Kate Elliott - Cold Fire

The gremlin shut its burning eyes and remained silent for so long that I bent closer, my breath visible as a shimmering glamour on its brass face.

“Remember one thing, little cat.” Its voice altered, as if someone else were speaking through its mouth. “You must have his permission to ask questions. Do not ask questions.”

A gust of wind sprinkled salt spray over my face, and I blinked. When I looked again, the latch was just a smooth brass latch. Cautiously, I touched it, but it did not bite.

“Hey, there,” I whispered.

It did not answer.

On we rolled through the restless sea-swept night. Every time a big swell struck the causeway and splashed, I flinched as droplets spattered my face. Yet I could not bring myself to close the shutters, for then I would truly feel I was in a cage.

Bee had crossed. She would find Rory. They were safe. That belief I clung to.

On we rolled, and I did not sleep.

After forever, night lightened to day. The wind-washed sea spread to a horizon so gray it was impossible to tell where the sea ended and the sky began. At first I took the pale shapes rising and falling along the swells for boats, and then I realized they were rafts of ice. I shivered and drew my coat tighter around me as the coach slowed to a halt.

The horses stamped.

A footfall clapped on stone.

I clambered out because I could not bear to sit inside for one more breath. Better to plunge into the storm than cower to await its blow.

We had come to the end of the road.

The causeway ended in a pile of rocks. Breakers boiled at their base. The gray sea was whipped by a stark wind under an iron sky. Islands of ice peaked and troughed as swells passed beneath them. The wind chapped my face, and when I licked my lips to moisten them, I tasted my own blood, for the wind’s icy claws had cut them.

“Go to your sire,” said the coachman. He pointed to a rowboat leashed to a post among the rocks, waves breaking beneath its fragile ribs. “We have brought you as far as we can.”

Once or twice in your life the iron stone of evil tidings passes from its exile in Sheol into that place just under your ribs that makes it hard to breathe. That makes you think you’re going to die, or you’re dead already, or that the bad thing you thought might happen is actually far worse than you had ever dreamed and that even if you wake up, it won’t go away.

“My sire?” I whispered, my mind recoiling.

All that was out there was cold, deadly water.

The coachman said, “Remember, he seeks what you fear most so that you come to him most vulnerable. Courage, Cousin.”

“Look for the tower,” the eru called.

My feet moved under the master’s compulsion. My heart squeezed as in a vise, I picked my way over the rocks while fixing my sword into the loop at my hip, tied three times so I wouldn’t lose it. I closed a hand around my locket as I splashed into the pebbled shore break.

“Blessed Tanit. Father and Mother. Watch over your daughter.” What hold did he have over me, the creature who had sired me and yet left me to be raised by others? Why had my mother never spoken of this? Or had she and Daniel been waiting until I was older?

The water hissed, mocking me. I stuffed the locket beneath coat, jacket, and shift, against my skin. Caught on an incoming swell, the boat slammed into my knees and I sprawled forward into it, facedown in the choke water of the bilge. I inhaled a miasma of foul brine. One of the oars whacked me on the head. I grabbed at it as the boat pitched sideways. Water sloshed in, so cold I could not breathe.

The boat came loose. It began to tip and spin as the waves brought the prow around. In a moment, I’d be swamped.

I sucked in air, battled up to the seat, and grabbed the oars. Already, impossibly, the boat had drifted a hundred paces from the pier of stone where the coach-and-four waited. If the tide of a dragon’s dream washed the spirit world now, I would be lost. Changed. Obliterated.

“Tanit protect me! Melqart grant me wisdom. Ba’al give me strength!”

I set to the oars, working the prow back around. With my back to the swells, I rowed into the sea. The prow lifted and dropped, lifted and dropped, my backside slapping on and off the seat each time. Water slurped in with each plunge.

I rowed, glancing over my shoulder as I set my sights on a nearby floe of ice that appeared as a sculpted tower. I rowed until my shoulders ached and my back throbbed. I rowed until the causeway was nothing more than a smear on the sea like a smudge of charcoal on one of Bee’s sketches that she had forgotten to erase.

The rowing kept my body warm and my boots kept my feet mostly dry, but I had begun to lose the feeling in my fingers. I could not think of the watery deeps. Instead, I thought of Bee, dragged away by a call neither of us understood. I thought of Rory, compelled to kill the enemy. I thought of Uncle Jonatan and Aunt Tilly. Of Bee’s sisters, amiable Hanan and annoying little Astraea. Of the charismatic general, Camjiata. I thought of handsome Brennan and thoughtful Kehinde, and of the trolls and their odd charm. Most strangely, I thought of my husband.

I thought: He would row beside me. He would not have left me here alone.

I was getting awfully tired of being someone else’s puppet. The salt that stung worst in my eyes was the pressure of angry tears. I was not going to give up now, even in the middle of that which I feared most. A wave crashed over the prow, and the boat sank up to its gunnels. The water embraced me with an icily heart-stopping grip.

Breathe.

In and out. That was the first thing. In and out, measured and steady. I fumbled at the buttons of my winter coat and tugged it off just as a wave plowed into my back, flinging me sideways into the merciless sea.

The ice of the water robbed me of breath. I had no air.

I dragged an arm free of the water and heaved myself over the gunnel, using the swamped boat to keep me afloat. The waves wrapped my sodden skirts around my legs. The shocking cold made my throat close and my chest tighten, and I was sure I would pass out. But I bit at the inside of my mouth until the pain brought me reeling back.

Breathe.

Kicking my way around to the stern, I pushed the boat toward the ice floe. As my legs grew inert and my heart grew numb, the shadow of the ice covered me. The boat nudged onto a shelf.

Gasping, spitting, retching, I crawled out. I had no feeling in my hands and little strength in my limbs, yet by fixing fingers onto knobs of pitted ice, I pulled myself out of the deadly water.

For a while, an eternity, I lay on the ice like a suffocating fish.

A whisper of warmth pulsed against my skin where the locket pressed between my breasts. It aroused me from my stupor. I took in a breath, salt water fouling my mouth. Shaking, I rose. I checked my sword, the loop twisted so tight my frozen fingers could not untangle it. The locket’s throbbing heat fed strength to me as I stared across the shelf toward a vertical fissure in the ice. The fissure led into blackness.

Really, what choice had I?

“Brave enough for my purpose,” said a male voice, smooth and cold. I saw no one, not a single sign of life. “Come, Daughter. I will look on you now.”

“I hate you,” I whispered to the empty ice.

He laughed, as if my squeak of outrage amused him. As if he could hear everything. And maybe he could, for would it not explain me?

Maybe that would teach me to keep my mouth shut and not speak when I ought to be silent.

My legs were as heavy as logs as I stumped into the fissure. If he hadn’t killed me by now, he might actually wish to see what manner of creature he had sired on Tara Bell. A warm breeze stirred the passage. A bell tolled three times, the vibration passing right through my flesh. I felt as if my soul were being rung to check its temper, as a person might flick a finger against a finely wrought glass vessel to see how pure the sound is.