Winter of Ice and Iron

by Rachel Neumeier

  Kehera’s traveling dress was dark-brown linen with a little green embroidery. Kehera had thought it suitable. Now, as the city rose, she felt small and plain. She was glad she’d had Eilisè put her hair in a figure-eight braid, threaded with green and silver ribbons and a single strand of lustrous gray pearls. The style made her look older, she hoped, and the pearls, at least, should make her look like someone to respect.

  And then they were there, at the gates.

  The gate guards had clearly been alerted to their approach. They stood to either side, stiff and formal. Traffic had been cleared off the road and the gates stood open, a vivid blaze of sunlight in the shadows cast by the walls. A delegation of some sort waited by the gates.

  “The king . . . ?” she asked Corvallis, leaning forward in her saddle and searching that company with an anxious glance. She half hoped the Mad King would be there so she could get the initial meeting over with, and half hoped he was not there, that he was even out of the city, finding another small Immanent to feed to the Suriytè Power.

  “He will be in the King’s Hall,” General Corvallis told her. “These are courtiers and officials. That man in the fore of the gathering, do you see? That is Lord Geiranè. He will welcome you on behalf of the king.” The general hesitated, as though he might add some other comment to this, but then did not.

  Kehera nodded and did not ask any more questions. When they came to the gates, she inclined her head a tiny fraction to Lord Geiranè and then straightened her shoulders and tried to look regal and unimpressed, maybe even a little bored. Her brother, Tiro, could have managed it; playing roles was one of the many things he was better at than she was. Kehera was afraid she mostly just looked stiff and nervous.

  Lord Geiranè was a narrow-faced man with a flat mouth and opaque eyes. Kehera instantly disliked him. She disliked his voice as well: It was too polite, a voice that hid everything he felt. And she was, now that she sat on her mare beneath the very shadow of the walls, uneasy for a different reason. Something about Suriytè felt . . . wrong, somehow.

  The breeze still smelled of the desert, but it seemed that a chill ran through the city, almost as though the desert air carried within it a hint of ice. . . . That was ridiculous, and Kehera didn’t even know exactly what she meant. But she didn’t like it. When Lord Geiranè murmured flowery phrases, she barely heard him. When he fell silent, she blinked and drew a breath and said, grateful she had thought this out beforehand, “I thank you for your gracious welcome, my lord. I shall think of my coming, not as the loss of my home, but as the gaining of another home, of incomparable beauty and splendor. I must add my voice to those which, through the centuries, have proclaimed with delight the peerless elegance and glory of Suriytè.” There, criticize that, she thought, satisfied despite her distraction and nervousness. Whatever Lord Geiranè thought of her, he could hardly fault that little speech.

  Lord Geiranè looked slightly surprised. Had he thought she would be too frightened to speak? “Your Highness will be the greatest ornament possible,” he returned politely. “Suriytè is the most fortunate of cities to boast of your presence.”

  Kehera inclined her head politely and nudged her gray mare forward, and the company formed up behind them as they rode through the gates and into the Queen of Cities. And Suriytè deserved the title, reluctant though Kehera was to admit it. She had never imagined a city as . . . as polished as Suriytè. Perhaps the blowing sand scoured walls and cobbles clean, but even so there was a surprising lack of sewage in the channels that lined the roads and no trash at the edges of the streets. Men rode astride or walked, and women rode in carriages or in veiled litters, but the veils were usually pulled back so that those who occupied them could see the streets. All the people they passed were well dressed, in red and brown and tawny gold and rich blue, and she saw no poor folk or beggars—though probably such unfortunates dwelt in a lesser area of the city.

  The streets were wide, too: wide enough for four carriages to travel abreast, fronted by buildings of dressed stone—white or pink or pale gold—and everywhere she looked, she saw ornate columns and porticos. And then the streets opened up to a wider view and she saw the King’s Hall, and knew that nothing else in Suriytè could possibly compare to that grace and strength.

  The King’s Hall was all smooth pink stone; not sandstone, but something smoother, something that took a finer polish. The windows were high and arched, screened against the sun with latticework shutters; the doors were made of wrought iron. Between the Hall and the city stood a high fence of wrought iron, its elaborate gates guarded by men in Emmeran colors, men with cold eyes and tight mouths, who looked at her as though they knew who she was and didn’t approve of her at all. Kehera felt her heart sink as she studied that fence and the guardsmen and the forbiddingly ornate hall. It looked to her like the kind of palace that was probably easier to enter with a proper escort than slip away from on one’s own.

  General Corvallis did not enter the King’s Hall with her, though he met her eyes as if he meant to convey an important message. But all he said was, “It has been my honor to escort you, Your Highness. I know you will do well and bravely in everything.” He saluted her gravely, turned aside, and rode away with his men along the curve of the wall. Kehera stared after him, wondering if she were foolish to think there might be some hidden message for her in those words, not feeling brave at all.

  The rooms to which Lord Geiranè at last escorted her, following a long, involved route through the King’s Hall, were very elegant indeed. The rugs and couches and walls of the sitting room were peach and pink and powder blue, with ruffled lace everywhere; the bedchamber had been done in rose and gray. The bed itself was more than twice as broad as the one she had slept in at home, and the wardrobe larger as well. A massive bathtub, pewter and enamel, stood behind a screen against one wall; a beautifully carved rosewood table followed the angles of another wall. Several vases of flowers had been placed on the table. Kehera’s chests had been brought here already and sat on the hardwood floor by that long table, waiting attention. Once Lord Geiranè had taken his leave, she looked around at the elegant room and wished desperately for her simpler apartment at home in Raëh. It had been a terrible mistake to come here. . . . Of course her father must have been right to send her, but she couldn’t feel that he had been right. She wished she dared flee at once; that she had an open road before her that led straight back south.

  There were several windows through which slanted the sunlight of the late-autumn afternoon, rather stronger and warmer than it would have been at home. All the windows were high and narrow. Standing on tiptoe, she managed to peer out one of the long slits. It gave a view of a nice little courtyard; across the way were more of the narrow windows, and a glimpse of color and movement within.

  Eilisè slipped past her, went to the largest chest, and began unfastening the buckles. “I’ll unpack,” she said. “Why don’t you rest a little? I’ll send for water; I’m sure you’ll want to bathe. What gown do you suppose is suitable for meeting a mad king who’s going to make you marry him? Do you suppose he will formally present you to his court? Though perhaps even a mad king wouldn’t do that tonight, before you have a chance to rest properly.”

  Kehera wished she could guess what Hallieth Suriytaiän might do. She went over to the bed and tested it with one hand. “Too soft,” she judged. “And I’m filthy with road dust, anyway. I do want another bath. I suppose you might lay out my best gown, though you’d think Lord Geiranè would have said something, if the king were going to present me tonight.”

  Eilisè glanced up from the gown she was shaking out. “If no servants show up soon, I’ll go find someone to carry water.” She opened the wardrobe and put the gown away. “There’re quite a few gowns in here already, Kehy. That’s a good sign, isn’t it? We’ll have to see how they fit after you have your bath.” She shut the wardrobe door again. “Beautiful material, at least. They’d be worth the trouble of altering.”

  Kehera was
unable to work up interest in this prospect. She sat down on one of the couches and leaned back, shutting her eyes. Briefly, she allowed herself to entertain the fantasy that when she opened them, she would be back at home in her own rooms, but the feel of the couch and the smells in the air were too different.

  “Oh,” Eilisè said suddenly, in an odd tone. She held up a small, flat box, carved of blackwood, perhaps a handspan wide and just a little more than that long, with scrolling inlaid across the lid in abalone shell in the shape of the Harivir Falcon. Kehera knew exactly what was in it: thirteen four-sided rods, each with its own name and symbol, and four dice of agate and jasper. The tiahel set Tiro had made her. Her brother must have slipped it, at the last, into her luggage: a final, private gift.

  Kehera took the box. She unlatched the lid and slowly lifted out the first rod of the set. This was the King Rod, engraved with the suits—Emmer’s White Stallion, Harivir’s Red Falcon, Kosir’s Azure Griffin, and finally Pohorir’s rather horrible double-headed Winter Dragon—it said a lot about a kingdom, in Kehera’s opinion, that it chose the winter dragon as its sign and symbol.

  The King Rod ruled the hand—or lost it, if too many other rods came up in opposition. Kehera turned it gently to the Falcon, then gathered up all the rods and cast them across the bed.

  The King Rod came up with the Dragon on top, one narrow head arching forward on its snakelike neck, the other turned to glare back over its shoulder. Tiro had painted in tiny red dots for its eyes, giving the Dragon what had always seemed to Kehera a particularly savage expression.

  Winter dragons weren’t actually so terrible, at least not for Raëh. People who lived in the south, in Viär and Coär and such towns tucked in against the roots of the mountains, had more reason to fear the midwinter storms that carried dragons north from the Wall of Endless Storms.

  The Wall of Endless Storms, the Wall of Winds, the Hurricane Wall . . . It had many names, that vast cyclone of black, churning winds that the Fortunate Gods had long ago created between the northern lands of the Four Kingdoms and the disastrously ruined south. Kehera knew everyone should be grateful for the Wall of Storms, but during the Iron Hinge days, the uncounted days during which the year pivoted around the long midwinter night, winter storms spun away from the Wall and came down upon the lands of men. Dragons rode those storms, ice falling like knives from the shadow of their wings; the obsidian winds streaked the sky with dark translucence. The dragons that rode those winds cried with the voices of the doomed southland, the voices of men and women and Immanences and all the creatures that had been destroyed in that cataclysm.

  Or so tales claimed; Kehera had never glimpsed a winter dragon nor heard one cry. But she had always thought it said a lot about Pohorir that one of that country’s distant kings had chosen a double-headed winter dragon to represent his country on the King Rod.

  Some people thought a tiahel cast divined the future; they thought the Fortunate Gods nudged the rods to fall in an order one might read. But certainly Kehera could not imagine what the Dragon of Pohorir might have to do with anything. She glanced over the pattern the rest of the rods had made, but saw nothing she could interpret. She told herself she hadn’t expected to. She didn’t believe in divination, anyway. But the tiahel set was like a breath of familiar air in this strange desert-scented place.

  She said in a small voice, “Eilisè? Do you really think there’s a chance we’ll see home again?”

  Her friend put the gown she’d been holding back in the wardrobe and came quickly to take Kehera’s hands. “Kehy. Of course. A chance always comes, if one holds to hope. The trick is to recognize it when the Fortunate Gods put it in your way and catch it before it’s gone. But we’ll be watching, and we’ll catch it, and we’ll get out of this and fly straight home to Raëh and everything will be fine. You’ll have bought your father the time he needs, and he’ll do something clever and crush the Mad King, and everything will go back to how it’s supposed to be.”

  Kehera nodded and said, “Yes, of course,” and tried to believe her.

  No one came for her that night, nor the next day, nor the day after that. Kehera could not imagine why Hallieth Suriytaiän was waiting, but he did not send for her. For three full days after her arrival in Suriytè, Kehera saw no one but Eilisè and a scattering of servants who would not speak to her, nor even to her companion. The Mad King sent her neither messages nor commands nor courting poems. Of course he had no need to court her, but still, his utter silence frightened her. In this unfamiliar palace in the heart of this foreign land, she would have found such a gesture reassuring, even without blue roses carved of lapis.

  Servants brought water for washing, simple meals that were always cold by the time they were carried from the kitchens, and, when asked, sewing materials. Kehera and Eilisè spent their hours altering some of the gowns that had been provided, and without quite commenting to each other about the matter, stitching some of Kehera’s pearls into the hems of a selection of the plainest dresses. Just in case.

  Kehera wished her father’s agent, Quòn, would make himself known. That would have made her feel safer even than the hidden pearls. She thought perhaps he might disguise himself as a servant and slip into the King’s Hall that way. She couldn’t think of any other way for a stranger to approach her. She looked closely at the male servants who came, but no matter how Quòn might have disguised himself, all the servants seemed too old and too stupid, and none of them whispered her father’s name to her. Kehera told herself she must be patient. She did not feel patient at all. She felt anxious and helpless and very much alone, and she was glad Eilisè was with her even though she was sorry she had let the other girl come into this strange and frightening place.

  On the morning of the twenty-eighth day of Fire Maple Month, the king sent for her at last. By that time, Kehera welcomed the summons, only so she would find out something of his intentions. He would tell her the date they would be wed, or perhaps inform her they were wed now even though there had been no ceremony. Perhaps she was only frightening herself, but three days of silence had given her a lot of time to frighten herself.

  At least now Hallieth Suriytaiän must surely give her some idea of what her life was to become here in his Hall. She did not know; she could not guess. It was better to find out, and so she was glad of the summons and willingly followed the man-at-arms.

  The man guided her by convoluted ways, along ornate corridors, past doors of carved, polished wood, and up long, curving stairways. All the corridors were deserted and all the doors closed, though sometimes Kehera thought she heard voices within the hidden rooms. Then, when she was already lost, the man led her up more stairways and along more corridors, which grew plainer as they ascended, and finally up a long spiral stairway illuminated only by the daylight let in by the narrow windows that pierced its thick walls. Even the undressed stone of this stairway was handsome: pink and cream and gold. But Kehera felt her stomach knot with dread at the silence and loneliness. She wanted to ask the man where he was taking her, whether the king in fact waited for her somewhere ahead, but she was afraid he would not respond, and more afraid that he would and that she would not want to hear his answer.

  But Hallieth Theraön Suriytaiän was there at last, in the small round chamber to which the man finally led her.

  Kehera knew the Mad King was in his sixties, but he did not look so old; clearly he had not spent himself over the years to support his Immanent Power, but had chosen instead to take strength and vigor from his land and his people. His hair was white, his lips thin and pale, but otherwise he looked like a man in his midforties. The deep lines engraved at the corners of his mouth spoke not of age, but of anger and malice. She tried not to stare at him, but he stared at her. He did not look at her as a man looks at a woman. His look was odd, almost of triumph, but not of honest triumph for a political victory gained, which Kehera could have understood. It was more the satisfaction of one who has gotten away with something wicked. She could not brin
g herself to meet his eyes, but looked around at the room instead.

  The chamber stood above the world, at the top of a slender tower. The walls were pierced all around by those slitted windows, and where there were no windows, there were long, narrow mirrors, so that all the light that came into the chamber was cast back and forth in a confusing dazzle. The air smelled close and dusty, except once again there was that strange bite of ice behind the heat and dust. She thought the cold was coming from the Emmeran king, though that made no sense.

  He said to the man, “Good. Bring her here.”

  The man gave Kehera a little shove forward, like she was too stupid to understand, like she was only an object to be pushed where real people wanted her to go. An object that had climbed all those stairs with her own feet and strength. Maybe she should have struggled and made the man carry her. But it was too late now. She thought she ought to say something, protest or ask a question or even plead, but she had no idea what to say or what she might plead for, and her mouth was so dry from the long climb and from fear that she could not speak anyway.

  Hallieth Suriytaiän reached out with one bony hand and took Kehera by the throat. When she would have backed away, his man shoved her forward and held her. The king’s fingers were cold. He stared into her face. His eyes were a strange color between brown and green, flecked with gold. His white hair was tangled; his breath was stale. He said, “Raëhemaiëth.” Then he stopped and frowned, the lines of his face deepening. “Where is Raëhemaiëth? Where is your tie, girl?”