The Star Bell (The Cendrillon Cycle Book 3)

by Stephanie Ricker

  “If you take me back to the Tremaines,” Helias said in the quiet, controlled voice that Elsa knew from childhood experience meant he was restraining his temper, “you’ll be taking me back in a coroner’s bag. Being the family’s puppet would be a fate worse than death. But then,” he added deliberately, “you already know that, don’t you, Cilla?”

  Elsa nearly dropped the commlink. The woman’s voice was far harsher than that of the Cilla she knew, but the underlying similarity was obvious now that she knew what to listen for.

  “In that case, no need to take you back at all,” Cilla snarled. “Stay here on your beloved Anser, and may the snow wolves gnaw your bones!”

  There was a scuffling noise, the sound of several blows, one low gasp of pain from her father, and then a muffled thump. Some distant, analytical part of Elsa’s brain told her that the thump must have been the commlink falling from his pocket onto the snow during the scuffle; she had found it near the crevasse. The commlink’s microphone was not sensitive enough to pick up the sound of her father’s body hitting the ice. She repeated this to herself.

  The commlink kept recording after it hit the snow. She heard the hunds howling in the distance more clearly, and she heard the woman’s hard breathing, almost a sob. “Goodbye, cousin,” Cilla said.

  “Haw!” Elsa shouted

  The hund team obediently turned left, kicking up snowspray behind them. Granted, driving a rented team was nothing like driving her own had been; half of the time, her lead hund Harmattan intuited what she wanted before she had a chance to ask for it. But the team she had rented from the hund livery in Gahmuret was a good one, responsive and in good physical condition. Their ground-eating strides devoured the distance between her and her destination: Atticora.

  Elsa had burst from the library while still slipping on her parka, a cardinal sin on Anser and one she had never before committed. She had to get to Atticora before anything happened to Karl. He wasn’t answering her repeated calls to his commlink. Whatever Cilla’s plans were on Anser, they weren’t innocent, and now Karl was alone with the assassin who had killed her father.

  She didn’t trust the Anser wardens enough to tell them about Cilla, as there was a good chance they were in the pay of the Tremaine Mining Company. The fact that there had been so little investigation on their part into her father’s death made her suspicious. She was on her own.

  She made two lightning-quick stops, and then she went on the hunt for transportation. There were no skiffs to be had in Gahmuret, which only left hund teams as a means for crossing the snowfields. The depth of her desperation shocked her; for one wild moment she even considered stealing a team from the nearest house, another unpardonable sin. She barreled into the livery like a charging mammut and demanded the best team in the stable. When the hund master stood staring and stammering, she began harnessing a team herself and had them halfway out the door before he came to his senses.

  Within moments she was tearing past the town limits behind a galloping pack of hunds, streaking across the snowfields at a pace that would have made her father cluck his tongue and shake his head. She was hit by an almost tangible sense of having stepped back in time; the last time she had driven a hund team was across this same territory—almost at the same time of year. She hadn’t even realized it was spring on Anser until they landed; life as a cinder or aboard a Fleet ship was entirely divorced from the turn of the seasons. Old muscle memory returned faster than she would’ve imagined—balancing the sled as she drove required almost no conscious thought. Unfortunately this left plenty of brain space for worry.

  She knew now that Cilla’s carefully constructed explanation for her lies was just another story. But why had Cilla been so adamant on coming to Anser with them in the first place? What was in Atticora that was so important to her? Further evidence of the Tremaines’ perfidy that she needed to destroy? Elsa’s stomach roiled at the realization that she had actually spent years working for the very company that was responsible for her father’s death, paying the company back when in truth they owed her an unpayable debt. Maybe more proof of that heinous act still existed on Anser, waiting to be uncovered.

  Or worse—her father had made it sound as though Cilla was the company’s assassin on the payroll—was she here to assassinate Karl? There hadn’t been an unobserved moment to do so aboard the Sovereign, the Strelka, or the skiff since Elsa was always present, but now she had him alone. A chill sank into Elsa’s bones that had nothing to do with the Anser wind. That must be it. Elsa had used Karl’s access codes to investigate Helias’ death when she was still aboard the Sovereign. Cilla thought that Karl was the threat to be eliminated.

  Elsa urged the hund team to faster speeds. They were momentarily distracted by a whiff of mammut scent on the wind; the herd she had seen when aboard the skiff was on the move and wasn’t too far away. She was impressed by the quality of the team, though; in spite of the tantalizing aroma of the traditional prey of their wild forebears, the domesticated hunds subsided and went back to business quickly.

  She was glad; she couldn’t afford the time wasted on a fractious team. The Wolfram Range would be blanketed in twilight very soon. Under normal circumstances, she would never have ventured out onto the snowfields this late in the day; it was the most dangerous sort of folly. But if Karl really was Cilla’s target and she waited till morning to set out, she feared she would be too late to do anything. She planned to travel by sled at night, something she would’ve never imagined doing.

  In the distance, a pack of wild hunds howled, probably on the scent of the mammut herd her own hunds were smelling. Her hunds pricked up their ears, and one of them tried a half-hearted howl in return. She chirruped to him to pull his attention back.

  The sudden roar of a skiff’s engines startled her so badly she nearly fell off the fast-moving sled. The hunds shied a bit at the noise, but they held true to their course. As the skiff drew nearer, she saw the Strelka’s markings on the side. Her heart leaped; maybe Karl had seen through Cilla’s story after all and set off to return to Elsa. The skiff descended towards the snowfields. An undefinable sense of unease nibbled at the back corner of her mind.

  She called to the team to slow them and engaged the brake, bringing the sled to a halt. “Stay,” she ordered, and took a few eager steps forward towards the skiff as it came in for a landing, hovering briefly over the snowpack. The unease ceased to nibble and began to gnaw. She turned swiftly back to the sled and picked up the ice axe, looping its leash around her wrist.

  By now, she had flown in a skiff with Karl many times. She knew his flying style, how he liked to skim the ground, and how he preferred to do his landings.

  She knew he was not the one piloting the vehicle in front of her.

  The hatch opened, and Cilla stepped out. For a split second, Elsa almost thought someone else was emerging; Cilla’s posture and movement had entirely changed from the meek, weepy woman she had spent so much time with.

  That likely meant that the charade was up. Elsa still decided to play dumb, just in case she had a chance of lying her way out of the situation. “Cilla!” she called brightly. “Were you able to find a good place to stay in Atticora?”

  Cilla brushed aside whatever shreds of normalcy were left to the situation. “What to use for this job? I’ve never been good at making decisions,” she mused, pulling out an assassin’s knife. “But the knife is more personal, and we are family, after all.” Her voice had the same timbre as in the recording.

  Some part of Elsa’s mind wondered how in the worlds she’d managed to hide the weapon for so long in a cramped skiff. She tightened her grip on the haft of her ice axe. “Where’s Karl?” she demanded.

  “Not here, finally,” she said, striding across the snow towards Elsa. “Stars above, I’ve been trying to get you alone for weeks. Someone was always hanging around: if it wasn’t that little silver girl, it was your boyfriend. The constant satellites you keep around you have made my life very difficult. Could’ve
just killed you both on the skiff, but Anser is such an easy place to hide bodies.” She grinned.

  A cracking sound filled the air, making the hunds prick up their ears. The skiff behind Cilla tilted alarmingly.

  She halted and spun around as the skiff began a slow slide into a crevasse. “What the hell?”

  Elsa smiled tightly. “There’s a very good reason why there aren’t many launch zones on Anser,” she said. “It’s a pity you aren’t truly Anser-born, Cilla. A native would’ve known that the Wolfram Range is full of rotten ice this time of year. Now that the playing field is leveled somewhat, where is Karl?” she demanded.

  Cilla stared in disgust at the place where the skiff had been. Elsa considered attacking while her back was turned, but the distance between them was still too great, and she had little hope against a trained assassin.

  “Maybe he’s as cold and dead as this godforsaken planet,” Cilla suggested. “Now how would that make you feel? It seemed you two planned to dance around each other interminably. I’m doing you a favor, really,” she confided, turning back around. “He was indecisive.”

  “Was any part of your story true?” Elsa blurted.

  Cilla wagged her head in a see-saw motion. “This and that. The best lies stick close to the truth. I’ve been used as a test subject a few too many times, cloned a few too many times. But the pay is so damn good. And some of my assignments are just plain fun.” She smiled widely. “They say I’m not quite right in the head, but I’m sane enough to take orders.”

  The hund team behind Elsa grew restless; she could hear their harnesses jingling. A part of her brain not occupied with surviving the encounter ahead of her wondered why. Then she remembered the mammut herd. The herd’s trajectory when last she saw them meant that they weren’t far away at all now. The women and the hund team were to the herd’s windward side, and a dip in the snowfields meant that the mammut herd must not have seen them. Elsa doubted Cilla even knew the herd was there.

  How to keep her talking? “Why did you come to the star bell?” Elsa asked desperately. “How did you know we would pick you up?”

  “The family has always kept its eye on you,” Cilla said matter-of-factly. “You’ve kept your head down and been so well-behaved all of these years, but when you registered with the Fleet, we needed to watch you more closely. When we noticed you starting to dig around in Helias’ records, I was dropped off at the bell to monitor personally. We had to do something to get me on board; you’d be amazed how tricky it is to come up with a plausible scenario to get aboard a Fleet ship heading into unexplored territory for a year. If you hadn’t picked up my signal from the bell, I would’ve found another way on board; I just ramped up the signal until you couldn’t miss it.”

  “But once you met me, you must’ve known I had no aspirations to reclaim an inheritance with the Tremaines,” Elsa protested.

  Cilla pursed her lips. “Perhaps. But you’re still a danger. Once you knew the truth about your father, I didn’t imagine you’d just let that slide.”

  Elsa hadn’t known until today, she had only suspected; but Cilla was right. And Elsa was out of questions to ask. She glanced back at the hunds. They were excited because of the mammut scent, but they wouldn’t fight for Elsa—not like her own trained team would’ve done. If she could escape into the snowfields, she might have a chance; Cilla wasn’t Anser-born and might not know enough snowcraft to find her.

  Cilla shivered. “Enough jabbering out here in the cold.” She strode towards Elsa, knife at the ready.

  How well-trained was this hund team? Elsa wondered.

  She whistled, sharp and piercing. Cilla frowned in puzzlement.

  The hund team lunged forward, ripping the brake from the snow. Harnessed as they were, they couldn’t make a sharp turn, but they ran in a tight semi-circle, pulling the sled in an arc behind them as they ran to Elsa. “Gee!” she cried, and the team swerved right just as the lead hund drew even with Elsa. The sled drifted outward in the turn, heading right for Elsa. She grabbed the handle as it went by and leaped, fortunately finding firm purchase on the runners after only one panicked scrabble.

  As the team crested the top of the hillock, Elsa saw the mammut herd below her. The thought barely had time to register before a pistol blast roared past her ears. She ducked reflexively and looked over her shoulder. Cilla fired again. Stars, where had she hidden that? Her stomach plunged as she realized she must’ve taken Karl’s pistol from him.

  Cilla’s next shot hit the sled, and Elsa felt the handle wrenched from her hands as the vehicle tipped sideways. The hunds panicked. Then Cilla shot the wheeler hund just as the team began its descent from the high ground. The dog collapsed mid-stride, jerking his teammate up short and causing a chain reaction down the line of harnessed animals. They slid in a messy pile of sled, hund, and Elsa partway down the other side of the incline.

  Elsa scrambled to her feet and slid behind the sled, anticipating more pistol fire. But she and the sled were out of Cilla’s line of sight for now, until she was able to climb the hillock on foot. With her ice axe, Elsa slashed the lashings on a small bundle tied to the sled, the survival kit she had purchased as one of her hurried actions before taking the hund team. She tucked it under her arm, hesitating for a fraction of a second. The hunds were milling around in a confused tangle, crowding around their fallen teammate. The team was a lost cause, Elsa told herself; she would have to abandon them.

  Elsa ran around the mass of hunds, then bolted out into the snowfields towards the mammut herd. She had the advantage of moving downhill, and the wind was still in her favor. The generic white parka now served her well: the mammuts, with their weak eyesight, didn’t see her coming until she was practically on top of them. They were distracted, though it took her a moment to discover why. The wild hunds were howling again, and this time they were close. Hunds hunted at night, and the mammut knew as well as Elsa did that the predators were only waiting for nightfall to make their attack.

  The huge animals spooked at the sight of her, but Elsa plunged into the herd nonetheless as Cilla continued her descent, sliding clumsily on the ice. Caught between humans on one side and the hunds on the other, the mammut didn’t know where to run.

  The light was beginning to fade, and sunset came swiftly here near the planet’s equator. If Elsa could keep amongst the herd, Cilla’s heat sensors—and she assumed any professional assassin would have them—wouldn’t help her. With night falling fast and wild hunds in the area, Elsa doubted that the other woman would survive till morning. Professional assassin she may be, but she wasn’t trained for survival in cold climates.

  Elsa dodged a massive, hairy leg as a mammut near her reared up and trumpeted. Elsa’s heart hammered painfully, both from the exertion of her sprint and from her fear. She opened her parka slightly, trying to cool herself before she sweated too much. Moisture was the enemy when it came to surviving on Anser, and she had to be wily if she expected to survive herself. She clutched the small bundle tightly—it was all that stood between her and death on the snowfields.

  She had to stop running so she didn’t overheat, but she also didn’t want to be trampled. She found a jag of ice not too far from the center of the milling herd and crouched near it, hoping it would provide a large enough landmark for the mammut to avoid. If they stampeded, though, she was going to be in a proper mess.

  From where she was, she could no longer see Cilla, which made her nervous. Would the assassin try to wait her out? Elsa hoped so. She could outlast Cilla. But if not—

  Pistol fire erupted at the edge of the herd, brightening the twilight in that direction. One mammut fell heavily to the ground as its leg gave way. It bellowed in pain, and Elsa heard the ice protest under its mighty weight. Did she intend to shoot her way into the herd? Elsa shook her head in disbelief. Foolish woman. The mammut would turn on her in another moment, and no pistol would stop a charging herd of mammut.

  The wild hunds chose that moment to attack.

  A
lready on the brink of panic, the mammuts lost their minds. Elsa hunkered down near her jag of ice and prayed not to be squashed as the animals stampeded around her.

  In the failing light, she caught a glimpse of the first of the wild hunds, harrying an older mammut. The canine predator was almost invisible in this light—perfect for hunting.

  As she watched the mammut run past, she realized that their flight was not as panic-stricken as it seemed. They were avoiding certain areas of the snowfields—not just one or two of them were, but all of them were. She remembered the creak of the ice when the wounded mammut fell. She exhaled slowly.

  She was surrounded by rotten ice.

  Cilla’s pistol fire had kept up the entire time, adding to the chaos. She couldn’t have much power left in the ammo pack; Elsa was surprised the pistol had lasted this long.

  The abrupt cessation of fire made the mammut sounds seem louder. An older animal wheezed as it barreled past Elsa, grazing her shoulder. Just a graze was enough to knock Elsa flat, the breath stolen from her lungs. She sat up, struggling to breathe.

  She looked straight into the eyes of a hund.

  She froze, staring at the animal only twenty feet from her. She had a couple flash-bangs in her survival kit to scare off lycaons or hunds, but she would have to dig for it, and she feared by the time she found it, the hund would be upon her.

  Strange that it wasn’t already. She was a prime target. But perhaps she was less alluring than the scent of fresh mammut all around. If so, why wasn’t it taking off after the herd with its pack mates?

  The hund seemed to look past her, and it yowled. The sound drove Elsa straight back into the past. Her lead hund Harmattan had yowled that way when danger was near.

  Disoriented, she turned around just in time to see Cilla fly at her with her knife.