The City of Ice

by K. M. McKinley

  “We see good things”

  “She is untrustworthy,” said another.

  “Our lord is upset. He sees amiss. His anger is not the whore’s fault.”

  “Taste her soul.”

  “I have. She does not lie,” said the third. “She has done nothing wrong, not yet.”

  “Not about this. There are other lies inside her.”

  “Master says is she a good choice. This other lie he did not ask of. If he knows, if he doesn’t, if he cares, is not our business!”

  The others laughed chillingly.

  “She has not seen inside his temple, it has not been profaned by mortal presence.”

  “She has obeyed his rules.”

  “Will she fulfil him?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Ecstasy then,” said the first voice.

  The hands all pressed into her at once, and became insistent. Where they touched, the pain ceased to be painful, but became an unbearable pleasure. Alarmed, disgusted, she moaned in spite of herself. They lifted her, taking her weight. The chains clinked. The strap across her sex fell away. Strange limbs stroked and moved within her, opening her body with multi-jointed fingers. She gasped, deep in her throat, until that was invaded also, appalled at the warmth spreading up through the base of her stomach. The mask writhed with a delight of its own. Madelyne wanted to scream, to throw them off and flee, but she was held fast by the fetters and the hands of the duke’s servants; her body was melting into a cocktail of extreme sensation, and her mind blurred into nothingness.

  Again and again, they brought her to climax, more times than she could have thought possible. In the end a species of numb ecstasy overcame her, and she fell into the embrace of the hands listlessly, without demure.

  When they had done, they took her down, unclipping the manacles and bearing her across the room so that she felt as if she floated. Only a little awareness was left to her. She had no idea that such a state could be induced through physical contact. She was glad that it was over.

  The mask remained on. A collar was placed around her throat, a chain attached to it and she was laid upon the floor. A fur was draped over her, its soft hairs a hundred thousand petty blisses on her wounds.

  Madelyne fell into a sleep the like of which she had never known.

  When she woke the next morning, the mask had come off. She picked it up fearfully, sick at what she might see. No maiden’s face or human skin greeted her, but a simple hood of kid leather, laced up the back, with open holes for eyes, mouth and nostrils. She felt a strange disorientation, before realising she had been moved into the Room of Dawning. As usual, Markos came in with clothes and unchained her. He tended to her whip cuts. They stung as he rubbed a salve into them, awakening her sex against her will, and she shifted uncomfortably, confused at this new reaction to pain. Markos kept his eyes from her nakedness as he worked, and left without a word, leaving the door unlocked.

  Madelyne sat there in a pool of fur, sunlight warming her listless body. She felt exhausted, exhilarated, ashamed, violated.

  She had never felt such an intensity of physical excitation. The duke had not lied to her, she had done nothing wrong and so she was spared. The punishment was nothing compared to the reward. She had lived her entire life to rules less severe than that.

  There were plaster faces in the frieze among the roses today, innocuous and still. They smiled smugly down on her.

  She shivered. What in all the hells was happening to her?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Ilona Discovered

  A SHIP AT night is a kingdom of small sounds. Iron creaked and pinged with differences in temperature. Men’s laughter from the common room swelled as the door was opened, cut off again when it clanged shut. The engines, powered down but never deactivated, sent their sighs out through the ribs of the double hull. A hammer banged three times, then stopped. A moment of silence in which Ilona imagined the wielder critically examining his work. Three more bangs came, then three more.

  Ilona crept along the main corridor. Doors opened on each side. She hurried past a cabin door as it cracked open. Inside someone snored. She glanced in. Four bunks, two empty. An Ishmalan sprawled on the top of the occupied pair. Another settled himself back into a lower bunk to read by glimmerlight. He glanced up at Ilona’s shadow dancing silently past. She ducked into an alcove holding firefighting equipment and held her breath. The man came to the door, looked down the corridor, shook his head and went back in. Her heart pounded. Quickly, she ran down toward the galley. She had removed her shoes to move quietly, and her feet were cold on the iron of the decks. How she had come to loathe the smell of iron, like the smell of cold blood. Her hair and hands were dirty with grease and black oxides. She supposed she must look a fright, and smell twice as bad. She had little energy to care about something so superficial as her appearance; she was hungry. She had to eat.

  She gained the door of the galley without being seen only to find it tightly shut. A press of her ear against the door revealed little. Noises were conveyed from all over the ship by the metal. She hesitated over the lever that kept the door shut. Her thoughts returned to the large stocks of food in the holds, but she had no way to get into the barrels and crates there without betraying her presence. No one would notice a little pilfering from the galley. There was no choice.

  The lever slid back and up easily, the motion sliding two horizontal bars out of their slots. A pull brought the door out smoothly, rubber seal smacking like lips. She stepped over the high lintel and into the galley.

  She shivered at the sudden warmth, unbearably hot after the unheated aft hold. The galley was close to the engine room. A bank of pipes delivered heat to the room’s ovens. Three long steel tables bolted to the floor took up most of the space. Pots and pans occupied racks, their handles hung on tall hooks, bellies held against the wall by tight netting. Two huge ranges filled one wall. A pair of doors to the left of Ilona, toward the stern, opened into a dry store and a cold room. She was in little mood for dry rice. She hankered for meat, for cheese, for something substantial. Tyn Rulsy seemed to think she should subsist entirely upon soup.

  After so brief a moment of warmth, it made her miserable to step into the cold room. Trassan had adapted some other man’s invention to refrigerate his stores. Rows of pipes covered in frost filled the ceiling. A liquid growling came from the walls. The air was sharp, the floor cold. She hopped from foot to foot to stop her toes burning.

  A wide smile bloomed on her face. A barrel of salt meat was open in the room. A wheel of cheese sat on a table by it, its wax peeled invitingly back and a large slice removed, revealing creamy flesh within. A knife had even been provided for her!

  She moaned with relief and fell upon the food, plunging her hand into the brine of the barrel and pulled out a large piece of meat. She bit into it and spat. The meat was wet cured, not cooked. Never mind, the cheese remained.

  It had been her plan to steal food and make a swift getaway. All thoughts of retreat fled as she cut into the cheese. She nibbled a piece, then another, then cut a large wedge and stuffed it into her mouth. Her careful cuts became an undisciplined sawing and she gobbled it down in ragged slabs.

  Whistling came from behind. The door opened. Ilona looked up, eyes wide with fear, her mouth crammed with cheese. A cook’s boy stared at her as if he’d found a cockatrice in his lunchbox.

  “Who the hells are you?” he managed.

  Both their eyes strayed to the knife in her hand.

  “I don’t want no trouble!” he said, as panicked as her.

  Ilona leapt and barged past him. She collided with a net of pans and sent them clattering. She recovered before the cook’s boy mastered his surprise, was out the door and sprinting down the ship’s corridor.

  The boy emerged.

  “Stop! Stop!” shouted the boy. “Stowaway! Stowaway! Stop!”

  Doors opened. An Ishmalan put out his head only to draw it back in shock as a wild, filthy woman hurtled to
ward him, a knife in one hand and a large piece of cheese in the other. Others spilled out into the gangway. Many shouts joined the boys. A bell rang furiously.

  She skidded around the corner that would take her into the stairwell. A blond man with a drooping moustache stepped into her path. He wore the light leather armour and uniform of a Karsan marine. As a girl she had constructed daydreams around such men, now he was a great danger to her. She sprang forward in a desperate knife thrust. The marine stepped out of the way of the blow with a surprised look on his face, and she slammed into the stairwell wall. He caught her knife hand with both of his, one on the wrist, the other wrapping round her fingers. He bent her hand back toward the top of her forearm, her fingers opened without her volition, and the knife dropped. With her wrist locked, he pushed up and back, upsetting her balance, and tipping her into his arms.

  “Release me!” she screamed, kicking at her captor with her legs. He grappled with her. He was so much stronger, and forced his arm down onto her thighs.

  “Get off!”

  “Calm down!” he said. “I’m just trying to hold you still!”

  Her captor relaxed his grip. She took the opportunity to tear a hand free and elbow him hard in the mouth. His teeth bit into her skin, hurting them both.

  “Lost fucking gods, ow!” he yelled. He spat blood. She ducked out of his arms, but he grabbed her and pulled her back. There was no escape anyway. Below, above and back into the gangway there were men. They were variously frowning, laughing, goggling disbelief, nudging each other suggestively.

  The man grabbed both her arms hard. “I’m not going to hurt you! What the hells do you take me for, woman?” He was offended, and pulled her roughly toward him. “I want you to stop kicking me! Hey, hey! Stop. You are going to hurt yourself, girlie.”

  “Never address me in that way again.”

  “Oh oh, now you play the goodlady. Driven gods!” He spotted a Maritime Regiment uniform in the crowd. “Forfeth, get me some bindings, she punches like a docker.”

  The gaggle of men laughed and whooped. Their smell was harsh in her nostrils.

  “You best come with me,” he said into her ear. His moustache tickled her and she cringed from it. “I’m an honourable man. Not all of them are.”

  “Take me to Trassan!” she said.

  “Oh I will alright,” said the man.

  “I am his cousin!” she shouted.

  The man’s grip relaxed. “Ilona?”

  “You know me?”

  “I know your cousin Guis very well. We have met before, a long time ago.” He looked her up and down. “You’ve grown.”

  She bared her teeth at him. “I’ll tear your throat out if you lay a finger on me!”

  “Hey there! I meant nothing by it. I am Bannord. Harimus Bannord Thriven of Donnelsey.”

  Ilona’s face creased. “Harimus?”

  “You can see why I go by Bannord.”

  Forfeth pushed his way through the men, a rope in his hand. “Here you are lieutenant.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” said Bannord. “Alright you men! Fun’s over, back to your business.”

  The crowd dispersed slowly. Bannord shook his head at a couple of ill-favoured Ishmalani. They touched their top knots and went away.

  “I remember you,” she said. “You used to pull my hair.”

  Bannord manoeuvred her towards the stairs. “Did I? Sounds like the kind of thing I’d do. Sorry. You just bust my lip, so now we are even. Come on.” He motioned for his man to open the door. Cold air blasted in.

  “I can’t go outside!” she said.

  He looked at her feet. “For the love... Don’t you have any shoes?”

  SPREAD OVER THE table of the stateroom was a large map of the lower kingdoms, the Suveren sea, the Sorkosan peninsula and the Sotherwinter beyond its curling southernmost tip. A brass model of thePrince Alfra marked their current position, far from any land. Most of the features past Karsa’s Final Isle had been recently pencilled in.

  Trassan leaned on the table with both elbows, fingers tracing over a heavily annotated blueprint. Five others listened as he described the recent modifications.

  “I’ve run heating pipes out of the ship, up the exterior of the funnel, and about the whistle. The heat will prevent the ice forming around the release pipes. I have endeavoured to take from the centre of the ship, away from the parts of the ship we use the most, but it will be colder.”

  Drentz the boatswain tapped the plans. “Without the heating pipes,” he said. “it will be unbearable in the forward quarters.”

  “Unfortunate,” said Heffi. “But they will just have to deal with it. Without heating, the release pipes will ice up and then we’re going nowhere.”

  “The modifications are finished?” asked Antoninan.

  “Yes, goodfellow,” said Tyn Gelven, the head of the expedition’s small band of Tyn. “They are completed. My iron whisperers are satisfied that the alterations are sound. We may depart when we wish.”

  “Tomorrow,” said Trassan. “It must be tomorrow. We have wasted enough time here.”

  “That is good,” said Antoninan. “We are outstaying our welcome. It has been made known to me that the Tatama are uneasy about Vols’ presence here for so long.”

  The mage blinked uncomfortably.

  “I do not know what to say,” he said.

  “Your ancestor’s fault, not yours,” said Trassan. “But the gods here are angry with you.”

  “Bannord would say you are a liability,” said Volozeranetz.

  Trassan made a noise in his throat. “Bannord isn’t here. Antoninan, let them know we’re going at first light. Now, as to where. After our conference with their magician, we were given some valuable insight. Heffi.”

  Trassan rolled up the blueprint and Heffi came forward. He ran his finger along the coastline of the continent of the Sotherwinter. Large parts of it were blank. Other sections were dotted, the high and low watermarks both covered in question marks. Where it was solid, someone had scrawled ‘Ice or land?’ next to the coast.

  “Here,” he said. “There is an entrance to the interior.”

  “How did you come by this knowledge?” asked Antoninan. “No one has stepped upon the continent and returned.”

  “Their Unshe is a breed of Guider. Through her, we learned that that is not the case,” said Heffi. “Rassanaminul Haik’s expedition made it to through the ice. They have been to the city.”

  Consternation and surprise murmured round the room.

  “The stories of Verenetz?” asked Volozeranetz.

  “Fabricated, in part. For what reason was not revealed to us,” said Heffi.

  “Servants of the One do not lie!” said Drentz.

  “This information comes from a servant of the One,” said Heffi. “They cannot both be correct.”

  “You deal in necromancy, against the teachings of the One,” said Tolpoleznaen.

  “Well, as I understand it,” ventured Vols, “your religion does not expressly forbid the—”

  Tolpoleznaen glared at him. Ardovani rested a hand on his shoulder. Vols shut his mouth.

  “Listen to me, Tol. This way is the only way. Our planned route,” Heffi’s fingers moved along the paper to another isolated section of solid black coast, “takes us two hundred miles overland. This way is much shorter.”

  “Aye, a short route to death!” said Tolpoleznaen.

  “This is madness,” said Antoninan. “Your steersman has it right. The Sea Drays Bay is the only reliable landing point. We should head there as planned.”

  “But the survey, goodfellow!” said Heffi in exasperation.

  “We will not know for sure until we sail there to see for ourselves. The ice may have shifted,” said Antoninan.

  “Goodmen, please!” said Trassan, sensing a full-blown argument. “It is not unusual to be informed by the spirits. As expedition leader I—”

  The door swung open. Bannord came in.

  “What happened
to your face?” asked Trassan.

  “This did,” said Bannord. He beckoned and Forfeth pulled Ilona into the room.

  “Ilona?” Trassan pushed round the crowded table to her, and took her gently by the shoulders.

  Her face went from abashed to outraged in a second. “Don’t you Ilona me!” she shouted, and kneed Trassan very hard in the balls.

  Trassan collapsed with a pained sigh.

  “For the driven gods’ sake, goodlady!” exclaimed Bannord. “I thought you were calm!”

  “You bastard! You complete bastard!” Ilona screamed at Trassan. “We had an agreement! You were going to take me with you! You left me behind with my crazy witch mother! She was going to marry me off! Marry me off! You gods damned selfish wanker!” She kicked him in the ribs. Trassan moaned.

  “Hey, hey,” said Bannord softly. He pulled her away from her cousin. Ilona’s face wavered and she cried, more from fury than from sorrow.

  “I’ve been locked in the hold for two months! Do you know what that was like?”

  “To survive so long without detection is impressive,” said Heffi. He touched his forehead. “The One watches over you.” The other Ishmalani mirrored his gesture.

  Trassan’s hand slapped on the table. He heaved himself to his feet with a groan. “Stop smirking Bannord, this is a small disagreement between me and my dear—”

  Ilona went for him again. Bannord yanked her back in the nick of time. Trassan flinched as her foot grazed the hand protecting his face.

  “Please stop doing that,” he said.

  “I told you I’d kick you in the balls. And I have!”

  “Indeed you have,” said Heffi. “Well then. It seems we have a new crewmember. Tell me, do you have any skills you might offer our venture?”

  Ilona frowned. “Skills? I—”

  “Every man, and woman now I suppose, must pull their weight aboard a ship,” said Heffi. “And I, as captain, must assign you a job. What can you do goodlady, other than booting your cousin very hard in his privates?” Heffi’s men laughed.