased uncle in that moment Garten half-expected him to pinch his cheek there and then, or pull a half-thaler coin from behind his ear. “Excellent. Now, best we get back to our own carriage, make sure we’re far up the procession back to the Avenue of Peace, don’t want us trailing at the back like some sleepy Olberlander! Come come, work to do, there is work to do!” Brandishing his cane, he plunged into the crowd. Abing was one man who did not require the way cleared for him.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The Room of Dawning

  “BEGINNING TONIGHT” PROVED to be less than Madelyne expected. By the end of it she almost wished for what she feared instead of what she got.

  Madelyne had an early dinner of chops, alone as usual. After finishing, she went to read in the library. There was plenty to occupy her in there, though one bookshelf she avoided; it had heavy doors studded with square-headed iron nails, and gave off a malign feeling. Otherwise the library was as one would expect—tall and open, a gallery railed with gold curlicued metalwork at the midpoint; quiet, pregnant with knowledge pressed between pages, scented with paper and old leather.

  Madelyne had educated herself. Although she felt like reading something light, she decided to advertise the fact and chose Fourteen Dragons, a novel from the Maceriyan Resplendency. Supposedly based on fact, it had only recently been unearthed and reprinted. She found it diverting enough. Though the period’s bewildering host of unfamiliar terms and its strange social conventions was made even more difficult by the edition’s extensive footnotes, Madelyne lost herself in it.

  The Infernal Duke came for her at the fourteenth hour, not long after sunset, although the fog made the position of the sun moot. The day was pale grey, the night dark grey. A knock on the door made her jump and sent her scrambling up from her sprawled position on the reading couch, dropping the book in the process. The duke walked in.

  “You are comfortable.”

  “I... Yes,” she said.

  He recovered the book. He snapped it shut with one hand and nodded his approval at the title. “You read High Maceriyan.”

  “Yes,” she said. “But I expect you knew that anyway, your grace.”

  “Naturally.” He laid the book down and held out his hand. “If you will, it is time to begin.”

  “Do I have a choice?” she said, affecting lightness. Her stomach tightened. She had been through worse. She had done worse, she reminded herself.

  The duke bowed his horned head. “I said there is always a c
hoice, my dear, but if you wish to remain here, you must come with me now.”

  “Then I am ready.” She took his hand, curling all her fingers around two of his. He led her out of the room, down the long transverse corridor leading from the central hall and its staircase to the tower at the end of the north wing. Artworks and artefacts from dizzyingly ancient eras lined the panelling. Suits of antique armour, battered from use, were mounted upon lacquered blocks at regular intervals. Doors led off to either side, most of which she had been through. Drawing rooms and sitting rooms to the front on this side of the house. Toward the back there was a huge ballroom that occupied much of the length of the north wing, the chandeliers covered with sheets and dusty with disuse.

  Their feet whispered over the runner that stretched the full length of the wing’s hall. All was deathly silent. The city’s noise was muffled by thick walls and thick fog. Madelyne was gripped by the vertiginous feeling that she was trapped in a fog-bound mansion from which there was no escape. There was a story that the Morfaan lived in such a place. It was a dreadful thought, and the presence of the duke reassured her.

  What the hells am I doing? she thought. Too late for that. She kept her mind on her prize.

  They came to the north tower. An open staircase occupied the bulge of a turret set in the outer rear edge. It curled away into darkness.

  “This tower contains my personal rooms,” he said to her. “The room on the ground floor, which I am to take you into, you may frequent when you wish, though I doubt you will want to. That on the first floor you will come to know soon enough. Until I have taken you in there, it remains locked. After that it will stay open. The second floor has a chamber you will also be introduced to, but you are only ever to go in there with me, never alone. Upon the third floor is my chamber, to which you may come and go as you please. On the fourth, at the top of the tower, there is a room that you are never to go into under any circumstances. Do you understand? Please say that you do, and mean it.”

  “Yes your grace,” she said.

  “Say that you understand.”

  “I understand, your grace.”

  He was relieved by her reply. “Very good. Now we shall begin.”

  He placed a hand upon the handles of the double door of the ground floor room, and opened first one, then the other. With a smile, he gestured her within. “This is the Room of Dawning,” he said.

  A fire burned in the grate. Despite the chill of the mist on everything, the room was too hot. The ceilings were too high for the room. It threw the proportions off, and made her feel small. A tall plaster freeze ran around the top of the wall depicting dozens of figures—human, animal, Morfaan and other less identifiable creatures. They cavorted lewdly with one another. Their limbs were posed in postures of delight, but despair was on the faces of all. Flickering firelight made the plaster mouldings dance nauseatingly, and she looked away.

  The duke went to a high, wing-backed chair by the fire and sat within. Elsewhere in the house there was a mix of differently sized furniture for the duke and his guests. The few pieces in there—couch, large table, occasional table and the chair—were proportioned for his inhuman frame alone, intensifying her feelings of helplessness. She made to follow him.

  “No,” he said. He took off his jacket and draped it on the chair. “Stand. There.” He pointed to the centre of the rug. She did as she was told. “Now then. When we are engaged in these activities, you are to behave demurely. You are not to look me in the eye. You are to obey my commands without dissent and immediately. When addressed, you are to respond but only so that I know you understand. You are to say ‘yes, your grace,’ and nothing more.”

  “Yes, your grace,” she said. She looked at the rug. It did not extend as far as the walls, and the marble tiles there were uncovered. The centre was occupied by a stylised depiction of a rose. She concentrated on the patterns, and withdrew into herself. This trick had saved her before, when she had sold herself, staring at cracks in old plaster as men grunted on top of her. She had spent a lot of time convincing Harafan this would be the same, although now she realised she was convincing herself. It was not the same. Terror made its oily way up from her stomach, threatening to block her throat. Her legs shook.

  “Good. Now strip.”

  “Yes, your grace.”

  She slipped her arms from her dress, pulled down the top and began to unlace the bodice. An unexpected feeling of shame hit her. Before, the few times, she had not known the men, and that had made it easier. But this god she had conversed with pleasantly. It was more difficult to divorce herself from what her body was doing. She panicked and fumbled the clasps of her corset.

  “Slowly!” he growled. “I wish to enjoy this.” He lifted an oversized decanter from the small table by his side and poured a bottle’s worth of wine into a glass as big as a vase.

  She did as she was bid, slipping from her clothes carefully and silently. The duke made a noise of approval as her petticoats and underwear slid to the floor, revealing her nakedness.

  “I cannot abide mess,” he said, his voice thickening. “Pick up your clothes, fold them, and place them on the table.”

  “Yes, your grace.” She took care not to rush, stacking the clothes into a pile at her side, then carried them to the table.

  “Do not slouch!” he rumbled.

  She stood straighter.

  “No, no, no!” he said. “This will not do. You must display yourself!” The glass clinked down. He came to her. Placing one hand on her lower back and the other just below her breasts he adjusted her posture. “Stick you backside and your tits out,” he said. Madelyne was surprised to hear him utter so mild a crudity. He had not used language like that before in her presence. “Did not Verralt inform you of how to stand?”

  “Yes, your grace.”

  His hands, so large they met around her midriff, clenched slightly. They were so hot. “Then do it.”

  She forced herself into the uncomfortable position, bending her spine into a shallow ‘s’.

  “Place your legs more widely apart. How am I to get to the crux of the matter if you do not?”

  Horns sounded from outside, dozens of them. The duke looked up as voices rang out from the rooftops.

  “The Morfaan come into the World of Will,” he said. “That is not our concern.”

  His hands dropped away and he retrieved something from his pocket.

  “Look at this,” he said.

  “Yes, your grace.”

  Draped over one finger was a leather collar pierced with metal eyelets, a worn buckle at the back. A large ring hung from a plate riveted to the front. He lifted it up to her neck. It was old, the leather rough and flaked, and it was musty with the perfume and sweat of other women.

  “Bow your head, move your hair, aside” he said.

  “Yes, your grace,” she said.

  “Good, you are a fast learner,” he said. He fastened the collar about her throat. It pressed into her skin, not so tightly that she could not breathe, but tightly enough that she was aware of it.

  “This is in addition to your mark,” he explained. “You will wear this when I deem fit, and only remove it when I say.” He took a small silver lock studded with emeralds. It clicked into something at the nape of her neck. “I have the key, just in case.” He revelled in telling her this. The touch of his unnaturally hot breath on her cheek sent shivers of treacherous pleasure crawling along her limbs. “Should you prove satisfactory, I will present you with a new collar. For now, this one will suffice. If you wish something prettier, you must earn it.”

  She was so busy trying to maintain her posture she never expected the stinging crack of his hand across her face. She gasped with the pain and the rush of hot blood to her cheeks. He grabbed her with rough fingers, forcing her eyes up to meet his and crushing her cheeks into her teeth; the left throbbed with the blow.

  “No so fast a learner, then. Respond when you are spoken to, else how will I know that you understand? You do under
stand, don’t you, dear Madelyne?”

  “Yes, your grace,” she said.

  “Good.” He let her go. Twice more he walked around her, admiring her. The heat radiating off him and the fire made her sweat. “Now,” he said, standing before her. “When in this position, you must keep your hands on your head.”

  She immediately complied, remembering just in time to say, “Yes, your grace.”

  “Often I will ask you to kneel. Kneel now, maintain your posture.”

  She did so, leaving her hands on her head.

  “Very good. You are a woman that thinks ahead. Whenever you wear the collar, you are my property. You must be prepared to please me in whichever manner I demand, no matter how distasteful you find it. If I ask you to wait, it must be in this position, unless I specify otherwise. Remember, all this is for our mutual pleasure and your ultimate gain.”

  She did not see how it could be so. In that moment, she hated him. “Yes, your grace,” she said.

  “Very good.” He fetched a rope from a small chest at the end of the larger table in the room. He told her to place her hands in her lap, and he bound her wrists together, then her ankles. Then he had her lift her arms and he bound her stomach with a tight belt of rope, and tied her hands and her feet to this, so that she was forced to remain kneeling.

  He took a thick, velvet blanket from the cupboard and spread it on the marble off to one side of the fireplace, then he bent and picked her up as if she weighed nothing, and placed her upon it. There was a ring set into the wall, and he ran a length of chain from this to the collar at her neck, locking it at both ends.

  “There,” he said. Then he sat, looking away from her, thinking unreadable thoughts and drinking the whole carafe of wine slowly. He said nothing more to her. She was uncomfortable, thirsty. Crowds of people flooded the streets, she could hear their excited voices. Half an hour passed, and they receded. Her arms and legs throbbed with holding the posture. The duke did nothing. Fear gave way to boredom. Oddly she felt in no danger.