The Coldest Sea

by Marian Perera

Artek rounded on him. “Why do you want to stay here?”

  “To kill Greoc,” Ruay said, and it wasn’t a question. It was also, Maggie noticed, the first time she had used the man’s name, rather than calling him “the Eldred”.

  Vinsen sheathed his knife, sliding it home with a finality that emphasized what he wanted to do to the fortress’s master. “What happened to my men? The four I sent in here with terms?”

  To give her credit, Ruay didn’t hesitate. “They’re dead.”

  “Yes, I’ll kill him. Does that change anything?”

  Neither of the Bleakhaveners moved or spoke—they might have passed for two of the vault’s inhabitants if not for the harsh lines of fury and revulsion on their faces. The vault should have been freezing, and yet the air felt as though lightning had crackled through it.

  Then Ruay shook her head. “Go with her, Artek.”

  “And you?” he said. “If he shows himself, the Eldred will draw on the Faith to stop him, and when he finds out—”

  Ruay looked away from him at the crowd that stared into the distance, like a collection of marionettes. Sheill had stopped trying to make the children play with her and sat back on her haunches, cocking her head as if she didn’t understand why all these new potential friends were ignoring her.

  “He won’t reach Greoc without me,” she said. “Please go.”

  Maggie hesitated. If the people were taken far enough, Greoc would be left defenseless, because a snake minus its fangs was a worm. That still didn’t mean Vinsen—alone, injured—would survive whatever happened in the stronghold, especially since she didn’t trust Ruay at all.

  But she couldn’t argue with him in front of foreigners—in fact, knowing Vinsen, it wouldn’t have been easy even in private to talk him out of something once he’d made up his mind—and they had no other choice. She tried to speak. The effort failed when he looked at her as though he would never see her again and had to remember everything about her as a result.

  “Get as far as you can,” he said quietly. “Don’t look back.”

  Maggie managed a jerky nod. And then, not caring about the Bleakhaveners or where they were or anything except him, she moved forward, close against him, and kissed him once. It was light and gentle, the barest touch of her lips to his mouth, and she refused to think of it as a farewell.

  He didn’t respond other than his eyes briefly closing, as if to make certain she didn’t intensify it. Not that she had any intention of doing so. She turned away and went to stand before the people.

  She put the flute to her mouth and tried a few experimental chords, though her mind felt blank. It was all those empty eyes, like a shoal of caught fish heaped on a slab with every head facing in the same direction. Think, damn it, choose the music and they’ll pay the piper with their loyalty. “Summer River”, the ballad her father had written for her mother when he’d proposed to her? “Memories of Tomorrow”? Why did she feel on the verge of forgetting those?

  Maybe, just as the tale of the piper was an old story for children, she needed something simple and traditional. She closed her eyes, breathed out and began “Over the Hills and Far Away”.

  The notes hung softly in the air of the vault, but they were all she heard other than the people’s concerted breathing, turning the vault to the inside of a seashell. Get up.

  The rustling sounded like a scythe moving through dry grass. Maggie opened her eyes. The entire crowd had obeyed, every person now standing before her. A little distance away, Artek looked like a statue himself, face twisted in obvious horror both at what had been done to the people and disgust that a foreigner should be able to do the same.

  Smile at him.

  Fifty heads turned as one, and everyone down to the smallest children grinned. Maggie regretted it, because Artek looked as though he was about to lose whatever he had eaten. Stop, she thought as she continued to play. Artek turned away, his blaze draining of color.

  “I’ll go up,” he said. “Make sure the way’s clear for you. Start taking them out.”

  He was gone at once, and she turned to follow. Putting her back to the people helped, since she no longer had to look at them, and as she started to walk, she heard them copy the movement in unison. If Artek planned to betray her, if he’d gone ahead to rally the fortress guards and prepare an ambush, she’d dive back into the midst of the crowd and mentally order the people to close ranks around her.

  If she was quick enough. Concentrating on her breathing—from the belly, not the chest—and on the positioning of her fingers, she walked forward into the mist.

  Maggie vanished into the mist as though curtains had closed around her. Vinsen set his teeth. He longed to stay by her side, and yet he had no choice. The attack on the master of the fortress had to come from a completely different direction, to distract him from the people leaving.

  The quietest crowd he had ever seen followed Maggie through the door. A few wraps were left on the floor where they had fallen; clearly nothing mattered to the people but obeying what commands they had been given. He wondered if they would freeze along the way or if the Faith would somehow protect them—if Maggie learned how to direct them and keep them warm and fend off any attacks, all at the same time.

  Unity, he had to stop thinking about Maggie. His mouth felt sensitized from her lips, and he’d needed all his self-restraint not to take her in his arms and kiss her back.

  The light started to dim as the last few Bleakhaveners left, but a glint among the discarded wraps caught his eye. Whatever it was reflected the dying glow of the ceiling moon, and although it was unlikely to be a weapon, he went over.

  It was a tin soldier painted blue and silver, though the boy who’d owned it probably had no further use for it. He picked it up. It was the kind of toy he would have enjoyed as a child, except after his father’s death there had been no toys. Food had been more of a priority—until his mother had remarried less than a year later.

  “What are you staring at?” Ruay asked.

  Vinsen slipped the toy soldier into his pocket. That was a bad habit of his, a magpie mentality that made him pick up odds and ends, but somehow he didn’t want a child’s toy to stay there in the darkness. He took the candle and walked through the mist. That felt like passing through a dry cascade of freezing water, but before he could catch his breath he was outside the vault, and Ruay followed.

  “This way.” Without pause she went up the steps. Vinsen followed, wishing he could be certain of whether or not she would steer him right. Letting him walk behind her might have been a sign of good faith, except she probably guessed he wouldn’t stab even a Bleakhavener in the back.

  At the landing above, she took them all the way to the other end of the corridor and another flight of stairs leading up. He glanced at a window, hoping for a sight of the people being led to safety outside, but the diffuse glow didn’t permit anyone to see out.

  The other staircase wasn’t as tall, and they soon reached its end. Vinsen stepped out into the passageway. The walls looked like a river frozen in a rippling instant, and opposite the usual row of windows, a few alcoves had been scooped out. The nearest of those had a block for a seat with a reindeer hide thrown across it, and he ducked into the hollow before he beckoned Ruay closer.

  “Why have we stopped?” Sweat stood out like a film of condensation on her skin.

  Vinsen sat down. “I need to know what happened to them. Because I’ve had enough of fighting something I can’t see or understand.”

  “We don’t have time—”

  “Then go on by yourself.”

  She hesitated, then looked to either side before she entered the alcove. He shifted to make room, but she stood where she was, as if she didn’t want to be at all comfortable with betraying secrets.

  Her voice was quiet and drained. “It started with the Tree of Life.”

  “The one that was lo
st in the war?” Vinsen would have much preferred to find that inside the vault.

  Ruay nodded, staring into the featureless back of the alcove. “Everyone wanted to find the Tree,” she said, “but Greoc Rund searched, studied maps of the battlefields, found a few people who remembered the War of the Tree and questioned them. Finally he narrowed it down to some no-mans-land near a village called Stagskin. He didn’t say anything to the Church, in case he was wrong, but he told the people of the village what he believed, and they voted to help him.”

  “They hoped to have some of the Tree’s fruit,” Vinsen said.

  Her gaze dropped to him in a glare. “Can you blame them? Anyone would.” Vinsen didn’t agree, but when he said nothing, she went on. “My parents appreciated that he wasn’t using his status against us. House Rund controls an entire province, so Greoc could have started digging up the land with his retainers, but instead he asked for the villagers’ help.”

  “Did they find the Tree?”

  “Yes. It took a year, but they found it.” She closed her eyes. “Except it was dead.”

  “Iternan magic.” Vinsen had never met an Iternan, but he’d heard what they could do. Split the earth, darken the sky, anything was possible.

  Ruay’s mouth twisted. “The kind of power that can only kill, never heal. The people were devastated, until Greoc said the Faith could revive the Tree.”

  “I’m guessing that didn’t work.” Vinsen tried to keep any serves-him-right from his voice. If this Greoc Rund was the whoreson responsible for trapping a ship and trying to kill everyone on board, let alone getting the fruit of the Tree, he didn’t deserve to be spat on if he was on fire. But when Vinsen thought of the people who’d been caught up in that wasted ambition, he couldn’t feel any satisfaction.

  “He tried, using everyone in the village,” Ruay said. “Do you have any idea how?”

  “I can piece it together. You call it Faith because that’s exactly what the people provide, right?”

  “Yes. Trust and belief and hope. The Eldred use that, forge a single-minded purpose into a power that shapes and moves the world.” The faint pride left her voice. “But the Tree was as withered as before, because there weren’t enough people in the village.”

  “Of course. The more cows in the herd, the more milk you get. So he called in reinforcements?”

  “No, he wasn’t stupid.” Ruay’s biting tone made it very clear who the idiot was in her opinion. “The more people who knew the secret, the more the likelihood of it spreading through the land.”

  Vinsen raised his brows. “Whom did the Tree belong to—your village, or all of Bleakhaven?” Or perhaps all of Eden, given that the first Tree hadn’t exactly been confined to one land, but that didn’t mean he wanted pirates or Iternan magicians becoming immortal.

  She folded her arms tightly. “I suppose we were wrong. But it was the Tree of Life. Even dead, it…made you long to keep it for yourself. My father told me the other Tree needed an intermediary to give its fruit to the first people, but the Tree of Life is its own serpent.”

  Vinsen silently thanked the Unity he’d never faced any such temptation; he had enough to deal with as it was. Ruay sat on the hide-covered seat, gloved hands locked together.

  “He brought in more people,” she said, “his trusted servants and guards. Then he gathered everyone, lit incense and told them about the importance of giving all they had to the Tree. He urged them until they…”

  “Worked themselves up to a fever pitch.” Vinsen imagined it, the people whipped by words into a mob, surrendering their selves so one man could draw on the intensity of their emotion to forge the Faith from it. “But that didn’t succeed either?”

  Ruay’s head was lowered, and when she shook it her hair swayed to either side. “He had two choices after that. He could turn the Tree over to the Church or he could keep trying to bring it back to life. You can guess which one he picked. I suppose he’d fallen under the Tree’s spell too. But since he couldn’t increase the quantity of people from whom he drew the Faith, he tried to increase the quality instead.”

  “So he found people who believed more strongly in him?”

  “No. Stagskin had become his home, and he didn’t want to go outside it. So he told us that some people among us had greater Faith than others did, and if those people had children together…”

  Vinsen straightened up. “Are you saying he set up a breeding plan?”

  “I suppose a foreigner might call it so.”

  “And you went along with that lunacy?”

  “Farmers do the same thing to produce prize stock.”

  “If you can’t see what’s wrong with that reasoning—” Vinsen began, then gave up. Besides, everyone had probably succumbed to the lure of the Tree by then. Either that or the guards Greoc had installed in the village hadn’t just been to protect the Tree.

  “It was the promise of immortality.” The brief animation of her retort had gone now, and she spoke with a dull finality. “If not for them, for their children.”

  Yes, such a plan would by necessity have to be long-term—and some people sacrificed a great deal for their children. Though Vinsen supposed Greoc had failed a third time, and he said so.

  Ruay’s chuckle was bitter but flat, devoid of real anger. “He didn’t have a chance to try. The Church found out and stole the Tree. Right out from our midst. With it gone, there was nothing left for us but to escape.” Standing, she left the alcove. “Does that tell you everything you want to know?”

  “Not quite. Did the Church revive the Tree?” As an established authority, they obviously controlled many more people—and therefore wielded much more Faith—than one man outside their official ranks.

  “Ask them if you meet them.”

  Once again, she was as closed and secretive as she’d been on Fallstar, so all he could do was leave the alcove and follow her. But now he knew who those creatures in the vault were. Had been. Ordinary people going about their lives, busy with their daily work, until a stranger had come into their midst. Slowly they’d fallen under the sway of his dream, the promise of eternal life, and they’d followed him down step after descending step into a place of horror.

  And I have to stop him, somehow.

  If the music had not been so simple, Maggie would have faltered or played a wrong note during the endless journey. Artek had gone ahead to clear the way, so he said, but she kept bracing for an ambush. She couldn’t stay where she was, and yet it took all her courage to keep walking, her breathing controlled only as a result of long practice. Behind her, each footstep was echoed fifty times over.

  It helped that Sheill padded ahead. The dog was the one familiarity in the fortress, though when she stopped and growled, Maggie’s heart leaped into her throat. She was within sight of the outer doors, but someone moved out of a passageway ahead to block their path.

  It was Artek, and he heaved the outer doors open before beckoning her forward. Silently asking the Unity to keep her safe, Maggie led the way to the doors.

  Before she went down the steps, though, she stopped, willing the people forward. They moved around her like a river flowing to either side of a rock. Only once half of them had gone through the doors did she walk again, matching her pace to theirs as she continued to play.

  There was no warmth in the winter sunlight, but compared to the confines of the fortress, it felt wonderful—as did the relief when no ambush came. She went down the steps among the people and took her place in the middle of the single file they made to cross the bridge. One thing that could be said for them, they all moved in smooth lockstep, no one falling behind or stumbling. Artek was waiting at the other end, clearly unsure where to go from there.

  For that matter, so was she. The hollows where they’d left Alvert and Ewin? No, impossible to climb the peaks and play the damned flute at the same time. Then it had to be the seal shore.
The people might be out of reach, if the Bleakhaveners had to actively hunt seals there rather than the Faith doing it for them.

  Artek seemed to catch on to the direction of their travel at once, and he plodded ahead of the crowd. Maggie fell farther back, though that had nothing to do with suspicion of him. Vinsen had been left behind, and while she wasn’t entirely sure Ruay would seize the first opportunity to plunge a knife into his back—besides, Vinsen could more than defend himself—Maggie longed to make sure he was safe.

  It seemed to take hours before Sheill barked happily. Maggie couldn’t see the dog with all the people in the way, but she knew they had reached the seal shore, and she lowered the flute. When the crowd stopped, she pushed her way through them to Keet and Brander.

  “They’re the source of the power the Bleakhaveners used against us,” she said, “so we need to keep them here.” She hoped to the Unity that their master couldn’t reach so far to keep draining them. Because if he did, she’d have to choose between killing innocent people or allowing them to be used to murder Vinsen, or perhaps the crew. Imagining either outcome made her feel sick.

  Artek stood as far as he could from the rest of them, looking out to sea, but she lowered her voice to a whisper anyway. “I don’t know how far he can be trusted, so it’s best if he doesn’t leave.”

  Brander, sitting on the ice and with his leg heavily bandaged, looked up at her. “Do they need medical help?”

  Maggie shook her head. “Bleakhavener magic did that to them. I don’t know if they can be helped by whatever we have.”

  “Just tell them to keep their distance, is all.” Keet thunked the head of his axe into the ice.

  Her fingers were cold now that she was no longer playing, and she fumbled her hands back into her gloves. “If they move, it won’t be my—”

  “What’s that?” Brander said.

  Maggie turned in the direction he pointed, though Keet never took his eyes off the people. A dark speck stood out on the horizon, and her heart leaped. A ship, it had to be a ship.

  “Do you have a spyglass?” she said.