Prisoner of Ice and Snow

by Ruth Lauren

  The air is diamond-hard, with a cold that makes my lungs hitch. I think about Sasha to stop myself from running back to my cell, and hurry into the shadows by the boys’ block. The wind has blown drifts of snow against the walls, and my boots sink deep into them. Cold surrounds my legs, but at least with the sheet pulled over my head and around everything but my eyes I blend into the background. If I’m caught now, I don’t know what Warden Kirov will do to me.

  I wade along, keeping to the shadows, hoping the wind will blow a covering of snow onto my tracks. High above on the wall, the Peacekeeper turns the far corner, heading toward the mines. I take a few breaths, trying in vain to quiet the thump of my heart, and then I run into the open, heading for the tower. The wolves call to each other out on the plains, but there’s another sound that sends my pulse racing higher: boots on the snow.

  Across the grounds, a Peacekeeper opens the gate in the wall, the same one that leads to the cage where Feliks and I stood the day we arrived. It’s the woman with the cruel-beaked eagle tattoos. She hasn’t seen me, but if I keep running, she will.

  I drop to the ground on my stomach, burrowing into the snow and pulling the sheet flat above me. Icy cold reaches up though my clothes into my body. The Peacekeeper strides diagonally across the grounds, heading for the ice hall. I shiver, my teeth chattering. I can hardly tell whether fear or cold is making me shake. As she reaches the closest point to me on her path, I hold my breath and scrunch my eyes shut.

  When I open them, she’s gone. I let the breath out and scan the grounds, waiting as long as I can as the cold seeps into my bones. Shuffling around, I check behind me. Nothing.

  I stagger up, pull my sheet around me, though it’s wet and weighted with snow now, and run for the tower. The keys are heavy in my hands, my fingers numb and clumsy with cold. I try to feed the key into the curved door, but the bunch falls into the snow. My bandaged fingers are frantic, scuffing snow out of the way. My breath races away from me as I try to tame it.

  I snatch the bunch of keys, jostling them together as I try to wrench the one I need away from the others. Finally I jam it into the lock, too far gripped by panic to think straight. I twist it and push the door, falling through in a tangle of wet sheet.

  I lie in the dark on the plush carpet for a second, then tear the sheet off my legs and shove the door closed again. I listen hard, but the only sounds are the muffled calls of the wolves. Inside, the tower is silent and dark, solid and windowless.

  I feel along the wall until I knock into a table and put my hands down on an oil lamp. After three failed attempts with my bandaged fingers, I have to unwrap my thumbs and two fingers on each hand. My skin is red and angry, and I try not to look as I light the lamp.

  The spiral stairs are on the far side of the room. I kick the sheet into a ball and shove it under the table, then hurry to the stairs, this time going down to the level below ground. The light from the lamp is so soft and localized that I almost run into the door before I see it. Solid wood braced with iron bands. I stare at it, panic pinching every muscle in my back tight, before I think to check my keys. One by one I feed them into the lock, trying to hold the lamp steady. When I get to the last one on the ring, I hold it tight in my hand as though I can squeeze it into the right shape just by wanting it enough. I take a breath and feed the blade in.

  It doesn’t fit.

  I sink back onto the step, watching the little flame glow yellow in my hand. If I let myself sit here, I will never get up. I’ll let the avalanche of hopeless feelings thunder down and crush me. And a Peacekeeper will catch me. So I force my legs to push me up. I’m going to look for a key. There’s an office upstairs, and I’m going to find the key for this door.

  I keep telling myself this over and over as I put one foot in front of the other up the stairs. I pause on the ground floor, listening, but Tyur’ma is silent. I check the blue-carpeted room quickly, then the room with the collection of chairs around the table, and then the room with the music stand—minus its violin today—but there’s nothing in any of the spots where a person would naturally keep a key.

  In the room at the top of the tower, I keep low, shielding my lamp from the window. I have no idea how long the Peacekeeper on the battlements will stay out there, and the only way back is through this room. I’ll have to be quick. Quick and quiet. He could return at any moment.

  I put the lamp on the floor by the desk and search its surface. Documents, ink, nothing remotely key-shaped. For an instant I have a rogue thought that I’ll find the actual music box itself, stolen and transported here. No one would think to look for it in a prison. My heart beats wildly at the idea of it.

  But the drawers only turn up more papers and a ledger. No music box. And no big clue that proves the prince stole it. I’m sliding a drawer shut when something stops me dead. A letter addressed to Warden Kirov with the royal seal on it. I hold it close to the lamp and see the muddle of black lettering inside through the parchment of the envelope. At the bottom, in a haughty-looking slanted hand, is a name: Prince Anatol.

  I bite my bottom lip hard. Outside on the battlements, there’s a sound. I stuff the letter inside my coat and search the last drawer in the desk with frenzied hands. There are no keys. I swing around, wildly searching the room. It has to be here somewhere.

  The hidden panel door opens, admitting a freezing wind. I throw myself under the desk, stomping my boot down on the oil lamp and drawing myself into the space as tightly as I can in a horrible, twisted form of the hide-and-seek game I used to play with Sasha. The thump of my blood in my body fills the space with me, and the smell of singed fur reaches my nose as the Peacekeeper steps inside. The panel slides shut. Footsteps cross the room. I pull my knees so hard against my chest that I can hardly breathe.

  The steps go down the staircase. I sit frozen, my eyes wide and tight in the dark. After what seems like forever, the door at the bottom of the tower opens and closes. My head drops onto my knees and I shake. But I don’t have time to waste being scared, so I pull myself out from under the desk. Light from the clear night sky throws a thin beam through the single narrow window and across the middle of the desk.

  Which, now that I stare at it, seems oddly deeper than the drawers suggest. I pull open the narrow drawer in the middle again. I was right—it’s far too shallow for the depth of the desk. I push my fingers inside, feeling around the underside.

  There’s nothing but smooth wood. My finger slips over a knot in the wood, and a false panel springs down to reveal a velvet-lined tray. I let out a breath in a rush. On the tray, there’s a gold clasp in the shape of a fist and a thick gold ring bearing the royal seal. And two copies of a black key with matching blades and the same bow at the head of each, shaped like a thin bread twist from the bakery in the town square.

  I almost jump into the air. Instead, I tuck my trailing bandages into my sleeves, pick up one of the keys, and put everything else back as it was. Taking the lamp with me, I hurry down the staircase. My eyes are trained on the door, watching for Peacekeepers as I relight the lamp and rush back to the lower-level door. It has to fit. This has to be the key.

  I slip the key in, pause for a moment, and turn it. The lock opens with a well-oiled click. I rest my damp forehead against the cold iron on the door, tired out from tension and sudden relief. No sounds come from behind the door, but I press my ear to it anyway. Nothing.

  I turn the handle and hold the lamp in front of me, not able to stop the little cry that comes out. Ahead of me, stretching off into the blackness, is a maze of tunnels, each one tall and wide enough for two men to walk through side by side. There are four openings, all of them arched overhead and tiled in ancient mosaics.

  Three of the tunnels are dark, a black and murky cold pressing out from them, cobwebs hanging across their mouths. The fourth one, directly in front of me, is clean and dimly lit with oil lamps that illuminate the once-bright tiles of the mosaics around them. It stretches away in a straight line as far as I can see. This is
how the prince arrives here and disappears without warning. He never comes by carriage, except for the time he came on the cart with Peacekeeper Rurik. Warden Kirov said the prince wanted to speak with him to learn about the prison—the same Peacekeeper who just happened to transport me from the palace to the prison.

  A damp, earthy smell fills the airless space, but there’s a hint of oil too. I close my eyes and call to mind the secret maps I saw in Father’s study. They confirm this tunnel leads to the city. But the warden won’t realize I know that.

  We’ll sweep all the cobwebs away tomorrow night when we escape, and even if Warden Kirov does by some chance check the tunnels, she won’t know for sure which one we’ve taken.

  I peer ahead cautiously—there’s a chance someone else could be here—and walk a little way down the lit tunnel. Tomorrow, we’ll run. And this is how it will feel to have Sasha’s hand in mine as we run away from cells and Peacekeepers and work in the mines. Away from Warden Kirov and Tyur’ma and Prince Anatol. I imagine how bright her eyes will get as we near the city. It will be dangerous getting to the docks, and maybe we’ll be hungry and maybe we’ll be cold, but we’ll be free.

  I stop walking. I have to wait until tomorrow for this. I have to get back to my cell now.

  I lock the door behind me, run up the tower staircase, and return the key to exactly the right position on its velvet-lined tray. Downstairs, I pull my sheet out from its hiding place, relieved that I hid it and that the Peacekeeper on wall duty didn’t see it in the dark, and place the oil lamp back on its little table, snuffing out the light. I brace myself to go through it all again, back across the grounds without being seen, my heart pounding out of my chest.

  Keys in hand, ready to lock the tower again, I take one last, hurried glance around. Everything is as I found it. I open the door a crack. The wind blows along the silent prison grounds, rippling the snow. My tracks have been covered while I was inside. A light dusting of fresh snow falls through the opening I’ve made. I tug the sheet around myself and step outside, closing the door quietly.

  “Hello, Valor,” says Warden Kirov.

  CHAPTER 16

  The shock of her voice hits me like a bucket of freezing water to the face. I stagger back and pull in an icy lungful of air so fast it constricts my throat. Warden Kirov stands with a Peacekeeper on either side of her and holds out her immaculate gray glove.

  I stare at it for a few seconds before she makes an impatient noise, and I realize she’s demanding the keys. I look at my hand, though it hardly feels like my own right now, and then I reach out and give her the bunch. She examines each key in turn. Then she narrows her eyes. “I think we’ll conduct this interview in the forge.” The Peacekeepers move to stand on either side of me, but my legs don’t want to work. They’re made of ice, and if I move, they’ll shatter like my heart.

  They half carry me to the forge. The building is empty, but torches burn along the walls. Coal fires smolder in pits. The Peacekeepers haul me to an anvil, and I wait, trying to stand up straight and not crumple and cry. Then they all face me. Behind them, great iron tools hang along the walls: pliers and hammers and black tongs, pokers and chains and rows and rows of iron cuffs, all dull and dark in the half light.

  “I’m going to ask you two questions, Valor. Just two,” says Warden Kirov. The side of her face is lit by a torch, casting one eye in orange and the other in shadow. “Where did you get these?” She holds up my keys. “And what were you doing in the tower?”

  It’s warm with the smell of hot metal in the forge, but her words are like black ice, cold and slippery, tricky with menace. A shiver slithers down my back.

  “I—I stole them from a Peacekeeper,” I say.

  Warden Kirov’s mouth flattens into a thin line. “None of my Peacekeepers are missing any keys. And none of my Peacekeepers’ keys are silver. That’s the last lie I’m going to accept from you, Valor.”

  I swallow. I can’t let her find out anyone else was involved. “I stole soap and made impressions of the Peacekeeper’s keys, then I put his keys back and made those keys right here in the forge.” I say it in a rush, feeling heat push up my neck and spread across my face.

  “You expect me to believe that you managed all that by yourself? Without any help?” Warden Kirov takes a step forward, and I back up into the anvil. She crosses the room, selects an iron poker from the wall, and walks slowly and deliberately over to the fire pit, letting the hooked tip of the poker trail across the floor. The fire burns low, and she thrusts the poker into it, stirring up the coals so they spit and glow orange.

  A bead of sweat runs down the small of my back.

  “Let’s try the other question for now, shall we? Tell me what you were doing in the tower.”

  My mind flips about like a fish out of water. I can’t tear my eyes off the warden as she slowly builds up the fire, raking the poker over the hot coals. I have to tell her something, but she can’t find out I know about the tunnels.

  “I was trying to kill the prince,” I blurt out. It’s the only confession I can think of, and I’m already in prison for that very thing. “I knew he was always in the tower. I saw him at the window, and he made the Peacekeepers take me there so he could question me. I thought he’d be there or that I—that I could hide and wait for him. He put my sister in here and now he hates me, and he won’t stop until I’m dead or he is.” My words trip over one another, spilling out of me in a rush.

  Warden Kirov pulls the poker from the fire and examines the tip of it, now glowing a dull orange. My hands throb with the memory of the hot water searing them. She looks across at me, and I push farther back,

  my feet scrabbling on the coal shards littering the floor. The letter I stole slips out of my coat and drops in front of me. Warden Kirov nods to one of the Peacekeepers, who picks it up and hands it to her. She reads the front, her name written in the slanting hand that she must know belongs to the prince, and frowns. Of course. It’s sealed. She hasn’t read it yet. But neither have I.

  She examines the seal but doesn’t open it, and I itch to run forward to read the lines written on that page. She sees the prince’s name through the paper like I did, and then abruptly shoves the poker back into the fire so hard it makes me jump.

  “Lock her in solitary,” she snaps. She strides to the door, then pauses. “No—chain her up in here. She won’t be going back to the cellblock.”

  I jolt forward, then falter.

  Warden Kirov notices. “Well, cells can’t hold you anymore, can they, Valor? So we’ll just have to think of something else.” Judging by her grim smile, she’s already thought of the “something else.” And I’m not going to like it.

  She sweeps out of the forge. I stare after her as the Peacekeepers fasten cold, heavy iron around my wrists and ankles and feed chains through the cuffs. I’m fastened by both sets of chains to the huge anvil in the middle of the room. When they leave, I sag to the floor, weighted down and so drained that I feel like I’ll never move again. The warden will report to the prince. He’ll find out I stole his letter.

  For a while I sit, pinned by the iron, watching as the torches grow dim. My eyes get heavy, and then I jolt awake. The warden didn’t believe I could have done this on my own. So what would she do when she left here? Who would she go to?

  “Get up.”

  I blink in the watery daylight, dragging my hands in to my body and then remembering, as the chains clank, what happened last night. I got caught. I lost the keys. I failed.

  Peacekeeper Rurik stands over me, holding the keys to my cuffs. My arms and legs are stiff with cold as I stand. He releases me from the chains and leads me out into the prison grounds. It’s snowing lightly. Lazy, delicate flakes drop gently from the sky. Inmates stand in rows outside the cellblocks, some of them shivering, all of them huffing misty breath that rises into the pale morning.

  I see Nicolai, but not Feliks. His mouth is pressed tightly together. I scan for Sasha and Katia, but there are too many other girls
. The warden stands in the middle of the grounds, her hands behind her back as though she’s about to deliver a speech. In between her and the rows of prisoners, out on the expanse of fresh snow, are two tiny versions of the ice hall. These, though, have domed roofs, as though a shimmering, translucent ball has been cut in half and placed on the ground.

  The one closest to me has an opening and a stack of huge ice blocks next to it in the snow. The Peacekeeper at my back pushes me forward. Warden Kirov moves aside, and then I see. I see what she’s going to do to me, because she’s already done it to someone else.

  Inside the other dome, a figure huddles on the ground. Thick ice distorts the image, but I see the big, dark eyes, and it breaks my heart. Sasha. She’s totally encased in ice.

  Warden Kirov addresses the gathered prisoners. “No doubt you’ve heard by now that your friend Valor stole keys and left her cell last night. I’ve assembled you here this morning to show you what happens to those who cannot obey rules. Those who think rules apply only to other people. Those”—she pauses and looks at Sasha, who is shuddering on the ground, her arms rigid around her knees—“who aid others who break the rules, or even those who look the other way.” She walks up and down the ranks of prisoners. “As you go about your work today, think about your own behavior. Think about the behavior of others, and how selfish acts can have disastrous consequences.” She holds her arm out to Sasha as she finishes the sentence.

  A tear freezes on my cheek. Warden Kirov is right. I deserve to be punished. I’ve put everyone I came in contact with in Tyur’ma in danger, and I’m no closer to saving my sister. All I’ve done is put her in more danger. She’s suffering now, and it’s my fault. I feel it like pain, physical and real in my chest.

  The only hope I can cling to is that Warden Kirov believed me when I said I was trying to kill the prince. That she’s punishing me for that and for escaping the cellblock. That she doesn’t know I found the tunnels.