Vinsen moved away from the hollow quickly, not trusting his weight near the weakened edge, and soon everyone else was clear. The sunlight off snow was dazzling, but thanks to Dray, they all had strips of supple leather that wrapped around their heads with slits cut for the eyes. That reduced a lot of the glare. He wondered if Bleakhaveners’ blazes served any similar function, or whether those were a way for Bleakhaveners to recognize each other.
Never mind that. The most important thing was to find the heart of the iceberg. Sheill was back on her leash, black-spotted muzzle turning this way and that, but she didn’t seem to catch any particular scent. Vinsen looked around.
The valley into which they’d emerged seemed much the same as the one that had swallowed them up. Snow lay piled in great drifts that the wind couldn’t touch, and the blue-white peaks thrust up to the sky like teeth on all sides. He’d have to send scouts out in different directions, to climb those, and they didn’t have either time or strength to spare.
Only one thing to be done, so he turned to Maggie. “You’ll have to find the way.”
The fur-trimmed hood, blinders and smears of charcoal on her cheeks didn’t show much of her expression, but she took her gloves off and pressed her fingers to her throat to warm them before she extracted her flute from its battered case. The polished wood gleamed in the early-morning sunlight, smooth as honey, and Vinsen didn’t need to see her face to know how much she cared for the instrument. She touched it gently too, as she lifted it to her mouth and her fingers moved over the pegs in a graceful dance.
What she played was simple, as predictable as taking a staircase step by step and following the same well-worn pattern down. The men waited expectantly, and one of them ventured that nothing had happened.
Maggie took the mouthpiece from her lips long enough to say, “I’m limbering up. Scales and arpeggios first.” Vinsen had no idea what either of those were, and he hoped her fingers wouldn’t stiffen and freeze before she could play.
Then she put the flute back to her mouth and music spilled from it. Rather than being sweet and long-drawn-out, the sounds chased each other. Her fingers flew. The tones vibrated to fill the hollowness of the flute with echoes, shimmering out through the valley, and the pace grew faster, rising to a peak without pause, as though she didn’t need to breathe. She poured all of herself into the swiftness of the song.
A ripple ran through the air like water with a stone tossed in. Maggie broke off, gasping, and the men drew back. Blood spattered across the snow in a straight line, as if a great unseen sword had whirled across the valley after beheading some opponent.
Don’t be absurd, Vinsen thought angrily, to stop the sudden pounding of his heart. He put a hand on Maggie’s shoulder to turn her towards him and looked into what he could see of her face. No, the blood hadn’t come from her. She was panting, each exhale making mist in the air, but she managed to say, “I’m all right.”
“Guess that’s pointing the way, sir,” Jak said, and one of the other men bent to cautiously prod the nearest of the red spots on the snow. Maggie touched the pegs of her flute gently, as if assuring herself that the instrument was the same.
“Put your gloves on,” he said. “Your fingers’ll freeze.”
In answer she lifted her hand and touched the side of his face. It was a quick gesture as though brushing away a snowflake, nothing that would have embarrassed him before the men, but it was enough to show him the warmth of her hands. Was that the Faith too? It would explain how Bleakhaveners lived among the ice like bears.
His men didn’t have the same advantage, so he got them moving, and the effort of pushing a path through the snow soon made everyone warm. Though it exhausted them, and Vinsen would have considered asking Maggie to carve a way if not for the stains on the snow, the red speckles like a Bleakhavener’s blaze. The Faith wasn’t a safe thing to use, and the less they had to do with it, the better. Besides, he wanted to save her for truly desperate situations.
Finally they reached the sheer ice of the peak where the line of blood ended. Jak went up first, hammering spikes into the glasslike sides for ropes, and slowly the rest of them followed. That time there were no falls, though the ice began to melt as they struggled up, making the ascent more viciously dangerous. Jak had gained a ledge, though, and from the way he pressed close to the cliffside, making himself as small as possible, there was something more than another valley ahead of it.
Finally on a flat surface, Vinsen went to him and Jak flattened himself further against the ice. “Ever seen anything like that, sir?”
Beyond them, the peak dropped away into a gradual slope that ended in water, a curving lake. A narrow white bridge led the way across the lake and stopped at the huge crystalline doors of a fortress.
The ledge was too narrow for them all to crowd there for a look, but word was passed in whispers to the other end until Maggie heard it too. If the smiles from one or two of the men were a little restrained—she’d led them to the most dangerous part of the iceberg, after all—they were also more spontaneous a gesture than the crew had ever given her. She smiled back, as though she was in control of the power which had led them there.
She leaned sideways as far as she dared to see what Vinsen was doing. From his pack, he’d taken a spyglass, the brass smeared with more charcoal paste so no stray sunbeams reflected off it. Vinsen, she realized, might take considerable risks, but he planned them out and was prepared for obstacles. It reminded her of the best qualities of both her brothers.
For a long time, nothing happened, and the men at the other end of the ledge told her why. The fortress had been built into the side of another ice mountain, and it seemed to have only one entrance, the delicate crystal lattices of doors. Those were probably stronger than they looked, and given the moat-lake, the doors couldn’t be quickly or easily attacked.
The sun stood directly overhead. The men finished their last scraps of food, but Vinsen, elbows braced on a jut of ice, never moved. Maggie’s legs stiffened from crouching in place, and she wished her flute was in her hands. She’d felt the Faith flowing through her like quicksilver, making her not just warm but strong.
“That’s it.”
The words were quiet, but they were the first Vinsen had spoken in what felt like an hour, and the men turned as he lowered the spyglass. “Three of them just left. Guards opened those doors for them and they crossed the lake. Heading roughly east with spears and a net—it has to be a hunting party. So this is where we divide our forces.”
Vinsen’s plan was simply to occupy as many of the Bleakhaveners as possible with a feint while he slipped in to destroy the source of the Faith. He’d waited for someone to leave the fortress first, not only to have a glimpse of the defenses behind the doors, but because he had to deceive the guards. Brute force would raise an alarm, but if the guards expected a hunting party to return, he would take full advantage of that.
Once he dealt with the Faith, the fortress would be too weakened to fight any longer—and the morale of the Bleakhaveners wasn’t likely to be high either. He sounded confident, but Maggie knew they would be walking into an open mouth, and not all of them would come back out.
The men had the choice of who would form the feint, and although no one looked enthusiastic, four finally volunteered. Vinsen exchanged his clothes for Jak’s, and gave him the authority to make any terms that might sound convincing to the Bleakhaveners. “Stall them. The more you delay, the more time we’ll have to sneak in. And as long as they think they can get concessions out of you, they’ll talk.”
But if they feel their Faith is all they need, they won’t bother. No one said that, but Keet Lorring spoke up. He was a big man with a heavy brow ridge that made him look brutish, but Maggie had quickly learned there was nothing wrong with what was behind that solid bossing of bone.
“How can you be sure the Faith has a source, sir?” he said. “Something different
from the man who’s controlling it?”
Vinsen inclined his head in Maggie’s direction. “She used it too. That suggests it didn’t come from him, that it had an outside origin she was able to tap as well.”
Keet scratched his bearded jaw. “Makes sense, but what do we do when we find that origin? What if we can’t move it or destroy it?”
Maggie had the same questions. She might indulge in whimsy like imagining the Unity as a diamond, but she wasn’t so naïve as to think the Faith would be anything similar. And what if it protected itself?
“We’ll cross that strait when we come to it. For now, we move fast.” Vinsen turned to the men waiting to set off down the other side of the slope, where they would be in full view of the fortress. “Good luck.”
“See you back at the ship, sir,” Jak said, and the four of them were gone, leaving only their packs behind. Vinsen led the way in the direction the three Bleakhaveners had gone.
The ice peaks were a mixed blessing, as Maggie quickly found out. They provided a vantage point, and it was far quicker to use the narrow trails than it had been to push through snow. Keet had a cloth bag full of gravel scooped from the ship’s hold, and he scattered that on the ice to give them traction, muttering that he felt like a small child strewing petals at a festival.
The mountain trails were dangerously narrow, only enough for them to walk in single file, and before long she was more exhausted from tension than she was from activity. They hadn’t roped themselves together, so one slip was likely to send her down alone, and the drop was so deep she knew she wouldn’t come back up. Don’t look.
It wasn’t possible to move in a straight line to intercept the Bleakhaveners, and time slipped away like sand between their fingers as they maneuvered through the passes and trails. Vinsen had saved a scrap of sealskin from the Bleakhaveners who had boarded the ship, and he gave it to Sheill to smell; if not for that, Maggie thought they might have been hopelessly lost.
Unless she resorted to the Faith, of course.
Thankfully they found the path the Bleakhaveners had used—she guessed that from snow freshly yellowed—and it sloped down, turning past a jut of ice. Vinsen glanced out, then retreated quickly.
“They’ve cut holes in the ice,” he said. “Two of them waiting to strike, one on—”
Someone shouted just ahead, and water thrashed. The Bleakhaveners had probably caught a seal—a large one, from the struggle—and the crew didn’t need an order. They headed out from cover, moving fast to take the Bleakhaveners in the back while they fought their catch.
It was over in moments, though Brander went down with a spear through his calf. Maggie hurried out as soon as she knew it was safe, by which time Keet had hauled the dead seal out by himself, and Vinsen had pulled the spear from Brander’s leg. The physician’s aide made a muffled sound of agony, and she hoped he would be able to walk normally again some day.
One of the Bleakhaveners had played dead but was slowly reaching for a pickaxe when Sheill snapped at him. Keet was on him at once, pulling the man up and twisting an arm behind his back. Maggie knelt to help Brander bandage his lacerated calf and Vinsen went over to the surviving Bleakhavener. His knife was wet when he put it to the man’s neck.
“Answer me and I won’t have to kill you,” he said. “That fortress. Whoever controls the Faith—is he in it?”
The Bleakhavener couldn’t nod because of the knife at his throat, but his cracked lips formed the word yes.
Vinsen hesitated as if weighing what he could ask next before he spoke. “And where is the source of the Faith?”
“In the vault.”
The words were a whisper shaped by a twist of escaping breath, but she heard them clearly. From the way Vinsen’s eyes narrowed, he wasn’t sure whether to believe that or not.
But he sheathed the knife and nodded at Keet, who shoved the Bleakhavener facedown, put a knee between his shoulder blades and got a rope around the man’s wrists before he could do more than cough out snow. “Good,” Vinsen said. “Keep him here.”
“Sir?” Keet looked up sharply. “You’re not going in alone.”
“No, Miss Juell will be with me.”
Keet didn’t seem overly impressed by that. “I’ll go.”
“Someone has to stay with Brander.” Vinsen tilted his head at the Bleakhavener. “And what about him? If we leave him here, and one of those bears smells the bodies…”
“There’ll be one less of ’em in the world and good riddance.” Keet looked at him pityingly. “Sir, he’d do the same if he was in your place. Hell, he’d do worse. Cannibals, remember?”
“I can’t countenance killing a prisoner.”
Keet shook his head as if in complete disbelief. “Then take the dog. She fought ’em off on the ship too, and if you keep her on the sled and cover her up, they won’t notice her.”
Vinsen would clearly have preferred to leave her behind—perhaps to give early warning of any other bears hunting on the ice—but Keet had a point. The dog had made a difference in the fight for their lives, whereas Maggie didn’t know how much she herself could do under those circumstances. So Vinsen agreed before he moved to one of the dead Bleakhaveners and started stripping the man.
Maggie swallowed her distaste and did the same with the other. She gave Brander her fur cloak and put on the untanned hides the Bleakhaveners had worn, trying to duplicate the way those had been wrapped. The hides smelled so bad they stung her eyes.
Vinsen dressed quickly, then took a small bottle from his pack. He produced something that looked like a shaving brush with most of the bristles cut off and dipped it in the bottle.
“If they’re all like Ruay and those men who tried to board us,” he said, “women have theirs on the right and men on the left. Whenever you’re ready, Maggie.”
Maggie pulled off the blinders and scrubbed the charcoal off her face with a handkerchief, because the Bleakhaveners hadn’t used any such thing. Then she closed her right eye and let him paint a blaze tickling down her face. That wouldn’t last for a moment inside the ice fortress, because the population was likely to be small enough intruders would be recognized on sight, blaze or no blaze. But if it bought them a few more seconds to reach the guards at the doors, it would be enough.
Once Vinsen was done, she set to work on his face, trying to remember what Ruay’s spots and speckles had looked like so she didn’t make the blaze too uniform. Concentrating on that also helped her ignore being so close to Vinsen. It didn’t make any difference that they knelt on a sheet of ice next to dead Bleakhaveners and a dead seal, that Keet and Brander were nearby; an unsettling need ran through her and she set her teeth as she worked. Vinsen had both eyes closed, so he wasn’t looking at her.
Thank the Unity, because she wasn’t sure how she might have felt if he’d done so. If she’d known sharing his bed for one night would leave her like that, far too aware of him and still wanting him, under the most unsuitable conditions, she would…
Of course I would have, she thought irritably. The delicate point of the brush moved along smooth skin and rough stubble, dipped in the bottle and returned to its task. Maggie tried to pretend she was painting a picture—no, it had to be something three-dimensional—a statue, but a statue would not have had a pulse beating in its throat.
She finished and moved away as she closed the bottle. Vinsen waved a hand over his face to dry the ink, and took the brush and the bottle back, slipping both into a pocket. He was careful that way too, she thought, leaving behind nothing but footprints to show where he had been.
Then she turned around and gasped. Dark blood flowed sluggishly across the ice where Keet had gutted the seal, and more of it was smeared on his hands, which were red to the elbow. Surely he couldn’t have been so hungry?
He saw her shocked expression. “We’ll wrap the skin around the dog, and that way the sled won’t be so he
avy to pull, neither.”
“Good thinking,” Vinsen said. Sheill had been gulping down offal and whined when Keet wrapped the seal’s empty hide around her, but she let him lead her to the sled and lay down obediently. The shape didn’t look too convincing at close range, but Keet piled more innards on the sled to cover up the dog’s paws sticking out.
Vinsen handed Maggie one of the reins of the sled and took the other. Before they had gone very far, her arm ached, although the path leading back to the moat-lake was relatively even, with hardly any snow to slow them down. She played symphonies in her head so she could focus on something other than her growing exhaustion.
Sheill seemed delighted at the ride, and her tail wagged until Vinsen stopped and tied it to her hind leg. Maggie took the opportunity to discreetly rub the painful stiffness out of her arm, and looked up to see the lake water ripple ahead of them.
“Better get behind the sled,” Vinsen said. “That bridge is narrow.”
It was hardly a bridge, just a stone ledge cutting through the water. Anyone who wanted to storm the fortress would either have to find a better way to cross the lake, or would be slowed to the point where the defenders would… Well, she wasn’t sure what they could do other than strike out with the Faith.
Then again, enough of that and they hardly needed battlements or arrow-slits.
The runners moved quickly over limestone worn smooth as a shell, and at the end of the bridge, the huge doors swung open. Maggie peeked up, past the ragged edge of the hide that covered her head. One man emerged, standing at the top of the few gleaming steps that led down to the bridge. She dropped her gaze quickly, but that glance was enough to catch the flash of pale sunlight on the man’s armor. Breastplate, greaves, perhaps more—there didn’t seem to be a single vulnerable point.
Vinsen pulled the sled all the way to the steps, then stopped, lifting an arm as if to wipe sweat off his face. The guard’s attention had been on the sled, but now he turned to Vinsen.
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