“That’s a start.”
* * *
—
Winter came early that year, far harder than anyone could remember. With it came the Maizan.
The first frost was hard on the heels of the harvest, and the first snow well before the equinox. The storms themselves weren’t so bad: one blizzard, plus a brace of lesser tempests that added no more than a few additional inches to what had previously fallen. Roads remained passable, disruptions to civic life lasted no longer than a day or two after the storm.
It was the cold that killed. Regardless of how brightly the sun shone, or how clear was the sky, the temperature rarely rose above freezing. All it took was a little breeze to make traveling out of doors a bitter and daunting experience, and any sort of proper wind was deadly. For the most part, the air remained as dry as a high desert, so leached of moisture that the snow crunched underfoot, and therein lay a fatal deception. In summer, under high heat and no humidity, sweat evaporated off the skin almost immediately; if a person wasn’t careful, they might become dangerously dehydrated in surprisingly short order. Much the same applied now. It was easy not to notice how brutal the cold was as it sucked the heat from a body until one was already struck with bursts of frostbite or actually began to freeze.
At such a time the value of Sandeni’s transit system became clearly evident, especially on the prairie, where cable cars ran through tunnels. For the most part, it was able to handle the increased traffic. As the weeks passed and the weather stayed uncommonly harsh, with the greater part of winter yet to come, there were more and more expressions of concern. Not so much about the power source, though ice upstream had lowered the water levels of the rivers. The presumption of the engineers and hydrologists was that the force of the flow over the precipice was more than sufficient to prevent the falls themselves from ever freezing.
That confidence didn’t hold for the infrastructure of the municipal railway itself. Cold affected the grease that lubricated the great driving wheels about which the cables turned. The fear was that one of them might jam. Depending on which wheel it was, and how quickly the maintenance engineers responded, the effect on the system might be an inconvenience, or a catastrophe. And hard as that cold was on the driving wheels, it took a far greater toll on the cables themselves. The weather made the cable stiff, which required more grease to ease it along its roundabout track. This in turn required the brakemen to clamp their shoes more tightly, to achieve a decent enough grip to engage the car. Which began leading to failures of the gears in the cars, as they broke under the strain, and even of the cables themselves.
The upkeep was constant, the crews more and more exhausted.
While none of the rivers was likely to freeze, the same could not be said for the city’s canals. By equinox they were solid, and some enterprising entrepreneurs quickly established a growing fleet of horse-drawn sleighs to replace the normally ubiquitous water taxis. The city mobilized its youth, both middle school and college age, to shovel and sweep the streets clear of snow, while at the same time taking a precise inventory of its stocks of food and fuel as it became increasingly clear that a normal winter’s supplies might not last to the solstice, much less the following spring.
Elora was of two minds about the season. On the one hand, she was heartsick over the misery it caused. On the other, she couldn’t remember when she’d had such fun. This was only the second true winter she’d experienced in her cloistered life and she was determined to enjoy it to the fullest. By night she and Duguay continued to fill the tavern. By day she haunted the professor’s library, searching the volumes for anything that would be of help. She learned quickly to live with disappointment.
She was welcomed into Tam’s home, and that in turn gave her entry to Sandeni’s mixed-blood community. In Tam’s case, the crossover had occurred three generations back, beginning with a Daikini great-great-grandmother and a Nelwyn sire. The paradox was that due to the considerable difference in life spans, she was actually able to meet that ancient forebear. He was an ironmonger of formidable ability, from an offshoot minor house of the Rock Nelwyns, as knowledgeable in his way as Torquil but lacking that master artisan’s subtlety of craft. The talent was unmistakable as was the quality of workmanship, but sadly there was no grace to what he made. By the same token, it was no small achievement to match his skill, no mean privilege to be invited to share his forge.
The house was an eclectic blend of Daikini and Nelwyn, treating each race’s traditions with respect but very little reverence.
“Like wi’ metal,” Raasay (for that was Tam’s great-great’s name) said, though at the time he was molding glass in his furnace instead of steel, “there’s a place an’ purpose, an’ a value, no denyin’ that, f’r wha’s pure.” Listening to him took concentration and it was easy to see where Tam came by his own broad country accent. But the timbre of the words had a life and vitality that belied the man’s age and made him a pleasure to hear.
“The same while, tha’ purity puts a limit on what y’ c’n do with it,” he continued, thriving on his attentive audience as much as Elora did on hers. “Gold has beauty, but it’s malleable. F’r a proper piece o’ fine jewelry, it needs be an amalgam wi’ summat a bit more base, t’ give it strength. Same applies t’ iron; good as it is alone, it’s better forged as an alloy into steel. Same f’r blood, I be thinkin’. No more shame t’ bein’ a mix than t’ bein’ pure.”
“I’ve heard Tam called a mongrel,” she said, huffing beads of sweat out of her mouth as she pumped his bellows to keep the fire glowing white-hot.
“Not t’ his face, I’ll wager.” The old Nelwyn spat a laugh at the thought, which Elora echoed. All the while he spun the blowpipe, gripping the metal as delicately with just the tips of his fingers as he might the finest piece of crystal, using his breath down the pipe to shape the molten glass bubble growing from the opposite end. At the same time Elora, arms bare, her undershirt molded to her powerful form by sweat, stoked the furnace with heaping shovelfuls of coal.
“Never to his face,” she agreed with a roguish chuckle all her own.
“Never had dog nor cat in this house wasn’t a mongrel. Street saves, the lot. Some had their faults, same as two-legged folk, but most was worth the trouble. Tough wee scrappers, too. Spit in the eye of any critter what tried t’ cross ’em. Pride comes from what they’ve made of themselves, y’see, not what’s got handed ’em. Me, I got no hands f’r this.” Even as he spoke the vase took shape, flashing sparkling facets of color as the radiance of the hearth refracted through bends and twists in the flowing glass. “I do it f’r a distraction, f’r fun like when I’m tired o’ hammering. Me da were no better, nor his. Craft like y’ would na’ believe, but nothin’ more. But I got a great-grandlass, Tam’s aunt, looks as Daikini as they come, an’ she can make pure magic wi’ this fire.”
“I’ve seen her work.” In some of the finest shops in Sandeni, at prices that made even Elora swallow. She recognized the signature design immediately, and burned with silent, secret shame at the realization that she’d been served with some of that very crystal in her tower in Angwyn. And most likely smashed it.
“Summat o’ me, summat o’ me dear wife, some spark from who knows where. But the result, lass, the result is a beauty I could never achieve on my lonesome. Nor from any Nelwyn mate, neither, meanin’ no disrespect. Not sayin’ this is f’r all. I’m sayin’, f’r some, it’s right.”
* * *
—
After the blizzard, and before the legions of civic sweepers returned the streets to vehicular traffic, the city belonged totally to its children. Young in body, young at heart, everyone took a holiday, piling snow high into blockhouses and staging snowball fights from one corner to the next, populating the parks with a whole other community of snowfolk, using anything that would slide to cascade with shrieks of mingled terror and abandon down every available slope. Vendors of hot drinks and soups and stews di
d a record business that splendid day, joy so thick in the air it could almost be touched.
The next snowfall was more desultory, too dry and powdery to be of any real use, the day too cold, the wind too cutting, for more than a brief outing. That proved the template for the days to follow, as though the first storm had been no more than a tease, a haunting reminder of winters that were once and might have been, but would not be.
As the trolley made its way downtown toward the Citadel, Elora hunched in on herself upon the open bench and watched the people that they passed. They trudged with shoulders down, like cart horses hauling a monstrous heavy load, almost shapeless beneath massive layers of tunics and sweaters and cloaks, heads wrapped so completely with hats and scarves that only eyes could be seen and then only when you were face-to-face. They weren’t people anymore, at least out of doors, they carried themselves as beasts of burden, as worn in spirit as in body.
Elora still favored the clothes she’d taken off the Maizan sorceress, in part because they made her feel sleek and dangerous but mainly, thanks to the brownies’ efforts with needle and thread, because they fit. She’d gone shopping more than once since arriving in Sandeni, delighted for the opportunity to indulge herself in some conspicuous consumption, only to grow out of those purchases within the month. It was as if her body had deliberately held itself in check during her stay among the Rock Nelwyns and was now taking its revenge. Khory still had the edge on her in height, Elora suspected she always would, but the pair of them positively loomed over every other woman she’d ever met, and Renny had commented one evening that they were a close match for the High Elves. All this growth left Elora feeling gangly and ill at ease with her body, and she’d never felt that comfortable with herself to begin with. Spoiled rotten throughout her childhood, she’d hit adolescence as a plump, round face, round form, with her vocal cords the only part of her that got any regular exercise.
Today she was stronger than she’d ever been, probably than she’d ever dreamed, but none of the disparate elements even came close to fitting properly. She looked at herself and saw someone whose legs were too long, torso too powerful, shoulders too broad. Where others had soft curves, she was sleekly muscled, modestly endowed where fashion preferred voluptuousness. She looked like a wanderer, with a body good for striding off toward distant horizons, or riding horseback if a mount was available.
She didn’t know it yet, but hers was the look of a natural leader. Eyes turned to her when she passed as automatically as to a standard. That was never more obvious than when she took the stage. Good as he was, and that was very good indeed, Duguay could not equal the passionate intensity of her performances. When Elora sang of love, couples found their hands lacing together, reminded of the best of what had brought them together. When of loss, there were tears aplenty. And when, as she always did, she sang of freedom, they believed.
Gradually she and Duguay simplified her makeup while at the same time crafting a no less striking public persona for her. She kept her hair short and spiky and blue black as printer’s ink because she liked the contrast and it was a style no other woman would dare. The argent color of her skin they carefully faded, to create the impression that she was just naturally pale. Kohl was used to accent the shape and depth of her eyes, blush to further enhance the sharply defined bone structure of her cheeks, a shade of lipstick found to match the color of her leathers. The result, reproduced on handbills posted throughout the city, was a face totally defined by its hair, its eyes, its mouth, as unconventional as it was entrancing, with a level gaze that inspired trust and a faint quirk to the lips that hinted with her hair at a wild twist to her soul.
No one believed she was in her middle teens, and the stories she heard told about herself while roaming the city were so outrageously implausible she couldn’t wait to tell her friends and share their laughter. The best, the most rudely ribald, she worked into her repertoire.
She even found a way to meet with Thorn, though not often, and not on any regular schedule. Their meeting place was the professor’s library, because the university was so huge, its facilities so comprehensively interlinked and generally so crowded that it was virtually impossible to follow someone within its walls.
“Is the weather the key?” she asked one glorious afternoon, her attention continually distracted from the piles of documents strewn across the professor’s tables by the crisp and clear sunlight splashing gloriously through the top-floor windows. They were a mix of clear and stained glass, the one primarily to provide illumination, the other to create beautiful patterns of color. The layout of this level was an open plan, the only shelves those that lined the wall. The floor itself was bare, save for desks and chairs. The ceiling had been removed as well, allowing an unobstructed view past the massive bracing beams all the way to the steeply gabled roof.
“You tell me,” the Nelwyn said.
She chewed on a bit of her lower lip, flash-tapping her fingers on the table in a drumroll. “I hate it when you answer a question with a question.”
“That’s because you’re the one who has to provide the answers.”
“Meaning you already know.”
“Meaning you’re the one who needs to know. Understanding the why of a solution—the process of deduction—is far more important than the solution itself.”
“I can’t get away with intuition?”
“You can, Elora. But how then do you explain it to others?” Thorn leaned forward, that simple act somehow commanding all her perceptions to focus on his face, so that only his eyes were clear before her. She had never seen him more intense, or more serious. “There will come a time when you go to those who believe in you and say, do such and such a thing for no other reason than that they trust you. But that trust must be earned. They must know your word is good, the instincts sound. And you have to know you’re right.
“You must inspire men and women to love you, and though I pray the moment never comes to pass, you must then be prepared for the day when you send them to their deaths. And watch, as they do so willingly.”
She blinked rapidly, telling herself it was the sunlight making her eyes tear, but her voice was unusually husky as she spoke.
“Then you’d have done better with Anakerie in this role,” she told him.
The moment she mentioned the Princess Royal of Angwyn, she regretted it.
After the Cataclysm, and due consultation with the monarchs of the other Great Realms, Anakerie’s father established an order of servitors, called Vizards, to serve as bodyguards to the Sacred Princess. There would be twelve, one for each of the Realms, and they would go masked, for the honor would be in the deed itself, not for being known for it. They would serve for a calendar year. The first selected for that first cadre was his own daughter and heir. To the King’s mind, he could have bestowed no greater honor.
Anakerie didn’t see it that way. Barely a teenager, she was unable to reconcile Elora’s manifestation with the death of her mother and the disappearance of her beloved twin brother, for all that had happened the terrible night of Elora’s arrival. She was damned if she’d serve Elora in any capacity. She had her father’s strength of will and his lack of tact, and the pair of them butted heads as suicidally as a matched set of mountain goats dueling on the lip of a precipice. He was sure she’d yield. It never occurred to him that she’d find another way. Anakerie, by contrast, once she saw the fight was hopeless, simply ceded him the field. They had their final argument and the next day she was gone.
Within a year Anakerie had found her way to the nomadic Maizan and won herself a place of honor among them. They weren’t comfortable with strangers but they respected skill and talent above all else. For all her tender years she had both in abundance. She grew from girl to young woman among them and broke the heart of any man who thought he could claim her. Those who wouldn’t take no for an answer got their skulls cracked for their troubles, even their castellan, M
ohdri. He desperately wanted to win her heart and had his life saved by her instead.
Though she came to love the Maizan, and look on Mohdri’s advances with more charity as time went on, Anakerie remained a daughter of Angwyn. Her father never forgave her for her flight, but he was also too good a war leader to allow such a superb potential asset to go to waste. He swallowed his pride and asked her to come home, as she swallowed her own hurt and anger when she agreed.
Then came the night of Elora’s Ascension, and the ensorcellment of not only Angwyn but all the monarchs who’d assembled for the celebration.
As far as anyone knew, Elora Danan was responsible for the death of Anakerie’s mother, the disappearance of her brother, and ultimately the overthrow of her realm in the bargain. By rights, there should be a deathmark between the two women.
The wild card in that deck was Thorn.
“Anakerie is as fine a general as she is noble a Princess,” he conceded, speaking with great care the better to mask his own powerful feelings for her.
“How noble, Thorn,” Elora asked gently, “if she willingly serves the Deceiver? She knows him for what he truly is.”
“The Fates grant we get the opportunity to ask her, when this foul business is concluded.”
“Don’t you dare go all formal on me!”
“And don’t you use that tone of voice, my girl. Now answer my damn question before this lesson is totally wasted. Is weather the key?”
A quiet chortle floated from the shadows where Khory lurked, so still that Elora had quite forgotten her presence. Wherever Thorn went, the demon child was never far away, any more than the brownies strayed from Elora’s side.
“Sandeni exists on trade,” she told him. “The city is self-sufficient to a point, but its prosperity and power derive from the goods it ships and the services it provides the traders. The roads remain passable, the rivers increasingly less so. The flow of merchandise becomes as clogged as the flow of water. If storms close down the highways as well, some merchants could be in dire straits.”
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