by Aria Noble
Maybe the money had no value. It was the most sensible option.
Eli poured the coins back into the bag. “Maybe they have enough. They can afford to be generous.”
“You think it’s generosity?”
“There’s been no reason to think otherwise. Maudie’s been nothing but friendly.”
“She doesn’t worry you?”
“No.”
“But that smile? It’s so … unnatural.”
“She’s being friendly.” He let out a breath. “Why are you always so quick to assume the worst in people? Not everyone is out to take advantage of you. And this is Frost. They can afford it.”
“I’m not arguing with you about this again.”
“Good. Because I don’t want to, either.” He walked over to the other side of the room, pushing open a door they hadn’t looked through when they came into the room. “Oooh,” he whispered, more like a sigh than a word, then glanced over his shoulder and smiled. “I found the beds.”
“I’m going to go for a walk. See what I can find out.”
She wondered if she’d be allowed to leave the building, if Maudie or a guard or someone would try to stop her. Surely there were guards around. Surely there was someone watching them to make sure they weren’t here to steal or make trouble in the city.
“Okay,” Eli answered. His attention was back on the room that apparently held the beds. He stepped inside.
Ember followed, disconcerted by his lack of concern. It had become something of a theme with him these last few days. The other room did have beds; three of them, in fact, spaced evenly along the back wall of the room. To the right, the glass wall from the main room continued, and Ember wondered if there was anywhere in this apartment that wasn’t potentially visible from the outside.
That’s how she would keep an eye on them, she decided. By watching them through the glass walls.
Eli flopped onto the bed nearest the glass and snuggled himself down under a thick, bright white blanket. He’d kicked off his boots at some point while they’d been on the couch, and she could see the small mound in the blanket that must’ve been made by his toes, wriggling like he was rolling his ankles beneath the blanket. His head sunk into the thick white pillows at the head of the bed, so far that it practically disappeared. He closed his eyes and smiled blissfully at nothing.
“So. I’m going to leave now.”
“Don’t get lost.”
Ember scoffed. She knew how to make her way around a place.
She sensed that he was mostly calling her bluff, but now that she’d made the bluff, she was curious. Would they let her leave? Was she free to walk out of this room, down the spiral staircase, and out into the open streets?
Eli cracked open one eye. “You still here?”
Ember straightened. “If I’m not back by sunset, then you can assume I’ve been harvested for meat.”
The eye closed. “Will do.”
She lingered another moment, waiting for him to say something else, but he only rolled onto his side, his breaths already steadying into the rhythm of sleep.
She turned away, grabbed the little bag of coins, and emptied it into her pant pockets where they should be safe beneath the hem of her shirt. She grabbed the bulky knitted sweater from where she’d left it on the floor near the couch, leaving the thermals because she recalled on coming into the city that she’d begun to sweat with the thermals on — she hadn’t bothered yet to take off her boots — then went to the door and tried the handle.
She still expected it to resist her, despite the fact that it had been unlocked every time she’d seen it tried. But no, just as it had the other times, the knob turned without resistance, the door opened, and Ember stepped out into the hallway.
Chapter Six
She walked down the hall with light steps, doing her best to minimize the thud of her heavy boots on the rug-lined floor. She passed several doors in the hallway, and all seemed silent behind each one.
No one met her in the hall.
She went down the stairs. Her boots thudded much louder on the metal stairs than they had across the rugs, but again, no one seemed to be around to hear her and wonder why the stranger was clomping down the steps.
The ground floor of the building was as quiet and empty as the upper floor had seemed to be. Ember felt her skin prickling. This was supposed to be a great city — from what she was able to see out of the building’s glass sides, it was a great city, the greatest in all that was left of the world. So why was this building, and indeed this entire street, so empty? She pictured Dusk on the rare occasion that the sun came out; it became a hub of noise and activity, people trying to soak up what little light and warmth they could hope for and taking advantage of that light and warmth to air out clothes and tidy homes as best they could.
But the street outside the building appeared as quiet and empty as the building itself. Ember set her fingers on the handle of the room’s glass door and steeled herself for this one to be locked, for her to have finally found the catch in all this supposed hospitality. But the door swung inward when she pulled, and a light breeze, colder than the air inside the building but warmer than any breeze she’d ever known, swirled through the open door as if the air itself was trying to prove her suspicions unfounded.
“Alright,” she said, out loud in case the guards that ought to be watching her were merely hiding out of her sight. “I’m leaving now.” She set one foot firmly across the threshold and outside of the building.
No one jumped out from some hiding place to stop her and haul her back to the room upstairs. The building and the street remained still and quiet.
She brought her other foot out of the building. The door closed behind her with a soft hiss like a near-silent exhalation.
Ember walked away from the building, her eyes continuously scanning the space around her, still waiting for someone to tell her to stop, she couldn’t leave the apartment or be out in the streets. Every moment that nothing of the sort happened, she felt her anxiety rising.
It couldn’t be this simple. She couldn’t possibly be allowed to wander the streets. She was a stranger, an outsider, and Frost was the most glorious city in the world — there was no way someone wasn’t watching her.
But nothing hindered her as she continued to step away from the building and out into the quiet streets.
As she stepped out of the shadow of the building, she felt the sun hit her full on her exposed face and hands. She held out one hand, turned the palm up toward the sun, and tried to soak in the feeling. The light seemed to shimmer faintly blue on the rough skin of her palm; when she glanced up in the direction of the sun, she could see the whole sky shimmering in just that same way, with the same faintly-blue sheen that had first attracted her attention to the place.
A force field. Ember had never seen one, but she’d read about them in the books her father had cherished. She stared up at the sky for a while, marveling.
That must be how the streets of Frost stayed clear and warm. She tried to remember what she knew about force fields: they were a lot like thermals, but for the air, trapping and reflecting heat that was generated from inside them, and they took some very large and sophisticated machines to create and maintain. Machines that could’ve only been made Before. Machines that were modeled on the great Engine itself, and that only a handful of select scientists had ever even begun to understand.
Ember followed the arc of the force field as far in every direction as she could see it. As best she could tell, it seemed to cover the entirety of the city. She gaped, struggling to imagine the size and power of the machines that must keep up such a large field.
What she wouldn’t give to see such machines, to look at them and try to understand how they worked.
Eventually, unable to tell where the force field began or ended, and her neck and eyes aching from the strain of looking up and trying to see something that kept shimmering out of sight the moment she thought she actually could see the field,
she started onward down the street.
The streets here were laid out in neat squares. She’d noticed it when Maudie had brought them in from the door. The street she was on ran approximately parallel to the wall she and Eli had first seen, though she was only able to determine that based on her memory of how Maudie had brought them in, since the wall itself was hidden behind the buildings that crowded either side of the street. There were other equally straight-looking streets that intersected at regular intervals with the one she was on, and the intersections made what looked to her like perfect ninety-degree angles to each other.
After two blocks, after she was far enough away from the building she’d been in that she was sure anyone from there wouldn’t be able to see her, but before she lost sight of it entirely, she paused and let out a breath. So far, no one seemed to care that she was out of her room.
So far, it didn’t look like anyone was following her.
Ember scanned the intersection she was at so she’d be able to recognize it again when she came back. The buildings all looked remarkably the same, both as each other and as the building she and Eli were staying in: many times taller than any building she’d ever seen, though not as tall as the smooth ice — or maybe it was also glass? — wall they’d come through. Most of them were made of thick glass, at least at the front and sides visible from the streets, and the sunlight sparked blindingly off of them, making Ember’s unprotected eyes water when she looked at them for too long. The streets were quiet, empty of people. But at the northeastern corner of the intersection, there was a building with a worn wooden sign hanging over its glass door. The sign was painted black, and in golden script letters it said “Queen’s Cross Cafe.”
Ember pulled in and let out a breath. That seemed unique and memorable enough that she would recognize it again when she saw it. She tugged the hem of her sweater down over the opening of the pocket to limit the chances that someone would be able to snatch her rubuls from her without noticing, and turned left down the street that she hoped would take her away from the edge of the city.
People began appearing just three blocks later, and though their presence heightened Ember’s attention to what was happening around her, it also eased the anxiety she’d been feeling as she was forced to wonder if Frost was empty or abandoned. But, no. There were people here, and lots of them — though why she’d had to go so far to find them was a question she stashed away to puzzle at later. They were all dressed as impractically as Maudie. The women wore light sleeveless dresses that barely covered their knees and wide-brimmed hats without any ear protection. The men were a little less ridiculously dressed — at least their pants went down to their ankles, though most of them still had bared shoulders and the same sorts of wide-brimmed hats that couldn’t possibly keep their heads warm. But none of them seemed to much notice or care that they were dressed like there was no chance of them losing their limbs to the cold; they strolled down the streets, talking and laughing with each other, or hurried from one intersection to the next. Some came in and out of the buildings along the sides of the street clutching bags made of paper and cloth to their chests.
Ember walked, joining in the general direction of the crowd. She kept expecting to hear someone point her out, demand to know what a stranger was doing in their midst, maybe even to grab her and stick a knife in her belly to harvest her meat — not that she’d be good pickings, especially compared to most of the people around her, but it was something she was so used to watching out for that she would probably never be able to turn it off no matter what happened or where she lived.
There wasn’t a lot of cannibalism in Dusk, but it happened often enough to keep everyone wary of strangers in a crowd.
But no one seemed to give her more than a quick second glance. She saw heads turn toward her on occasion, maybe once with every few dozen people she passed, but when she met those people’s eyes, they only smiled wide and nodded at her like she was an old acquaintance they couldn’t quite recognize, then turned away and kept doing whatever they had been doing before.
Ember wasn’t sure what to make of this reaction. On one hand, it seemed friendly and innocuous, not worth the way it caused her heart to thunder in her ears and her fingers to curl into ready fists each time; on the other, it was too strange for her to ignore.
Why was everyone in Frost so eager to let her go about whatever she was doing? Why was no one more suspicious of her?
Why was no one watching her?
She tried to shake off the worry that was morphing into paranoia inside her. Maybe Eli was right, and people in Frost were so used to being comfortable that they could afford trust and generosity.
But that thought only irked her more. She wasn’t ready to concede the point to Eli and his foolish lack of suspicion.
There was something going on inside this city, something that made Ember’s skin prickle every time another person looked at her and smiled as wide as Maudie. It wasn’t natural for people to be so accepting, so unconcerned, about a stranger in their midst — especially since, according to Maudie, Frost rarely had any visitors.
The flow of the crowd pulled her down a few more streets, all of them packed with buildings and people moving in and out of those buildings. Food smells began to catch her attention after another block: warm meats and drinks, spicy, savory scents that she had no words for. Inside the glass walls of one large, squat building, she saw rows and rows of food of all different colors and shapes and sizes. People moved through the rows, ran their fingers across the slatted wooden boxes that held the food, picked up the individual items and squeezed or sniffed them, then dropped them into large bags or set them back in the boxes they’d come from.
Ember’s mouth watered, but she didn’t dare go into the place for the fear — probably exaggerated, but still plenty real — that leaving the crowd on the streets would be all the invitation someone would need to sneak up behind her to rob or kill her. While she was in the crowd, though she could feel along every inch of her from hat to boots how she stood out, there were enough people around that she could disappear if she needed to. Separating herself from the main crowd on the streets would make her stand out that much more.
So she let the motion of the people around her pull her away from the sight of all that food, pass another intersection, and deposit her into a space where the buildings pushed back and the street opened up into a large rectangular space defined on three sides by the buildings and on the fourth and far side by a massive palace that seemed to be made almost entirely of tall, thin spires of clear bluish ice.
Ember’s footsteps flagged and paused as she found herself facing the palace. It was so large and so near that she couldn’t take it all in at once; she had to turn her head left, right, and up to see it completely. Some of the spires reached so high that they almost became obscured by the wavering bluish gleam of the force field.
The general flow of the crowd broke up as it spilled into the space. Many people continued straight forward, toward the palace and what Ember guessed were the front doors of the building, but equally many people split off the main stream to go to the other buildings around the edges of the space, or to the middle where there was a great sculpture sparkling in the dimming sunlight.
Ember wandered over to the sculpture, though her eyes remained mostly on the palace. Still, she was able to see the sculpture all at once, and that comforted her. It was a woman dressed in a dress similar in shape and cut to those worn by the women in the city. She held a long, thin spear raised in one hand, and curled at her feet was some kind of great monster, a beast with a thick body and tusks that curled from its mouth to almost the back of its head. On the base of the sculpture were words dug into the glass and worn almost completely away by the gentle swipes of the fingers of passersby. Ember could only just make out the words clearly enough to read. “Our mother Atalanta, hero and explorer. May she forever keep us safe from the monsters Beyond.”
It seemed a strange place for an altar to Atalan
ta. Still, the statue, clear bluish glass, with the spear lifted in triumph over her head and the dead beast at her feet, cut an imposing figure in front of the palace.
“This is nothing,” said a male voice from just behind Ember’s right shoulder. “You should see it in the moonlight.”
Chapter Seven
Ember yelped and spun around to face the attacker. One of her hands went around his throat even as the other scrambled for the knife she usually carried tucked into the waistband of her pants. But her groping hand found only air and her thick knit sweater, and she remembered in another flash of near-panic that she’d taken the knife out when she’d shed her layers in the apartment.
How could she have been so stupid to step out of the room without her knife? She was in a strange city where she knew nothing and no one. If this stranger robbed her or dragged her into an alley to cut her up for meat, she might almost deserve it for being so unprepared to defend herself.
“Whoa, easy!” The other person lurched back, apparently surprised by the way she rounded on him. His hands came up in front of him, palms out and fingers splayed to prove he wasn’t carrying a weapon. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Ember narrowed her eyes. “Who are you? Why were you following me?”
His hair was orange, a surprising pop of color in the white and faintly-blue space around her. She’d never seen hair that color before.
“Not following,” he said, swallowing hard around the fingers at his throat. She wasn’t squeezing, but it was clear by the shock in his face he understood that she could. “I just got here myself. From Fourth Street.”
He said the name with significance, as though he expected her to recognize it. As though it proved he wasn’t following her.
As the initial burst of panic eased, Ember began to see more of him. He was about her age, maybe just older, taller than her by a head, and dressed like the dozens of other Frost men in the square, though without the hat. A strap of a small cloth bag was slung over one shoulder, and the bag itself was half full of some of those brightly colored, roundish foods in the building she’d passed a few intersections down. His accent was like Maudie’s: fast and liquid, sounds eager to escape before their predecessors had been fully formed.