The City of Ice

by K. M. McKinley

  “You will back the Labour Associations?”

  “My dear goodfellow, I shall run the Labour Associations.”

  “Now you are threatening me,” Grostiman said. “That is an offence.”

  “A lesser one than living off the backs of less fortunate creatures. But I am not threatening you, I am threatening the established order.”

  “And if I don’t agree? You are not a member of parliament. You cannot stand. Give it some lesser man, and it will never be heard. I hardly think your father will agree to put this forward. And for that matter, does your father know about this?” Grostiman raised an eyebrow. “How do think he would react?”

  “The demonic legions of all hundred hells can blast my father’s arse!” she snapped. “I am a free agent, not some dutiful, goat-eyed daughter to go sniffling after his say so. I and my father’s approval parted a long time ago.”

  “Still, you will not get it into parliament, because I will not put this forward.” He peered dismissively at the document title, “A New Little Agreement for a New Era,” he read. “We might as well say we are culpable of terrible crimes, line up against the wall and shoot ourselves. No.”

  She smiled wickedly. “Very well. Now I am going to threaten you.”

  “Oh?” said Grostiman. It was his most dangerous “oh”. He had an arsenal of such utterances. Better let a man hang himself running his own mouth off, he thought. An “oh” was often a sufficient noose. Not that he would employ such tactics on a goodlady, but he was so incensed he had ceased to see Katriona as a woman. Viewing her as another bullish, new money upstart made it easier to deal with her. By the gods, he would “oh” her, woman or not!

  “I have been in one of your family’s factories,” she said. “I have seen the conditions inside. Not only do they transgress every standard of human decency, go against the spirit of the Little and Grand Agreements, they also, very provably, break today’s law. I quote, and my lawyers had me learn this verbatim, ‘no child under the age of six years shall be employed for more than four hours a day’. How old are the waifs in your sheds, goodfellow? Four? Five?”

  “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

  “The Lemio Clothing and Shoddy Company factory,” she said. “And the attached home for strays.”

  “One of many my family own. What of it? It is a small business.”

  “The size of the business is not at issue, only the enormity of your crimes.”

  “What on Earth are you talking about?”

  “I see. So you would not object to an inspection by the Minister of Trade? Or a magister’s sending and a broadsheet report? I can arrange all of these things.” She lowered her voice. “I have been in there. The children work twelve hour days maiming themselves plucking apart better cloth than they are given to wear. Some of these children are below the age of employment. None are adequately fed or clothed. None are schooled.”

  “Nonsense,” he said uneasily.

  “So many high men are guilty of this,” she continued, her eyes narrowed to a slit. “All are guilty, so none will upset the floatstone. Because of this unspoken agreement of scoundrels, all break the law freely. Well goodfellow. I am upsetting the floatstone. I will point the finger and cry havoc.”

  “I see,” said Grostiman. “And what of your part in this little club? If we are all guilty, then so are you. Guilty by association, and very probably guilty in actuality.”

  “Not as guilty as some. One lesson being a woman in this day and age has taught me well, goodfellow, is to have no respect whatsoever for the unwritten conventions of men. For it is those selfsame conventions that kept me from my ambitions as keep children chained up in the dark making money for tubby parasites like you. Sign the paper, Grostiman, or I will ruin you and your entire gods’ damned family. It will be incidental to my upsetting the current order, but devastating to you.”

  “You cannot,” said Grostiman simply. “Your reputation will be destroyed. No one will deal with you. The Kressind name will be irredeemably sullied.”

  “Yes. I suspect it will, among people I do not care for nor respect. Whereas the poor, they shall love me.”

  “You will appear a weak woman, trying to expunge her guilt for a massacre that came about because of her own feminine follies. You have seen what happens when change is effected —unintended consequences of the worst sort.”

  “Perhaps,” said Katriona. “On the other hand, convention and society have changed a great deal over the last century, goodfellow. What on the Earth or the Twin makes you think it would stop at a position to your best advantage? I am heading off a problem before it occurs, Minister. You and your ilk wander the mud blithely, ignorant of the tide. I have a boat. We can deal with this now, or you can wait for the entire city to explode. Good day.”

  Katriona got up. The door banged behind her. Grostiman looked at the documents again.

  “Hmmm.”

  He picked up the bell on his desk and rang for a servant.

  “Goodfellow?” his man asked.

  “Send for Artibus, Dofer and Seward,” he said. “That woman will be trouble.”

  “Yes goodfellow.”

  “And fetch me a decanter of red. A good one.” He put his spectacles on and considered the papers more closely. “I find myself unaccountably in need of a drink.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The Unshe

  NIGHT IN THE far south was a strangely luminous affair. The late spring days were long. When the sun finally departed, it dipped down behind the horizon for the briefest of rests. As it slipped to its short midnight, Heffi waited upon the summit of the island calculating the precise arc in his head. He had been a captain so long that he required a sextant only for the most precise of reckonings. As a guide to latitude, it was rough, but useful. He marvelled at the gentle declination. So far south, he had never thought to come so far south.

  On the ice shelf the huts of the sea-peoples glowed enticingly with lamplight, blue through the joins in their walls, bright yellow in the ice windows. Out from the island the iron ship was lit by blazing glimmer lights and alive with an engineer’s racket. Trassan had the crew working in shifts to make the alterations to the funnels, taking advantage of the calm weather and the season’s light.

  That far south the sky never truly darkened, the west remained tinted lemon yellow, darkening through subtle blues toward the prime meridian where the White Moon rested, nigh on a whole orb, though much faded by the promise of tomorrow. The Red Moon sped by, rosy rather than red, tracking into the east where a semblance of darkness took hold. There the sky glowed a deep purple strewn with untold stars. Heffi rested his notebook on his knee, making notes of the various constellations along with his rough reckonings as to their latitude. Longitude was harder. Only the Ishmalani had the secret of it, and they guarded it fiercely. Heffi justifiably regarded himself of something of a master of that art. To take back all this information on new stars would make him famous. It would also make him rich, given time, but he was counting on the city in the ice bringing him fortune long before then.

  The lightness of the sky was redoubled by the placid surface of the ocean and the plaques of ice upon it, and so Heffi wrote without the need for other illumination. By his calculations once they passed the eighty-ninth parallel, according to the ancient science of his people, they would experience near constant daylight until past the solstice in Gannever. Heffi was content to sit and think. Occupation had forever been his personal formula for success, he was frugal with his idleness. He waited now for his meeting with the Unshe. He could do it in impatient pacing without result, instead he used the time productively. The One gave them little enough life as it was. Heffi praised Him for granting him an active mind.

  Snow crunched behind him, and the breath of someone forced to climb.

  Heffi shut his book gently, and tucked the pencil back into the fabric holder at the side.

  “Heffi,” said Trassan, stepping into view.

  �
�Good evening, goodfellow.”

  Trassan sat down on a nodule of floatstone poking out of the snowcap. “Funny, surrounded by snow and freezing water. I’m almost too warm.” He flipped the hood of his parka down.

  “As much as I am happy to see you, Trassan, I did come up here for a bit of peace.”

  “And to see this Unshe of theirs?” said Trassan. “Me too. Antoninan told me that the sea peoples venerate those who are neither male nor female, and that they have great powers of foresight. I’m sorry to interrupt your dance, but I’m intrigued.”

  “You have not been called!”

  “Have you?” said Trassan. “You did not translate what Chichiweh said.”

  “I will not,” said Heffi, his gaze falling to the hand-written title of his book. He stroked the smooth cover. “It is forbidden.”

  “You are a strange breed, you Ishmalani,” said Trassan. “You’re a good man Heffi, I wish I could get to know you better.”

  “You can know me without knowing the secrets of my people. We worship the One, the Will that makes. He made this Earth, the Twin, all the stars and moons and the peoples upon them. Each sect honours him in his own way. I am bound to do so by blood and birth.”

  “Everyone knows that.”

  “And you do not need to know more in order to befriend one of us. But so many of you Ushamali feel different about it. You grow vexed at things you do not need to know, and so a distance remains. It is a pity.”

  Trassan shrugged. “I try not to think about it. All that matters to me is that you’re a good captain, and a pleasant fellow to be with. If you’re too selfish to share your religious secrets, fine! I’m rather jealous, I suppose we all are. You got to keep your god.”

  “This is why there is always the distance,” said Heffi. “Your gods were never real. They were illusory, things made by men.”

  “I don’t believe that,” said Trassan. “How can men make gods?”

  “Ask Eliturion, he says so often enough—they are stories told by men made flesh.”

  “Magic then? Which mage called them into being?”

  “Magic doesn’t need mages in the same way water doesn’t need taps. I think he is right. There’s an Ishmalani saying—fate is a story the universe tells itself.”

  Trassan made an interested noise and kicked at the snow.

  “Have you read Eliturion’s books?”

  “Which one?” said Trassan. “The old windbag must have published a hundred.”

  Heffi smiled absently. “He has, I suppose.”

  “Sorry Heffi, I don’t trust gods.” Trassan thrust his hands between his knees. “I’ve met him.”

  “Who hasn’t?” said Heffi.

  “Your time is here.”

  Both men looked up at this third voice. There was a woman standing in front of them where no woman had been before. Nor had there been any sound of approach on the icy snow.

  Trassan jumped off his perch.

  “Gods!” he said.

  “I thank you for it,” Heffi said. He put his book away inside his parka and stood, touching his forehead with his forefinger knuckle. “This one has not been called. Shall I proceed alone?”

  The woman gave Trassan a sleepy look. “If he had not been called, he would not be here. You are both to come with me.”

  “See?” crowed Trassan.

  “This way,” said the woman. She lifted a lethargic arm and pointed down the far side of the island, away from the village. “Both may come, or one, or none. The same numbers might return, no matter how many go in.” She floated away in the indicated direction, leaving no mark upon the snow.

  “Did you see that? I think she’s a ghost!” said Trassan. “Is it safe?”

  “Did you hear her message? Probably not,” said Heffi. “But I am going anyway.”

  “I admire your demeanour, Heffi.”

  Heffi patted Trassan’s shoulder. “I’ve seen too many natural and supernatural wonders in my years as a mariner to be affected by something so simple as the manifestation of a phantom,” he said. “Come on if you’re coming.”

  “You’re not sore at me?”

  “You heard. You were called. We don’t want to lose her.”

  They followed the spirit down the hill.

  THE GIRL WAITED for them at the foot of the island’s mount where the brim of ice was narrow. She waited for them to approach and drifted along a thin path of compacted snow clinging to the rockface, dark water below.

  “Keep one hand on the wall!” said Heffi. “To fall in means death in minutes.”

  “No fear,” muttered Trassan.

  Clutching at the pockmarked stone, they slowly made their way to where the ghost waited for them again. When they reached her, she pointed down a tunnel leading into the rock, and unravelled as smoke on the wind.

  “Do you have a light?” asked Heffi.

  Trassan pulled out a small glimmer lantern from his pocket. He worked the lever to spin the incantation wheel inside. After a few presses, light sprang up from the lens at the front. He aimed it into the hole. A rough tunnel of unfinished stone went down further than the torch’s ability to penetrate.

  “We better take this carefully,” said Trassan. This time, he went first.

  The jagged cups of broken floatstone cavities stood sharp in the light of Trassan’s pocket lamp, and they had to watch their footing. The tunnel curved. Some way in, the light of the device faded, leaving them in the dark,

  “This is why I dislike incantatory devices,” he grumbled, shaking his lamp hard. “This tunnel is too large for the rock above the waves, it must go far beneath the surface of the sea.” He felt the walls. “The rock’s freezing.”

  “We are close. I feel a warm draught coming from below. Let’s press on.”

  They shuffled along, feet snagging. One stumble could see them sever an artery on the razored stone, and again they held tight to the wall. Presently, the darkness lessened. Firelight shone from further in. Once it made itself known, it grew bright quickly. They stumbled, blinking, into a rough cave dominated by a blazing fire.

  “By the driven gods...” said Trassan.

  This was the kind of cave he had expected at the Tatama council. It reeked of sweat and cured meat. Smoke wove randomly toward gaps in the ceiling. Holes were few, and most of the smoke curled back on itself, making the air blue. Trassan blinked tears from his eyes, coughing from the fumes catching in his throat. From all over the ceiling hung severed hands on wires, brown like smoked sides of ham. Those closest to the blaze were black and shrivelled, those to the edge of the cave had fingers lengthened by stalactites of rendered fat. Stacks of bones and oceanic debris lined the chamber like a gruesome tidemark.

  “Deep magic,” Heffi said gravely. There was no point affecting a jaded air. Heffi, generally speaking—the non-general caveat being where money was involved—was honest and straightforward. He sensed power from the cave, and he made the sign of the One at his forehead. “We are here great one!” he called. “I can see no one,” he said to Trassan.

  “I do. Look!” said Trassan.

  A figure skulked by the blaze.

  The Unshe spoke in Heffi’s private tongue. This unsettled them both.

  “She has something for me,” Heffi said to Trassan. “How is it you speak the language of my people?” He spoke to the Unshe in Maceriyan, his cultural disinclination to speak the secret language with a non-Ishmalan too strong to overcome.

  “I speak the language of the spirit world. All tongues are snowflakes in the mouth once the master speech is learned,” she said. She moved around the fire in a crabbed crouch, affording Trassan a better look. On her scalp was piled a mess of filthy dreadlocks. Over that was draped the loose skin of some kind of bird, covered in close feathers of black and white. The Unshe had painted herself to match. Her arms and face were smeared with white ash, a black bar daubed across the eyes. A second garment of hide sagged from her chest, hiding small breasts. Her arms were sparely muscled, and filthy, h
er hands and face were feminine, but there was a masculinity to her too, a prominent larynx in her throat, and her scent was that of unwashed man.

  “I have heard of many master tongues,” said Heffi. He maintained his calm, but his speech became stilted and declamatory. “Some of the less flexible members of my own kind reckon our language the master speech. Wars are made and races overthrown for the sake of truths like that.”

  “There are many absolute truths, Heffira-nereaz-Hellishul vovo Balisatervo Chai Tse-ban, and all are absolutely true. They intersect, they oppose. They are all lies. They are all valid.”

  Trassan sweated heavily. He was faint with the heat and the charnel smell of the cave. He wished to take off his parka, but he would not leave himself blind in front of the Unshe for a moment. She spoke to Heffi, but her eyes, glistening white in her filthy face, were intent on him.

  “I believe in only two, the value of family, and the value of coin,” said Heffi.

  “What of your One?”

  “If god chose to speak to us, his message would be so complex as to be incomprehensible to the listener. The One is everywhere, but he only watches. In His garden are space for all truths to take root. They flourish, but are only adornments. We are never permitted to see within His house. That is where the ultimate truth is, and we shall never know it in this life.”

  “You are wise, Heffira-nereaz-Hellishul vovo Balisatervo Chai Tse-ban of the Ishmalani.” The Unshe tapped a finger against her nose.

  “I do what I can to stay alive and earn coin. The more the better,” said Heffi. “What is, is. A man who ties himself in knots about the meaning of life experiences hardly any life at all.”

  “Yes, yes,” said the Unshe. “There is one truth from the many.” She, he, it, crept around the fire toward them. Her movements were sinuous. The fire flared and glowed green. Trassan was spellbound by her staring eyes. They frightened him, but he feared what he might see in the fire more, so held her gaze.