The City of Ice

by K. M. McKinley

  With a triumphant wailing of its whistles, the ship left the canyon. The dock pool opened out a mile wide. To one side a stream of water flowed upwards through a channel alive with glimmer light. Tolpoleznaen headed for it, the iron ship shattering the thin covering of ice as it sailed forward.

  After a brief consultation with Heffi, they decided to chance the unusual lock, and the ship sailed to the foot of the water. The prow nosed onto the flow, there was a lurch forward, a grumble of settling steel, and they were sailing uphill. A look of purest pleasure spread across Trassan’s face.

  “A road of water, without locks. It is a fully functioning Morfaan device. It is unlike anything I have ever seen before. It is beautiful!”

  “It is, goodfellow,” said Ardovani. “It is.”

  Frozen canals led off at the four level of the docks, running around the back of the quays so that at various tides they could be accessed from both front and back. Leading off the canals open rectangles marked berths for vessels. Trassan imagined finding an example of a Morfaan craft left behind, waiting for a new master. He saw himself returning not in a ship of iron, but in one wrought of the Morfaan’s imperishable metal. To his disappointment all the berths were empty, their waters frozen white.

  They reached the last level of the docks. At the top a second round pool opened out, square docks extending radially from it, each of these bigger than the ones below and closed off by a lockgate.

  The city of ice was before them, half a mile back from the dockside.

  Giant pentagonal beams canted at uniform angles formed an immense latticework. One, single edifice, no individual buildings, but a palace at the base of the world to dwarf that of the richest emperor. Diamond white, this was not the building glass or metal the Morfaan were known for, but ice, clear as water. Murmurs went around the crew, then shouts, then cheers. The entire complement came out on deck to look in awe upon their destination. Men slapped each other on the back. Trassan caught sight of his cousin hugging Bannord.

  “We’ve made it,” said Trassan. “We’ve actually arrived.”

  “Does it live up to your expectations?” asked Heffi.

  “I cannot describe how I feel,” said Trassan. “Put us in.”

  “Tolpoleznaen, make for that berth there. Slowly. A shame the gate is shut. We will have to tie up alongside.”

  But as they approached, there was a cracking of ice, and the door slid down to allow them access. The Prince Alfra’s prow broke the ice on the surface of the dock, sailing in as if it were returning home. Heffi had the whistles sounded one last time, then gave the order to stop. The Prince Alfra’s wheels stilled. The engines quietened. The steam rising from its funnels reduced to a trickle.

  Tolpoleznaen blinked, looked about in confusion, down at the dead man covered in a blanket by the wall, and slumped against the wheel. Heffi grasped his shoulder gently.

  Trassan took in the vista of the city again, and his eyes were drawn to another berth occupied by a wild shape of spun ice. At first he took it for a natural formation, but within was a shadow. Trassan squinted at it, until the riddle unlocked and spars, masts, and hull leapt at him from a confusion of icicles. He took out his glass, ran it over the shape, then snapped it shut.

  “We’re not the first to come here,” Trassan said. The cheers died down. Heffi came to his side. Everyone looked to where he was pointing. “In that ice, there is a ship.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  An Adventurer’s Fate

  TRASSAN, FLANKED BY Bannord and three of his marines, approached the entombed ship. Vengrise, one of Ullfider’s two assistants, came with them. As did Ilona. Trassan fumed about her inclusion, but Bannord had argued her case.

  “She’ll probably be safer with us than at the ship,” he had said.

  Looking at the second ship in its casing of ice, Trassan doubted that, but Bannord was insistent. He had even given the girl a gun. Trassan walked to the ship, shoulders tense with wrath. He blamed himself. His idea to have Bannord teach her had backfired. He had hoped she would find the repetitious nature of swordplay drill tiresome compared to the fantasy of her novels. The opposite seemed to be the case. Trassan felt a fool. The satisfaction in being able to say “I told you so” to a close relation is rarely matched and he would not get to say it.

  She is happy, he reasoned, and being useful. The crew like her. Stop being such a selfish, curmudgeonly arse. If Katriona heard me say half of what I am thinking, she would stab me to death with sharp words. It’d take a while, but she’s persistent.

  Ilona might die, he argued back against himself. She will die. What will I do then?

  Presentiment of death filled his heart with ice and boots with lead. She was there, there was nothing he could do about that. She was armed and more or less capable. Not the ideal situation, but there was no way she would let him lock her in her cabin until he had delivered her safely home.

  Maybe if I knock her out...?

  He dismissed the idea. A curse of silence on Kressind women, he thought. I have friends with sisters and cousins who actually know their place.

  The day was overcast but sharp, with a clarity that made a lie of perspective and carried sound for miles. Every shout made Trassan wince as if it would bring an army down on their heads. Around the Prince Alfra’s dock there was a lot of noise. The steam crane peeped and huffed. Men called out directions to one another as they lowered pallets of supplies onto the quayside. Antoninan’s dogs barked excitedly where he exercised them away from the ship, kicking up clouds of snow as they chased each other. Amid all the bustle of unloading, there was laughter and loud conversation. All of them—man, Tyn and dog—were giddy with being ashore again, but away from the Prince Alfra, with the silent City of Ice looming over them watchfully, Trassan was nervous, and wished they would all be quiet.

  The snow was dry, and the flawless surfaces of the Morfaan offered little purchase for drifts. At the dock the dark gloss of building glass shone through the snow where the wind had cleared it away. It was very cold, but still, dry and crisp. The party barely felt the low temperatures.

  The crunch of their boots on snow stopped. The silence redoubled.

  The ship was locked solidly into its berth. Ice encased it completely to the depth of several feet, so that the actual shape of the vessel was elusive to the eye. Strip the ice away, and it was much smaller than the Prince Alfra, half the size abeam, a little over half as long. Much lower to the waterline, and with an insignificant displacement by comparison.

  “Most interesting,” said Vengrise.

  “What is?” said Bannord. Trassan could tell he felt the same way about the city. He had his gun ready to fire, and looked often towards the dark cave of the entrance.

  “The ice, goodfellow, do you see? It is sideways. Have you ever seen icicles like that? They are horizontal.”

  “It is quite obvious when one looks at it in that way,” said Trassan.

  “Hmm,” said Bannord. He picked up his pace so that he walked ahead of the others, examining the vessel. “Definitely Ocerzerkiyan. No one south of the High Spine makes ships of wood like this, and I should know, I’ve boarded enough of them. This is a small one, not a ship of war. Fast though.”

  Trassan braved the intense cold radiating from the ship to squint into the ice. A thirty degree tilt to port obscured a view of anything but the hull, but he made out a gunwale topped by a balustrade with finely carved spindles. A line must be rigging, and a round shape a barrel. There were all manner of objects in there, but all were off the deck, frozen mid-explosion.

  “Trassan! Come and look at this!” Ilona called from the prow.

  “Stay together!” muttered Trassan to himself. He took up a lumbering jog to reach her side. Seeing her like that, with the ominous columns of the city dome behind her, rekindled his fears for her safety.

  “You shouldn’t wander away like that. What if there are beasts here, or...” he trailed away.

  “Or what?” said Ilona. “The
re’s nothing here. It’s deserted.”

  “I’ll feel happier accepting that when I know what happened to this ship,” said Trassan.

  “There’s a piece of the puzzle right in front of you, cousin,” she said. Being under Bannord’s tutelage had done her good. Some of the light had come back into her eyes, and though she attempted to repress her spirits round Trassan in case she provoked him, she was finding it harder not to talk back; the part of Trassan not fretting about the safety of his expedition was relieved, and decided the sword swinging from a hangar at her left suited her. He imposed a scowl on himself to scare off his positive feelings.

  Ilona looked away from him to avoid giving away her amusement—Trassan always wore his feelings on his face. She pointed up at the prow. The wood had only a thin sheath of ice, the bowsprit erupting through it to stand proud, though on the lee side the prow had its odd jacket of horizontal icicles like the rest.

  “Yes?” he said. “A ship’s name.”

  “You said you had read Rassananimul Haik,” said Ilona. “We talked about it at my house. When we made our deal, remember?” she said, unnecessarily smugly as far as he was concerned.

  “I have, but not in Oczerk. Who speaks Oczerk?”

  “Well cousin, I do. As a matter of fact. What?” She pouted at the look Trassan gave her. “There isn’t much for we goodmaids to do, you know. I had tuition. That is Oczerk. It says—Hakkainma Kre, or The Shining Dawn,” she said excitedly.

  “She’s right,” said Bannord. “I read the letters, I speak about fifty lines worth of Oczerkiyan, mostly variations on ‘Surrender or die’, but I can make out a name. I know this one.”

  “This is the last ship of Haik himself,” she said.

  Bannord shifted his gun. “Didn’t he vanish, what, forty years ago?”

  “Twenty-seven,” said Ilona.

  “Then how did he end up here?”

  “His book, which I have read in the Maceriyan translation,” said Trassan pointedly, “was an account of his expedition to the polar south three decades back.”

  “Yes, I read it too. I think we all did,” said Bannord.

  “Well,” said Trassan loudly. “He departed again three years later with much winking and implication to his countrymen about a great mystery he had discovered—he was such a braggart he could never keep a secret. And he never returned. One man survived, the Ishmalani cargomaster Verenetz. He always maintained the expedition never made landfall, although he spoke of a marvellous city he saw made of ice. The shaman of the Tatama Awa-Ata had... a different account.”

  “Hers might be the truer account,” said Bannord. “Verenetz said they saw the city from the ocean. You cannot see the city from the sea.”

  “Verenetz was never really believed,” said Trassan. “Until Vand uncovered the Morfaan map at the Three Sisters. Vand had the money and the influence to get a sending performed. Nine attempts it took, and a fortune in silver, but he was successful and I was commissioned to build the Prince Alfra.”

  “So Verenetz was lying then, only not in the way everyone thought.”

  “He wasn’t telling the whole truth,” said Trassan. “That’s for sure.”

  “Then what happened to Haik?” said Ilona. “Do you think he might be in there, entombed in the ice?”

  “Let’s take a look around the far side. Slowly, and carefully.” Trassan lifted his arm and waved back at the lookout’s post on the Prince Alfra to indicate they were going out of sight. The flicker of a red flag responded. “Come on.”

  He led the way around the prow. Ice reared over the ship in a wave studded with a thousand spikes. Thick cylindrical sections of icicle lay broken all over the dockside under a scrim of snow. Debris and objects cluttered the interior with dark shapes. The listing of the boat brought the gunwale right down to water level, and made a ramp of the deck. Snow blanketed much of the ice on that side, but in the few clear spots many more objects were visible trapped in the ice.

  “Hang on,” said Bannord. He held up his hand and pointed to something sticking out of the ice by the aft mast. “Drannan, Forfeth. Check that out will you.”

  “Is that a corpse?”

  “I reckon so. The crew has to be somewhere, don’t they? Kolskwin, keep watch here will you?”

  “Sir.”

  Forfeth looked back. “It’s a body sir.”

  “There we are,” said Bannord. He shouldered his gun and he, Ilona and Trassan, went to look.

  A man’s upper torso, shoulders and head protruded from the ice, one arm was frozen in the mass, the other was held across the remains of his face to shield it. His flesh and skin had shrunk, freeze dried, and become hard as cured leather. This, more than his resting place’s frigidity, kept him in the position of his death. His clothes were faded by harsh polar sunlight and tattered by winter storms, but below the level of the ice, man and clothing were eerily intact. Bannord leaned closer and lifted up a long braid, checking the beads at the end.

  “Ocerzerkiyan alright, one of their warrior-sailors, a bit like our marines, but not proper soldiers. They usually run.” He looked closer. “There’s at least one more in there.”

  “There are more up there sir, look,” said Drannan.

  Trassan looked to where he pointed. Bannord scrambled up the ice, it was so ridged with icicles that he climbed it easily enough. He moved over the tilted deck, brushing snow away, ordered Drannan to help him, and together they cleared a wide section of snow.

  Ice tinkled down the slope to the dock. Ilona covered her mouth and stepped back.

  Within the ice were dozens of bodies, all frozen during the act of falling. Weapons flew from still hands, never to land. Fingers shielded faces, some had turned and run. All had been hit by a tremendous force and then captured by it, imprisoned for three changeless decades.

  “Now this, I do not like,” said Bannord.

  “Nor me,” said Trassan. “Any idea what might have happened to them?”

  “If you’re asking if I know, then I don’t. If you’re asking for a guess, well,” Bannord looked at the city, “I do not think this place is as deserted as it looks.”

  A DAY LATER Ilona paced the deck along the railing of the ship. Snug in her arctic gear, her exposed face was thrillingly cold. The long day was coming to an end, its last light dying in the sheets of ice hanging from the Prince Alfra in glorious display. Two weeks from midsummer, a single brief hour of night awaited. On the ice were numerous tents established by the expedition in anticipation of housing finds from the city, glimmer lamps on hooked poles marked out paths through the camp and its perimeter. Just beyond the lights, the great sleds of the drays were set up ready for morning. The dogs lounged on the snow, grateful to be out of the hold, restrained by pegged leashes that could not possibly hold them, Ilona thought. The ropes were an odd formality, it seemed to her, a mark of the agreement between master and hound, not intended nor suited for genuine restraint.

  The mood of all was up, and that had taken genuine restraint on the parts of Trassan, Antoninan and Captain Heffi to defer the first foray into the city. After their inspection of Haik’s vessel they had drawn into council, from which she was excluded, and had been there for hours. For now the rest of the crew celebrated, the ship alive like at no other time on the ocean. Ilona found the stillness of the land unsettling. The ground seemed to swell and rock in a way that made her feel sick. It was a trick of the mind after so long at sea, the Ishmalani said, but in a place like that it was difficult to put aside thoughts of bewitchment.

  A door in the superstructure opened. Bannord came out, and made straight for the ladder hanging off the side of the ship, unaware of her watching him. He had his men out to patrol around the ship, a hundred yards between them, always in sight of each other. He visited them all one after another, his gun over one arm. The snow was bluing in the light, making of him an unreal shape starkly highlighted in orange by the sunset, like a puppet in a theatre. Such a strange man, very masculine in that aggravating m
anner so many of them had, dismissive toward her weaknesses—as he saw them—patronising, but at the same he had encouraged her. At first, when he began to teach her the sword, she had thought he was holding back. He assured her when she asked that he had not, and as far as she could tell he had applied himself to her education diligently. And then he’d make some awful, crude joke, or slap her behind or call her weak or do something else that made her blood boil.

  She coloured at the length of time she watched him for and became cross at herself for mooning at him like a girl just into her womanhood, and pointedly looked away, back to the ship. The deck was quiet but for a couple of sailors covering over the forward steam crane with a tarpaulin. Comforting yellow light spilled from the windows of the wheelhouse and the doors when they opened and closed. There was hint of festivity to everything, as if they had reached the Yule Feast of First Iapetan half a year early. The weather was fit for it, though that date was far away. Midsummer Night was so much closer. With the cold and the snow it did not feel like it. Winter here must be a terrible thing indeed, she thought.

  She continued on her thoughtful stroll and came across Magister Ardovani at the stern of the ship. His strange rifle was propped up against the rails and he was engaged with setting up a long astronomer’s glass upon a tripod. The brass of the tubes was already spidered with frost that grew with each breath that caressed it.

  “Good evening, Goodlady Kressinda-Hamafara,” said Ardovani. He spared her a brief, genuine smile, and a polite bow, then carried on setting up his equipment. Ilona thought him good company, kind and enthusiastic in all he did, unstinting of his praise of the merits of others. He was handsome in that Cullosantan way, small but well proportioned, with long, agile fingers, and finely groomed. He had kept his beard short despite the cold. His warm, caramel skin looked so out of place in the frigid wastes. She looked into his eyes and saw dusty roads and dark green cypress neat as topiary rather than reflected snow.