Winterspell (26 page)

Soldiers hurried into action, shouting foreign commands. The nobility ducked, screaming, covering their glittering coiffed heads. The humans screamed as well; some held up their hands, threw themselves onto the floor in supplication, but others laughed and took the opportunity to snatch goods from unmanned carts.

Clara looked to the door. The soldier had gone.

She took one last frantic look at the lothouse floor. Various stalls caught fire as the explosions continued, scattered throughout the building. One singed metal flake of a kambot feather floated down from the ceiling to fall at Clara's feet.

On edge, stretched thin with fear, Clara smiled anyway.
Bo, I could kiss you.

She turned to the door, fumbled at the latch with her pick, wiping the sweat from her eyes. When she thought she had it, the latch began
shifting
, right there beneath her fingers, with a roiling black hiss.

Faery magic.
The door had been enchanted.

She recoiled and, through her alarm, felt something
else
building inside her. It was cold and piercing, the same sudden force from her nightmare, when winter had torn through her blood and turned everything blazing. The same sudden force from the doomed train.

It burst out of her like a fist, this energy, and threw her against the wall. She sagged there, clutching her throat, coughing for air. Something was inside her; something was
crawling
. She was choking like she would turn inside out . . . and then it was gone. It left her, like a storm brimming in and out of existence.

Where the lock had been, there was now a hole, steaming softly, its edges charred. When she touched the surrounding metal, she hissed; it was cold to the touch.

As impossible as it seemed, there was no denying it. She had done this.

How
was another question. Understanding hovered at the edge of her awareness. If she only had some time to think, to stay in this moment with the chills still prickling her skin, she could find an answer.

But she had no time. The lothouse remained chaotic, but it would not take long for the faeries to regroup. So Clara pushed aside her curiosity with a pang of foreboding and slipped through the doorway.

The chromocast station was a tiny room, walls filled with multicolored panels—the chromocasts, as Clara now knew they were called—and enough space for a faery soldier to stand in the middle of them.

Pushing hair out of her eyes, not caring if she smeared Karras's paint, Clara scanned the flickering screens. On some of the screens, bright blue faery symbols scrolled in patterned groups. Letters, words. It was gibberish to her, and she ignored it in favor of the chromocasts displaying images—dozens of them, hundreds, shifting quickly from one to the next. Bo had suspected, thanks to the common gossip and her own patchy observations, that the screens in these stations transmitted images recorded by the kambots, and that seemed to be the case. Clara saw images from the viewpoints of birds—the tops of buildings, undercarriages of the elevated trains. Roadways, frozen meadowlands, beggar citizens, the slums of Zarko; crowded streets, the interiors of other lothouses and various rooms, someone's bedroom, someone's sitting room—
there.

A flash of red, a blurred, bent figure that could have been a man. But then it was gone, that image flickering to the next.

Clara cried out in frustration. She couldn't have much more time. Outside, the noise seemed quieter, though she did not know if this was truth or her own fear. Refusing to blink, she willed the images on the chromocast to cycle back around. Each second seemed an hour. Each second sent the fear in her heart spiraling more feverishly out of control, but then—there! Yes, a red head, a bent figure; a dark room, one lonely window, out of which . . . Was that falling snow?

The image passed, and Clara decided she would wait one more
cycle. One more, and then she would leave, and if all she knew was that there was a man who
might
be her father kept in a room that
might
be located in an area where it was snowing, it would be more information than she had had that morning. Of course, it could have been a trick, or not him at all, or her own wishful thinking projecting false hopes.

She waited, so tense that her shoulders ached . . . and then there it was again. Her palm slapped against the screen, as if grabbing it could keep it there.

And it
did
. Around it the other screens continued on their cycling patterns, but this one, this image of the bent-looking man, remained still, quivering with energy. Clara squinted, taking in as much detail as she could. A dark, jagged-looking room, elaborate architecture embellished with ironwork; a pallet on the floor; a window, and a blizzard outside it. The image of the man himself was fuzzy, but he
did
have red hair, and a blurred shape that seemed John Stole–size. She could see no visible wounds upon him, but he wasn't moving. She hoped he was simply unconscious.

She hoped she was not insane for allowing herself to believe, even for an instant, that the distorted image now branded into her mind was anything relevant to her search. It was an outlandish hope, naive. And yet she could not let it go.

Nor could she stay here. Peeling her hand from the screen was torment, but she did it, slipped back outside with her palm held to her chest as though it cradled her father inside. After she had shut the door behind her, she thought belatedly to look for the guard. It did not matter. Bedlam still reigned outside. Clara moved through it, outside, and eastward down an avenue that smelled of bodies and blood and spiced meat. Her skin still prickled strangely, and the image of the burned-away lock lingered at the edge of her thoughts, frightening her, but she couldn't think about that now. Not now, not yet. Not
ever
, if she could help it.

When she reached the rendezvous point, a shop outside which Afa and Nicholas browsed through an assortment of elaborate smoking pipes, she did not even stop to say hello or to acknowledge the shopkeeper, a young human girl with chains at her ankles who smiled shyly. Numb, newly heartsick, she went straight to Nicholas, ignored his exclamation of relief, and leaned into his chest. When his arms came around her, when he whispered her name, Clara was glad, for beneath Karras's perfumes, he smelled faintly of Godfather's shop, and of home.

B
o was to meet them back at the pleasure-house, and by the time she finally slipped through the common room's beaded curtain, minutes before curfew, Clara was sick with worry and Nicholas had been pacing a hole in the carpet.

Afa hurried to her and fell to her knees. “Dear sister, dear, brave,
stupid
sister. Your soul surely must have struck a deal with Zoya herself. Where have you been?”

“Faeries caught me. Seemed to think I might've had something to do with the lothouse incident. They didn't know me from any of the other wretches running around, but they were right angry. Needed someone to pummel. And I got caught in the crowd, besides.” Bo shrugged, but the movement made her wince. Already-darkening bruises marred her face, and dried blood spotted her hands. “Good thing I'm not a doxy, eh? Doesn't matter much what I look like.”

“Oh, Bo—” Clara said, starting to apologize, but Bo cut her off.

“How did everything play out? Did you find what you needed?”

“Afa and I met a party leaving for the underground at dusk the day after tomorrow,” Nicholas said, grave as he inspected Bo's wounds. “A group of four. Three men and a woman. They're headed for Hub 13. If we wish to join them, we're to meet them at Krezentia House.”

“None of them recognized Nicholas, even after I'd wiped off a bit
of his face.” Afa was still on her knees, still cradling Bo as though she were a precious thing. “But then he sang, and their faces, the way they smiled . . . I think . . . Sister, this might be what we've been hoping for. It might be
change
.”

Nicholas looked dubious. “A possible beginning, anyway. I hope they don't go gossiping to their friends. Our goal here is not to start a rebellion or to initiate great social change. The populace is too disjointed for that, too weak. It would be snuffed out before it truly began. Stealth and secrecy are the best hope.” He glanced at Clara. “For both of us.”

She tried to return his smile, but it felt ungainly, the day's events heavy in her mind.

Bo settled herself gingerly on a settee. “What did you find out?”

Clara repeated what she had already told Nicholas and Afa, describing every last detail of what she had seen on the chromocast. An urge to describe the lock's destruction itched at her, but she resisted, and the swallowed words stewed ominously. After she had finished, everyone looked grim.

Bo sighed. “Well, that's not much help, is it?”

“No.” Clara felt foolish, having now told her story twice. It was so little to go on, such a thin hope. “It might have been him. It might not have. It could have been a false image, or someone else entirely.”

“Let's assume it was him,” Nicholas said firmly, “and that he's being held farther north. Maybe one of the northern districts. Maybe Wahlkraft itself.”

Afa agreed. “Even now, you don't see blizzards in the southern lands.”

“Even now?” said Clara.

“It's been damn icy cold here, ever since the mages died,” Bo said. “Worse, of course, the farther north you go. We like to think it was another, you know”—she made a rude, unfamiliar gesture that Clara nevertheless understood plainly—“to the faeries. They hate the cold. Can't say I blame them.”

Afa had risen to her feet, hands clasped tightly at her waist. Her
eyes did not leave her sister, and Clara understood. If Clara returned home—no,
when
she did, with her father safely in tow—she doubted she would ever again let Felicity out of her sight.
That
development would certainly put Felicity in a terrific mood.

“We will discreetly spread the word about your father, Clara,” Afa said, “and relay anything we find to you and Nicholas through the underground. Not always a reliable way to communicate, but it's the best we have.”

Clara smiled gratefully at her and turned to Nicholas. “Well, it seems we must head north, then.”

He inclined his head. “Do you mind keeping me company for a bit longer, Miss Stole?”

“Have I a choice?”

A flicker on his face. Or perhaps it was the shift of shadows. “You always have a choice.”

She almost laughed. Choice. Perhaps she did always have one, yes. But when the choice was between two terrible things—between a father and a sister, between the peril of a pleasure-house and the unknown of a strange land—she wasn't sure it could truly be called something as hopeful as
choice
. Rather, it seemed like a wager, with both paths leading to something dire. But perhaps one would not be quite as traumatic as the other, and that was how you made your decision, for that perilous chance.

Afa suggested they turn in for the night, and the relief at her suggestion was palpable. Before Bo could slip away, Clara caught her shoulders and knelt before her. She forced herself to look at the ugly bruise blossoming on Bo's right cheek. It wasn't terrible; it could have been much worse.

Bewildered, Bo put a hand to Clara's forehead, as though feeling for fever. “Are you ill? Karras spike your coffee or something?”

“I'm sorry you were hurt,” Clara whispered. Bo's slender arms in her hands were so like Felicity's, so readily snappable, like a twig under
pressure. And the nearness of Bo, her composure and good cheer, despite what had happened to her . . . it was too like Felicity, too horribly, wonderfully like her.

“Oh.” Bo waved her off. “It's really not—”

“Truly. I am. Promise me you won't take a risk like that again. Not for me.”

Bo raised her eyebrows. “You did hear what we've been talking about, right? You understand what's about to happen? Sorry to say, but missions such as these go hand in hand with risk.”

“Just promise me. No more risks like that, not for me. For Nicholas or Afa, if you choose to, but not for me.” Carefully Clara hugged her close. She smelled of Cane, of Pascha House, but also of girl, too-small-to-have-to-endure-such-things girl.

“All right,” Bo said with an awkward pat. “I promise.”

It was a selfish treat to hold her, to pretend her arms were Felicity's, so Clara let her go.

* * *

Later Clara lay in bed counting.

It had been two days since she and Nicholas had arrived in Cane, which meant, according to her rough Cane-to-Beyond ratio, that twelve hours had passed at home. A short amount of time, it seemed at first consideration, but that left a mere six and a half days in Patricia Plum's ultimatum.

Six and a half days. Twenty-six days here in Cane to navigate the underground, to somehow pass through the impassable Rieden, to sneak past whatever guarded Wahlkraft. And then what if her father wasn't there after all, or they were intercepted before reaching the capital? Anything could happen between here and there.

Twenty-six days might not be enough. She tossed and turned, restless with the thought.

“How is Bo?” came Nicholas's voice from across the room, startling her.

“Fine. Hurt, but not badly. Of course she won't admit it.”

A long pause. “I could cheerfully kill them for doing that to her.”

“I could too. Maybe not cheerfully, but readily.”

“I think it might be cheerful, for me.”

Clara turned on her side to face him. In the dimness she could make out his form across the room on his low cot, staring at the ceiling. She watched his somber profile, followed the troubled shadows playing across his face in the candlelight.

“Have you ever cut something open,” he whispered at last, “while it was still alive?”