The Coldest Sea Read online

  The flute’s notes stuttered and Maggie caught herself only through long years of training that had taught her a musician could not react to distractions. Her mind might have gone blank momentarily, but her body remembered the notes. The officers had started up, which put Dray’s unoccupied chair in her line of sight. The wood of it was worn smooth and dulled with age. So different from forests, where roots sank deep into the cool dark places of the earth while the trees’ arms reached up, whispering, to the sun.

  A soft crackle ran through the chair, like onionskin being crumpled. The seat broke out in the ridges of roots, and the stalk shot up from it, the stem of a sapling with pale green leaves unfolding from delicate branches. The fish thrashed for the last time.

  “Stop,” Vinsen said.

  He didn’t speak loudly, but the word broke the spell. Maggie jerked the flute away from her mouth with more force than she would normally have needed to use. The officers had moved well away from the table. Vinsen gave Maggie a quick look as if to make certain she wouldn’t start playing again, then turned to Joama.

  “How did you know?” he said.

  “When you mentioned rats, that reminded me of the story about them. They all followed a piper into the sea, didn’t they?”

  Evrett nodded slowly. “The dance of death. Except with Bleakhaven, that means life. Or what passes for it.”

  Holding her flute so tightly her fingers had gone numb, Maggie made herself stand. The room felt empty except for echoes, people’s voices muted next to the magic. The music. And she’d felt something when she’d played before, she’d sensed it twice and yet she hadn’t realized what it was.

  The officers watched her, but once she put her flute back in its case, they seemed to relax slightly. She touched the leaves of the sapling. Those were real, a strange note of spring in the cabin.

  I did that. “So I’m using their magic?”

  “Their Faith,” Vinsen said. “You can control it a little, with the flute.”

  Dray nodded. “If I had to guess, I’d say the Bleakhaveners used musical instruments too, when they first started learning to manipulate the Faith. It may have been easier with a tool.”

  Good to know. “I’ll keep that case closed until you—until we’re back in port.”

  If Vinsen noticed the small gaffe, he didn’t call any attention to it. “Then we can be reasonably sure they won’t rise and that nothing more will happen here unless the living Bleakhaveners attack. So before that happens, Joama? The prisoner.”

  “Yes, sir. She’ll be released at once.”

  The officers left, and Vinsen came to her, gloved fingers lifting her chin so he could kiss her. “Stay safe, Maggie,” he said, and turned to leave.

  “Vinsen, I want to go with you.”

  Maggie only knew she’d spoken when she heard her voice and saw the startled disbelief on his face. The words had come of their own accord, without conscious thought, and yet she had to do it. Vinsen was going into the heart of Bleakhavener power, and if she could affect that power a fraction, she wanted to.

  Not that he seemed about to agree gratefully. “What? Don’t be a fool.”

  Maggie bristled, but tried to stay calm. “If I have any control over this Faith, don’t you think that might be useful?”

  “It’s too dangerous.”

  “Because I’m perfectly safe here?”

  “Safer than we’re going to be.”

  Thrashing the issue out would waste time, and she didn’t want to argue with him, mostly because she’d lose any such debate. She couldn’t even explain it to herself. Her brother Darok would have loved a challenge; keeping him away from danger was like putting a pike in a fishbowl. Alyster was more cautious, but having grown up in Darok’s shadow, he would have done almost anything to prove himself.

  At that moment, though, she didn’t feel either reckless or eager to show her worth. She just didn’t want Vinsen to be harmed.

  “I wouldn’t be any good in a fight,” she said, “but if I can influence their Faith at all, I want to try.”

  “And what if they kill you?”

  A dark emptiness lay beneath his voice, a meaning she couldn’t quite make out. He wasn’t saying he cared about her, or that he’d be furious at losing someone under his command. It was something more unnerving than either, as if her death would take away the last hope he had left.

  She’d wanted to reply with, That would put a crimp in my plan to live forever, but she couldn’t. “I still want to go with you.”

  If that had betrayed her vulnerability, it cracked his mask open. His release of breath was audible and he closed his eyes as if he didn’t want her to see anything in them.

  Though he sounded normal when he looked at her again. “The ship’s likely to be attacked if they realize Joama’s trying to break her free,” he said. “That’s the only reason I’ll agree.”

  Maggie didn’t have so much as a moment of relief before he crossed the distance between them too fast for her to react. She jerked when his hands caught her shoulders—not that she could have moved away.

  “But here’s what you’re going to do.” His tone didn’t brook disagreement any more than his words did. “You will stay alive no matter what it takes and who you have to leave behind. Is that clear?”

  She managed a nod and after a moment Vinsen let her go. He turned and reached for his pack. “Damn. You don’t have a bedroll and there are none to spare.”

  Maggie cleared her throat. “I’ll share yours.”

  “Doesn’t it bother you that the men will see?”

  “Body heat is a good way to stay warm, so if they have any sense they’ll sleep together as well.”

  The harsh lines left his face. “I like your practical side. But put some more clothes on.” He paused. “Never thought I’d say that to you. And hurry. We’re leaving in a few minutes.”

  Maggie yanked her fur cloak down and flung it around her shoulders before she wrapped a scarf around her face and thrust her hands into gloves. Vinsen took a small bowl from the sideboard.

  “Close your eyes,” he said, and when she did, he swiped a cool moisture beneath each lower lid. He did the same to his face, leaving dark smudges of charcoal and grease on his skin.

  “It’ll be difficult enough without us all being snowblind.” He reached out and drew the hood of her cloak over her head. “Ready?”

  Maggie picked up her flute’s case and slung it over a shoulder to keep her hands free. “Ready,” she said, and followed him out.

  Ruay had no breath to curse the Denalaits aloud, but she hated them more with every weary step. If they were going to trail her back to Palemount, why hadn’t they at least given her some food and water to last her on the journey?

  They were following her, of course. They were nowhere in sight, and if they made any sounds, the ocean and the iceberg’s own breathing drowned those out. No, she knew it simply because there was no other reason to release her.

  But what to do? Lead them astray or let them follow her to Palemount? That could go either way—the Eldred might want the chance to deal with their enemies himself, or he might be displeased with her for bringing them to the fortress. The uncertainty wore away at her, just as exhaustion and thirst did.

  She wasn’t too cold, thanks to the exertion of trudging through snow and then climbing to a narrow pass that led between two of the ice peaks. But her legs trembled, and her breath puffed out in clouds of vapor, making her more thirsty. From the vantage point, she glanced behind, but nothing was in sight except for the trail she’d left for them to follow. If the pass had been mountainous, she would have looked for a boulder to dislodge, something that would erase her footmarks—or better yet, crush the Denalaits as they climbed up—but all was ice.

  The hair above her forehead hung in her eyes, which was the best she could do to dull the glare of sun on sn
ow. Ahead lay a great expanse of white, stretching for half a mile before it sloped up into the inner circle of peaks which guarded the heart of the ice. As if the mountains had turned to glass in her mind’s eye, she saw what lay beyond them—Stillwater Lake, a crescent of water crossed by a narrow bridge leading to the fortress. She would have given anything to be there.

  Except if she crossed a valley of snow, soft and smooth as fresh cream, a blind Denalait could follow her.

  The sweat on her body was cooling now that she had stopped to think, and she shivered. Her only other choice was to stay to the ridges of the ice peaks, taking the long and more dangerous way—

  A sigh rippled across the iceberg, a wind through a motionless void. The air above the valley shimmered, and across the valley a furrow raked itself as if an unseen hand had reached down from the sky. It left a straight clear path for her.

  “Th-thank you,” Ruay said aloud. Her voice was cracked and rasping, but that didn’t worry her as much as the sign in the snow did. For once, she didn’t thrill to see the Faith. Instead, she guessed what the Eldred would do, and she hoped it would finish matters once and for all, before the people were drained any further.

  She started down into the valley, moving carefully over a slope made treacherous by melting ice. And much as she knew the price paid for every drop of power wielded, she couldn’t help being relieved that a path had been cleared for her through the chest-deep snow. Her legs ached fiercely by the time she had crossed the valley, and her body might have been beaten with sticks. She glanced back and saw nothing, which was good too. The Denalaits would follow her, but by the time they did that, the path would be distorted by her torturous progress, rather than being a straight neat furrow. They wouldn’t be suspicious.

  And they weren’t. She crouched behind a jag of the cliff, shivering harder now but not caring as she watched the valley. The figures at the opposite end were so far she couldn’t make out anything except a dog going ahead. She ducked her head, though in the shadow of the peaks she doubted they would see her. They climbed down into the valley with agonizing slowness and began to make their way across.

  It happened swiftly, without the shimmer of the air that had warned her. The ground split along the path, as if that had weakened it in advance. A great mouth gaped, edged with raw blue ice, showing nothing but darkness within. The dog tried to scrabble away too late. The first few Denalaits disappeared into the void.

  They were all roped together, but before she could feel disappointed that they might survive, the crevasse yawned wide and swallowed the rest of them. They could climb out, though. They’d come prepared—

  The Eldred was prepared too. The edges of ice slammed together and fused so the ground was solid again, a lid far too thick to be broken through. Ruay smiled, because there was no way out of the hollows. Eventually the Denalaits would die down there in the dark, eating each other if they wanted it to last a little longer.

  That reminded her of how hungry she was. She would have chewed on a sealskin mitt if she hadn’t known what frostbitten fingers looked like. Besides, Palemount was less than a day’s journey from her. And maybe Artek would meet her before she reached it, now that the Eldred knew she was on her way.

  Raising her face to the sky, she whispered, “Thank you.” Then she turned and started out through the pass.

  Chapter Nine

  Hollows

  Merchant vessel Fallstar of Denalay trapped by Bleakhavener magic in iceberg, 41° 46’ North, 50° 14’ West. In need of immediate assistance. Payment from the Admiralty of Denalay for delivery of this message.

  Joama signed the message with her name and the date, then blew on the paper to dry it before she pushed it into the last of the glass bottles. She jammed the cork in and took the bottle topside, two more flasks tucked beneath her arms and her pockets filled as well.

  A brisk wind hit her as soon as she was out of the hatch, but it also fanned the flames from the pitch the men had spread over the icewall. With something that thick, Dray had said, they couldn’t rely simply on ballast stones to break it, so they might as well burn it first—and there was always pitch on board. That was nearly all used up now, but to Joama’s satisfaction, it made a fire so strong that fifty feet away, she felt its warmth.

  That morning a pillar of smoke had risen up from it, but now the wind was dispersing the beacon, tearing the smoke to ribbons. Didn’t matter. She had her messages, five of them. One was sure to be found.

  “Elyot,” she said to the man in charge of the catapult. “Use an oven-stone first, make sure you’ve got the angle right.” She had no intention of wasting any of her precious glass bottles, smashing it on the icewall.

  The men nodded, and once the stone flew over the wall, Joama sent the first bottle after it herself. She felt better when all her messages had been launched, bread cast upon the waters. Fallstar was probably too far north for Seawatch’s eyes and ears to find the bottles, but there were other ships—freighters and whalers and fishing trawlers. Someone would find them.

  Or at least carry home the news of what happened to us. Then she shook her head. She couldn’t afford to waste time brooding. From the look of the fire, it wouldn’t last much longer.

  The wind seemed infinite, though. She felt like a dog on a chain; they should have been riding that wind, running before it, and yet the sails were furled. But they’d be free soon. She had ordered the men to bring up a few of the heavy stones kept in the hold as ballast, to serve as catapult-shot, but she made sure ropes were tied around those so they could be hauled back and reused after they were flung. Otherwise the catapult crew would run out of shot long before they smashed through the wall. Unbalancing the ship by using her ballast as projectiles wasn’t part of the plan.

  Dray came up to the deck with a mug of steaming broth for her, and Joama took it gratefully. He stood beside her, but didn’t seem to notice the first stone being loaded into the catapult, because he was too busy watching the ice cliffs on the ship’s other side. Joama hoped he wouldn’t say anything about a dozen of the crew, not to mention the dog and Captain Solarcis, being left behind.

  “Let fly,” she said, and the catapult’s cup snapped up with a whack. The stone smashed into the blackened, oozing icewall with a solid crunch.

  If she had been hoping for it to fall to pieces, she would have been disappointed, but the men were already reeling the first stone back in and loading the second. She drank her broth, watching as stone after stone whipped out at the wall, fell with a splash and was hauled up. The wall was starting to crack, she saw with satisfaction.

  The wind had grown stronger, though, hissing through the ice cliffs before it poured down on them. Fallstar rocked in the water and what was left of the rigging swayed like a cobweb.

  Bleakhavener magic. She looked around, trying to anticipate the direction it would come from. The catapult crew noticed, but she rapped out an order at them to keep moving. Ice crunched, the sound almost drowned beneath the wind. Where are you? She would have taken any Bleakhavener in a fight, but this was—

  The wind howled like a wolf, and when it came at them from the cliffs, it brought a cloud of ice particles with it. The men crouched, shielding their faces, though one of them bolted for the hatch. Fallstar shifted, and he sprawled flat across the deck. Joama flung her arms around the nearest mast and Dray grabbed a clew line.

  The air around the ship shimmered and turned solid. Each fleck of crystal whirring through the wind grew to a chunk of ice, and those melded together. Fallstar went still.

  Joama straightened up, unable to believe what had happened. The wind was gone. The world was gone. Fallstar floated inside a translucent dome so close around the ship that if Joama had shimmied out on the bowsprit, she could have reached out and touched smooth ice.

  We’re a ship in a bottle. She was no engineer, so she didn’t know if the dome was too close, if the catapult’s projec
tiles wouldn’t build up enough speed before they smashed into it—and how much longer would it take to smash a way out now? They would run out of air first.

  The sound was louder than a whipcrack.

  The ground rippled below Maggie’s feet, as if the iceberg was a living thing that had stirred from sleep. Someone in the lead let out a hoarse shriek. Vinsen was before her in a single-file line, so she couldn’t see anything, but the sharp splitting sound went on, and panic ran through the line. Behind her, Jak stumbled, trying to get back. Vinsen pivoted and buried the head of a pickax in the ice beneath them with a thunk.

  The rope around her waist jerked taut. Maggie flailed her arms to catch herself, but her foot came down on a patch of slippery ice. She couldn’t scream; all the breath was knocked out of her when she landed on her back. Any pain vanished in a surge of terror as the rope tightened and dragged her forward against Vinsen. He staggered, but gripped the pickaxe and closed his other hand around the hood of her cloak.

  Beneath them, the ground groaned and was gone. Maggie felt it draw away from under her as she scrabbled desperately for a handhold. Snow came away between her fingers. She had one glimpse of the blue spread of sky above her, and then she fell, trying to twist around to see what was beneath her. Darkness and wheeling air.

  The impact was darker. It blasted all the light from her eyes. There was a faint high hum in her ears, and she tried to call out to Vinsen, but just breathing was all the effort she could make. The darkness was thicker than velvet, and it wrapped close around her so she didn’t feel the cold, only a marrow-deep weariness and longing to rest.

  No. In the back of her mind, she remembered what had happened, how deep they had dropped. Working her elbows beneath her, she raised herself a little off the ground.

  The rope was uncomfortably tight around her, but it was the only indication that she wasn’t alone in—in—wherever she was. When she looked up, she might have been staring at a slab of obsidian. Not so much as a sliver of light indicated the mouth of a crevasse.