February 9, ‘91 (3 Years Before the Fire)

Farisa sat up in bed. The house was asleep, and the radiators were throwing copious heat, so she had turned up her sleeves. She heard a tremolo, the call of a screech owl from a high branch, but the night was otherwise dead quiet. Stray light, reflected once by the moon and again by fallen snow, sufficed for her to see the thin scar on her naked left shoulder. She’d had it for more than half a year, and it still ached.

She had acquired the scar, as well as one of Raqel’s pencil drawings, just twelve days before the Summer Market bombing, though the context of the portrait went about a month further back, into May. The streets were bright into the evening hours, but one needed a jacket to go outside after dinner. Farisa and Raqel, in a moment that felt preciously normal, were double-checking their appearances in Raqel’s bedroom mirror before going out to one of those cabaret shows—one had to be seventeen to enter, but this was a big enough town that no one remembered anyone’s age—on Agba Avenue that began exactly five minutes after eleven.

“I’m almost ready,” Raqel said as she applied makeup. “I just have to do the other eye.”

Farisa said, “I wish I could do that.”

“Do what?”

“Raise only one eyebrow.”

Raqel’s left eyebrow went up, then the right one. “You can’t?”

“No, I never got it to work. See?” Farisa tried to raise one brow, but both went up, and arched lines crossed her forehead. “I raise one, the other goes… bloop!”

“You’re so cute, Farisa.”

“Cute? I’m sixteen, and I have forehead wrinkles.”

“Everyone does when they make that face.” Raqel stepped back. She had, as she so often did, the studious expression of an artist taking memory of shadows, angles and hues.

Farisa half-smiled. She didn’t understand how Raqel could look at her, see every feature in replicable detail, but perceive not a single flaw. “Not everyone.”

Beth, in the adjacent reading room, snickered. “Honey, worry about lines when you get to my age. And then don’t worry all that much, because what can you do?”

“Such an eavesdropper,” Raqel said. “She hears everything.”

“So....” Farisa smiled. She’d be ecstatic to look like Beth Ahava in her forties; she’d be ecstatic to live to see forty at all. “Do I look good enough that you won’t be embarrassed to be seen with me?”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Raqel said. “You’re stunning.”

Farisa scratched her arm. “Of course you would say that.”

“Listen to my daughter,” Beth shouted through the wall. “She’s going to be a famous artist one day.”

“Mom, stop that!”

So, about a month later—still before June 25, so Beth was out at a poetry reading, but it was hot now—she had been in Raqel’s room again while Farisa read one of Beth’s novels and her best friend painted a still life of a bowl of strawberries. On the way to the kitchen, for a glass of water, Farisa noticed a pencil drawing of herself on Raqel’s desk. In black and white, she looked over a bare shoulder, and the drawing matched her, line for line, down to the folds of her neck and the tiny mole of her chin. One of Farisa’s eyebrows, in the precise expression she had found impossible, was raised.

“Oh, I love this,” Farisa said. “It’s perfect.”

“I made a mistake,” Raqel said. “There shouldn’t be this—”

“The scar? It’s an improvement,” Farisa said.

The portrait had given her a thin scar along the curve of her shoulder. Farisa preferred to see herself and be seen as Raqel did, so she let a tiny bolt of electricity connect her finger and opposite upper arm, leaving a mark on her skin she would wear proudly, forever.

Raqel’s mouth opened in surprise.

Farisa walked to the window, turned around and looked back. “Can I have it?”

Raqel pursed her lips. “Yes, under one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“We spend enough time together that I can make another.”

That had all been in a different world, a different season, a time of promise. She was only—she had gotten out of bed and was sitting on a cold window seat—four miles north of Raqel’s home, but already felt the distance of tens or hundreds of miles that would come between them when Claes arrived and she could safely be moved again. No one else was in the room, and Farisa’s eyes watered, but she repressed the coming of tears, because seventeen was too old for that.

She had gone downtown yesterday, despite Arvi and Skaya’s stiff request not to leave the house. She dressed herself in one of those form-denying robes that conservative older Ignae wore—the opposite of Lorani, they covered everything except feet... and hands, and sometimes the face, but in winter would have been wearing boots and gloves and scarves as well, so she did. She needed to see Raqel, because so much had gone unresolved and the matter had left a phantom taste in her mouth that could not be swallowed away.

Farisa found her in a small park. Snow was falling and all the street lamps were on, although it was noon. She opened her veil to show herself, but Raqel averted her gaze and walked away. Farisa caught up.

“I’m not sure I have anything to say to you,” Raqel said.

“Is Beth—?”

“She’s fine. She’s alive. She’s no worse than she was before you.”

“Is she better, though?”

“She is,” Raqel started to say. “She still struggles sometimes, but she’s more like who she used to be.”

Farisa shrugged. “Isn’t that good?

“You didn’t tell me this would put the whole town in an uproar. People are now.... You know what? It doesn’t matter.”

Farisa stepped to face Raqel directly. “The Globbos are your father’s fault, not mine.”

“You’re such a child.”

Farisa grabbed Raqel’s knapsack and opened it, scattering all her expensive pencils, and then stomped on them, breaking quite a few, before realizing that she had drawn too much attention to herself, causing her to run away and come back here.

I should have never gone out. She called me a child and I proved her right. That will be her last memory of me.

She pictured the broken pencils under half a foot of new snow. She went back to bed and closed her eyes, dozing for a while.

The bedroom door opened. Umrah had nosed it open.

The old doctor followed. “You’re awake?”

Farisa nodded. “What time is it?”

“It’s two o’clock,” Arvi said. “Claes is downtown. He’ll be up here in a few hours, so get packed if you haven’t already.”

“I...” Farisa started. “I’m not sure I should go with him.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“I mean that...” Everywhere I go, goes up in flames. She had tried to help Beth; she had drawn Globbo attention to an entire city. “It might be better to keep hiding in one place, rather than ruin another one.”

“Dear,” said Skaya’s voice from the dim hallway. “That would be a waste of your talents.”

“I have read Claes’s plan,” Arvi said. “If your idea is to hide, then his is better. I know where he intends to take you, and I think you’ll like it.

Farisa, making sure her feet stayed hidden under blankets, sat up. In the Far North climate—she would miss it, she was beginning to realize—where the sun’s rules changed by the season, a day started whenever one decided it did, and two in the morning was as good a time as any. “Let’s hear it.”

#

She had not seen Claes since the age of seven, and so she could hardly remember what he had looked like, other than his having a beard and being generally handsome. She felt, this time, no small amount of guilt, because this time she understood the man to have a whole life—a family down south—that her circumstances had interrupted. Surely, even friendship with a man who had died fifteen years ago had limits. When the man did arrive, the first thing she noticed was that his beard was turning gray and that his face had thinned out. Skaya was boiling water for coffee. Clouds had covered the moon and the windows were quite dark.

“I haven’t seen you since the Reverie days,” Arvi said.

Claes said, “It’s been more than a decade, hasn’t it?”

“Closer to two.”

The men recognized each other as brothers-in-arms, though Farisa suspected they’d exchanged no more than a hundred words before this day. They knew people in common and had seen the same sights from slightly different perspectives, and that was enough. Arvi, as she’d always known, was no simple country doctor but had been one of the twenty most notable figures in Reverie, likely to be shot dead if he ever set foot south of the sixty-fourth parallel. Skaya, too, would cut into their conversations with her own interpretations, making clear that she had also seen more of the world than she let first appear.

Of course, all nostalgia the men could summon was reduced by the inescapable fact of the Global Company’s victory. They had lived in a time Farisa could not remember, a cleaner time, a more hopeful one.

“I visited the Ahava house,” Claes said as he started his third cup of coffee.

Farisa asked, “Is Mrs. Ahava well?”

“She sends her thanks.”

Farisa nodded. At least she does, if not Raqel.

Claes then looked at Arvi. “Doc, I’m glad you called for me. Your intuition that Tevalon has become unsafe is not at all incorrect. The Globbos came for oil, but it no longer is their sole interest. They still believe you are dead, Farisa, but curiosities now exist.”

Arvi said, “Who told them? Was it—?”

“Duriad Ahava? I thought it might be, but it seems the rusty gun was one of his bodyguards, Kalowar Pennard. He used to be a foreman in the coal mines, before they closed. He’s now a plainclothes Z-10.”

The old doctor shook his head. “He’s a Z-10 and Duriad’s bodyguard?”

“Indeed. The Globbos don’t like to catch one of their own is caught hanging private, so he must have given them something good to have body and soul—speaking loosely—in the same place. He has been in Tevalon for three years.” Claes crossed his arms and looked at Farisa. “The Globbos know there is a dark-skinned mage here. Does anyone, besides us four and a few people up at the Library—”

“You don’t have to worry about them,” said Arvi.

“—I’m not—know that you are Farisa La’ewind?”

Farisa stopped to think. “No.”

“How much does Raqel know?”

“I never used my real name. I am—I was—Farisa Mashkva to her and her family. Always.”

Claes’s eyebrows narrowed. “It was still more risk than you should have taken to use your real first name.” He looked at Arvi. “I wonder if there’s an—”

Arvi cut in. “An O-File? Doubtful. There are too many orphans these days for the Company to track all of them.”

Skaya slid her tea saucer across the table. “We must still be safe, and assume the worst. Let’s say the Globbos figure out everything they possibly could. What does our part of the world look like to them?”

Claes steepled his hands. Arvi tapped two fingers on the rim of the ceramic mug. Umrah laid his head on Skaya’s lap to beg for reassurance in the form of ear scratches. Then Skaya looked at Farisa, who had nervously bitten her knuckle.

Arvi said, “They know that there’s a Farisa here, and that she’s a mage.”

“A mage of substantial power,” Skaya added. “She entered a mind.”

“And it worked. And her name is Farisa.”

Claes said, “If they think there’s even a one percent chance of finding a mage of such a level, it would draw their interest.”

“Why?” Farisa found herself speaking. “The Globbo experiments on mages came to nothing.”

“That is true,” said Arvi.

Claes said, “People believe magic is more useful—”

“More controllable,” said Farisa.

“—than it turned out to be, and to capture a noteworthy mage would be a show of power. When you were a little girl, there were witch trials every day.”

Farisa stood up and began to walk around. “I’ve put you in danger. It’s all my fault.”

Skaya said, “No, dear.”

Arvi added, “I assume you had no hand in creating the massive lake of oil out west.”

Claes shuddered in disgust. “Once they start drilling, all those fishing villages are going to fall into sinkholes.”

Arvi waved his hand. “The Igna will blame us somehow.”

Farisa paced faster. “I screwed everything up. It was me. I wanted to help Beth. I wanted to help Raqel. I tried as hard as I could and it didn’t fucking work.”

“Beth,” said Claes, “is better than one could have hoped. You have done no harm to her.”

“Cait Forest,” she said. “Raqel was supposed to go to Cait Forest. Please tell me she’s still going.” It was Feburary; classes would start in less than a month. “Tell me she’s already left. Tell me I haven’t ruined that for her.”

Claes looked down, then at Skaya.

Farisa looked at him. “What?”

“As a matter of fact—Skaya and I discussed this by letter, months ago—I am of the opinion that Cait Forest would be the safest place for you to go.”

“Me?” Farisa said. “Cait Forest? That’s absurd. They’d never let me in.”

“We could make it work,” Claes said. “If you would like a slot, one can be made for you. The headmistress owes me a few favors.”

“Must be big favors.”

“I have to take you somewhere,” said Claes. “It might as well be there.”

Farisa shook her head. “I will stand out.”

“You stand out more here,” said Claes.

“Your complexion is more common in the South,” said Arvi.

Skaya added, “There may be nothing to this, but it is said that Cait Forest is protected by ancient magic.”

Farisa scratched her forearm. “I am thankful for your offer, Claes, but I don’t see what I could do there. I have no lettered education.”

Arvi laughed. “You’ve only read every book in the Library of Tevalon.”

“That is not even close to true. Barely one-tenth of a percent.”

Claes reached into his leather jacket. “I wasn’t going to do this here, but if you’ll believe this, I already have your acceptance letter.”

As he handed her the piece of paper, folded in thirds, she felt the fineness of the paper and recognized the letterhead, having seen Raqel’s note of admission. She wondered if her fate and Raqel’s had been, through some trick, switched. Had she stolen an opportunity, through some subliminal effort, from Raqel.

Arvi said, “I would never demand that you leave us, but...”

Skaya said, “You’ll be safer, and probably happier, down there.”

Farisa squared her gaze with four corners of floor tile. “I don’t... I don’t deserve this.”

“Of course you do,” said Arvi.

“Write us often,” Skaya added.

Farisa looked at Claes. “Can I see Raqel before I go?”

He shook his head. “That would be a terrible idea right now.”

Arvi said, “We’ve put obstacles—snow mounds and busted carriages—in the neighborhood roads and we’ve removed all the street signs. It’s not a perfect defense, but it has kept Globbos at bay, but downtown everyone knows there’s a five-hundred grot reward for a dark-skinned girl.”

“There’s no such thing as leaving too soon in a time like this,” said Claes. “When can we leave for Black Harbor?”

“I’ve already arranged for a driver and dogs to come at first light.”

“I’ve been out. The weather is terrible.”

Arvi walked to the window and peered through the drapes. The bottom sill was whited out. “I knew it would be. Barometer was half an inch negative yesterday. Temperature’s minus five. A blizzard’s coming, which is perfect. We don’t want to be seen by anyone.

#

“I guess this is it,” said Farisa as she tucked her scarf between coats. The outer wool coat appeared to have been tailored for a larger and rounder body, but the inner layers filled the space and kept her snug and, while still indoors, uncomfortably warm.

Skaya hugged her.

“I’m going to miss you so much,” Farisa said.

“As will I.” The old woman shivered. The front door was already open, as Claes and Arvi were outside. “We will see each other again. I am sure of it, though I do not know when or how.” Skaya handed Farisa a book wrapped in velvet cloth. “A gift.”

“Thank you,” Farisa said.

“Now, if you don’t mind, I’m freezing, so...”

She felt sad, but tried to smile. “You may go.”

Skaya went back inside, closed the door, and turned on a light.

“So you’re the girl?” asked the black-beareded man. He was in, in all respects, huge: closer to seven feet than six, with limbs like tree trunks. Though rotund, he had the apparent strength to lift a quarter ton of dead weight if it ever needed done.

“I am,” Farisa said. “You’ve got a lot of dogs.”

“I do have a lot of dogs.” The driver laughed heartily. “Sixteen. We’ll be carrying three huge men, plus you. I need ’em.”

“I resent being called huge,” Arvi said, laughing.

Farisa looked at Arvi. “So you’re coming too?”

“Of course. We need every pair of eyes we can get.”

Claes, already seated, called to her.

“He’s right,” said the driver. “We should get moving.”

As she walked out of the house’s wind shadow, frigid air struck Farisa’s face, as if there were not ordinary winter but some seventh season of a world unfit for life. Arvi and the driver fastened their packs to the back of the sled. Thin-grained snow stung her quarter-inch of exposed brow. This had once been cozy fireplace weather that made home feel like a home; today, it made the place feel alien, forever not-home. It would have been sadder, she supposed, to have to leave in October or May.

The driver added, as they walked to the sled, “Eight tundras or ten huskies would do this job, but they don’t have the speed or temperament we need, so we went with silvers. It takes more of them, but they work well in teams, and they’re camouflaged.”

“Like stormcats,” Farisa said as she sat down.

“Exactly.”

Farisa looked back. The sled hadn’t moved, but the fifteen feet between it and the edge of Arvi and Skaya’s house seemed to have doubled in length already. The wind howled and she was glad to be wearing so many layers of winter clothing.

Claes offered her coffee from a cork-covered vacuum flask. She drank a sip and let heat spread through her.

“I have one rule,” the driver said once they were all settled. “The dogs are friendly. Graza-yovah that. That said, when they’re in the reins, they’re not to be distracted at all. They are work dogs. We may need them to pull us at ten, fifteen knots, and at that kind of speed, we can’t have them a mote off the hairs. If we wreck on the way to Black Harbor, there’ll be nobody to save us, because we’re taking the shortest nowhere between two points.”

Farisa noticed that enough light had come into the sky, not from the east but from the top all at once, to make visible a few conifers down the street. Falling snow still obscured all sights beyond a hundred feet away.

He continued. “You don’t need me to tell you it’s cold. You’ve all got healthy layers, I see. It’s fixing to get colder. Minus six, it could be. If you shiver to a point that scares you, or if you start to feel like you’re drunk, here’s what we’re going to do: We stop the sled. Your life is worth more than my convenience. Then we run around in circles like idiots. We won’t be fast at all, but that’s not the point. It’ll warm us up. The dogs don’t freeze to death because they’re moving, and it can work for us too.”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Claes handed Farisa a compass. “Do you know how to use this?”

“Aye.”

The driver said, “Once we’re out on the plain, there won’t be much to see, and in this weather, not much seeing of the not-much either.” He tapped Farisa on the shoulder. “We’ll need you to keep an eye on the compass, because it’ll be easy to get lost. We’re going three flags north of west, until I say we’re going due west. It’s as straight a route as I can give us without touching that oil field.”

“Three north of west.” Farisa pressed her canvas knapsack between her knees. “Got it.”

“I can hitch your bag to the back,” the driver said.

“I prefer to keep it with me. It’s everything I own.”

“Very well,” the driver said. “Just let me know if you change your mind. As for arms…”

Farisa noticed that Arvi had set a shotgun beside himself. Claes was examining one of his pistols.

“You oughta carry one too,” said the driver as he handed Farisa a six-shot revolver.

“I don’t know how to use this,” Farisa said.

“No one but us needs to know that.”

“Who’s going to hold up a dogsled in a blizzard?”

“No one, me hopes.” The driver, after Farisa took the gun, walked to each dog, patting them on their heads, then took his seat in front. “Keep the weapon in reach at all times. Don’t point it anywhere in the sled. Let’s hope you don’t have to use the thing.”

Farisa nodded.

“Looks like we’re ready to go. Hike!”

The dogs pulled, the lines grew taut, and the basket started to move. The sled jerked and wobbled a bit at first, but was smooth once all the steel runners were in motion. Umrah ran alongside for the first quarter mile, then Arvi said something that led him to stop, crouch, and howl plaintively. The dawn streets of northern Tevalon were well behind them, fully invisible, and the sky and plains had whitened to the color of fresh paper as the sun furtively rose, though it would have been impossible to tell where it was, hence the need for the compass. The flakes of snow hitting Farisa’s face no longer stung; rather, the cold sped her heart, and she realized she would miss Tevalon’s five-month winters, because while they were fierce and often too long, there was a wildness to them she didn’t think she’d find in Cait Forest, at fifty-four and a half degrees latitude, where it snowed less often than once a year. Temperatures like this did not exist in that world, but cold was ground truth. Any fool could make heat.

They had been riding for a couple of hours when Claes asked, “How fast are we going?”

“No more’n ten knots right now,” the driver said. “They can go much faster, and they love to do it, but I can’t let ‘em do it here. There’s hundreds of bushes under this snow to get caught on.”

The sled’s runners carved parallel lines in the snow that led back into nowhere. The dogs kept pulling; Farisa and the three men kept drinking coffee.

As midday arrived, the sky darkened. A clear day would have given them a view of northern mountains; instead, they rode under a steel dome that noiselessly kept its center above them, its height undefined and its elements relentless. By this point, Farisa had stopped brushing away the divots of stray snow kicked up by the sled onto her coat and backpack, because in this kind of cold, there was no risk that they would melt.

The driver looked back. “One of the finer storms to ride the easterlies, I’ll say.” He looked at a thermometer he had tied to a cross-piece. “Cold, too. Minus six is no joke.”

“Minus six?” Claes said. “Temperatures like that shouldn’t exist.”

The driver laughed. “I’m told mercury freezes at six and a quarter.”

“That’s true,” Farisa said.

He knocked an icicle from his beard. “I wonder if there’s any limit to cold.”

Farisa interjected, “There is. Minus forty-four. Two boils, twelve flags below freezing.”

“Oh yeah?” The driver chuckled. “How’d they figure that out?”

“Gas expansion,” Farisa said. “The volume a gas like air takes up is proportional to its temperature, so they were able to figure out a zero point.”

Arvi said, “What was that song kids used to sing? Sixteen flags to a boil; sixteen twixt ice and steam.”

Farisa joined in, “Twelve for tea, ten for steak, and minus three for ice cream. Not sure what you’d do with minus forty-four.”

“I’ll stick to single digits.” The driver tugged the rightward line of dogs. They let their leftward siblings outpace them slightly; the sled steered to avoid a copse of low spruce trees. “Arvi, remember that month of minus eight when we were boys?”

“Ah, yes.”

“That’s when I caught my first lingcod. Minus eight’s the kind of cold where if you aren’t careful, you’ll freeze off your—”

“Yvec, Benjamin,” said Arvi. “There’s a lady with us.”

“It’s fine.” Farisa laughed. “I’ve heard worse. I’ve said worse. I suppose it is an advantage to be a woman. All that stuff stays warm because it’s inside us.”

A pair of dogs drifted off course, distracted by a snow hare. The driver shouted, “Get back here!”

Arvi handed Farisa a metal flask. “More coffee?”

“Yes please.” She drank more than she had expected, and the stuff was still hot enough to burn her tongue.

The driver said, “You’re going to college down south, right?”

“That is the case.” Farisa looked over her shoulder. The sky was lightening. “I will miss this place, though.”

“The South can grow on you,” the driver said. “Plus-two, this time of year. Hardly a winter if you ask me. We call that the second week of May. I’m sure Southerners complain about it, though.”

Claes laughed. “They do. If it’s two-point-nine, it’s too cold. Three-point-one, too hot. And if it’s three-on, it’s too rainy, or too windy, or too sunny. If the weather ever is perfect, they worry that it won’t last, and complain about that.”

A lull in the snow made it possible to see farther, possibly half a mile, making it possible to see nearby hills and a crescent wall of conifers Farisa had seen before. We’re near Opal Lake, aren’t we?”

The driver laughed. “We are on Opal Lake.”

“Oh,” Farisa said. “It did seem familiar.”

“Have you been?”

“A long time ago,” she said.

August. Raqel’s aunt always let her niece use her cabin for a week in the summer. Last year, Farisa had come along. The beach was thin, with ferns pressing up against it, and its sand was coarse, and there had been too many mosquitos, but the place was secluded, so the two women were alone all the time and, in retrospect, she could have then summoned the courage and...

No, Farisa. That story is over. You are going to Cait Forest.

She could not stay here, she realized. Everything would remind her of Raqel.

Arvi adjusted Farisa’s scarf to cover her shivering cheek.

The driver said, “If you’re worried about falling in, don’t be. Fat as I am, twenty of me wouldn’t even bend the ice.”

“It’s not that,” Farisa said. “It brings a lot of memories.”

“We’ll be on it for a while,” said the driver. “As you’ve seen, it’s a big lake.”

They had all grown hungry, so they ate their lunch in motion, sharing nuts and dried meat, warmed with coffee so it could be eaten at all, while the dogs pulled. The snow had thinned out now; white sunlight fell in oblique columns through shifting fog, producing one of those brighter-than-clear days that existed only in the Far North. The sky was nowhere blue, but the sun was shining everywhere.

Arvi pointed east. “A couple of grizzlies, over there.”

“Seems so,” the driver said. “Nothing to worry about. They’re a mile away.”

Farisa tugged at the binocular spyglass on Claes’s chest. “Can I borrow? I’ve never seen one.”

The driver laughed. “You’ve been up here a decade and never seen a bear?”

“I leave a lot of unfinished business, wherever I go.”

Claes took a first look, holding the spyglass a quarter of an inch from his face to avoid skin contact with the metal rim. “I’m afraid those aren’t bears.”

The driver seemed nervous, and the dogs must have picked up on his anxiety, because the sled wobbled, despite the perfect flatness of the snowbound frozen lake. “What are they?”

Claes handed the spyglass to Arvi. “Three men on horseback. They’re coming toward us.”

“Bandits or Globbos?” the driver asked.

Arvi grabbed his gun. “The distinction doesn’t matter.”

Claes handed Farisa an additional scarf. “Cover up.”

She put the scarf on, so even her skin color could not be seen, because it had to be assumed these men had field glasses as powerful as theirs. She heard Claes adjust the safety on his gun. The sled tilted as it sped.

“Hold on to something,” the driver said. “The ride’s about to get jerky. Dogs, haw!”

Farisa gripped the rails. Her seat pushed against her back as the dogs accelerated to racing speed. More bits of snow flew up from the sled’s runners, and several landed between her scarves, starting to melt.

A voice came from a bullhorn. “In the name of the Global Company, I order you to halt.”

“Not from around here, I bet?” The driver tugged a rein and the sled ride became bumpier.

Farisa felt sick and grabbed her stomach.

“Beach detour. No pleasant ride, but worse for them.”

The sled hit a bump—in her mind, she could see the shrub flattened by two feet of snow—and took air. When it landed, the seat slammed into her tailbone, sending waves of pain through her lower belly.

The driver asked, “Distance.”

“About a quarter mile,” said Arvi.

“Perfect. Right into my trap. There’s one place on this lake you don’t go in the winter.”

“The geothermal spot?”

“There goes one,” said Claes.

Farisa peered through the space between scarves. A man and his horse disappeared, slipping off the white world as if through a slit in paper.

“I don’t think we’ll see much of him,” said Arvi.

The driver added, “There goes a second.”

The sound of cracking ice had terrified the second soldat’s horse, causing the animal to rear up and discard him.

“Head on hard ice,” Arvi said. “Blood. Doubt he’ll wake up.”

“Two out of three,” said the driver. The sled was swerving now, the dogs doing their best to avoid moguls and short meadow trees. They had fully left the open flat expanse; in spring or summer, beach marsh would be under them, rather than sand.

“I’m ready to shoot,” said Arvi.

“I’d prefer to outrun him,” said the driver. “We’re all better off if it looks like an accident. Mush, dogs!”

The team sprinted. The sled creaked, sounding like it might come apart. Farisa focused her gaze on the gray horizon, trying to reduce the stress of motion by squaring her vision with it, but the opening notes of vomit were still crawling up her neck. Her forearms ached from holding onto the sled’s railings. Her neck ached from trying to hold her head in one place.

The air cracked. Ice and snow seemed to boost the echo. They had been shot at. Claes fired back and the driver steered them farther into the forest. Farisa ducked, though the sled’s uneven motion made it hard to keep a bracing position.

“Shit,” said the driver. “He’s hurt.”

“Who?”

The lead dog of the rightward line had been hit, leaving a mess of red on his back. Farisa, on sight of the wound, screamed into her mittened hands.

The rider’s bullhorn voice came again. “In the name of Global Company, I order you to halt.”

“And be less of a moving target?” The driver spat. “We’ll halt, you sack fucker. We’ll halt when we’re ready.” On the word ready, he pulled a rein, and the dogs slowed. The sled jounced, causing Farisa’s head to whip back.

“I repeat, in the name of the Global Company, halt at once.”

The driver brought the dogs to a stop. Some of the dogs were whining, having noticed their wounded brother’s condition. Farisa’s legs shook. She peered through her scarves again, noticing that they’d come at least a hundred yards deep into coniferous forest. The fresh snow softened the sound, but the galloping of the Globbo’s approaching horse grew louder and louder...

Hike, haw; gee, whoa. Growing up in the Far North, Farisa had read so many dogsled adventure novels, she was sure she had heard all the commands, but this one was new to her.

“Lune,” the driver shouted.

The sled dogs sat on their haunches and howled.

“What does that mean?” she whispered.

“Quiet,” said Claes.

“The wolves,” the driver explained, “consider sled dogs their cousins, and they’re not happy to see them hurt.”

The Globbo, now close enough that Farisa could see his face, tried to fire his rifle, but as seven black wolves surrounded mount and rider, his horse reared up. The man fell from the horse but his boot remained in the stirrup, so his body twisted and bounced behind the horse as it galloped away. After about fifty yards, the rider’s head struck a tree. The Globbo, still conscious by some miracle, screamed as the wolves closed in.

“Chance of survival?” said Claes.

Arvi said, “Zero.”

The sled ride continued in silence. Farisa, face hot from her own breath, removed her scarves when the driver told her it was safe to do so. The sky cleared and the sun, orange in the ice fog, showed itself during its last hour in the sky.

“We’re not far from Black Harbor,” the driver said.

#

When they came into the town, the single clock tower said it was half past five. The sky had cleared now, making hundreds of stars visible, but ground-level snow was blowing about. The seaside town’s window shutters bucked against the wind.

“He’ll live, graza-yovah, but keep his load light.”

“I reckon they all pull about the same,” the driver said.

“We all thank you,” said Arvi. “Tell your wife I sent my best wishes, if I don’t see her before Exile.”

The driver nodded. “I’m glad to have met you, Farisa.”

“Likewise.”

The doctor began to feed the dogs. “It’s rarer than ydenstone for a Far North girl to get into Cait Forest.”

Farisa said, “I don’t know about that.”

“My daughter did two T-levels, and traveled all the way to Va’ala to sit for an exam. Ninety-six. Still didn’t get in.”

“She studies Vehu history,” said Arvi. “Chan-Zadik’s better for that.”

“You are not wrong.” He broke up a scrap between two dogs over a piece of meat. “They’re never like this, but they’ve seen their sister get hurt. Arvi, are you coming with me?”

“I’ll stay for a night. I haven’t seen this town for years.”

“Very well.” The driver lit two glass oil lanterns and slotted them into mirrored cavities on the sled’s front, casting enough light that he and the dogs could see, and rode away.

“It shouldn’t be difficult for me to find a boat tomorrow,” Claes said before leaving to go down the dock. “Crabbers don’t have much to do this time of year, so I should be able to get a good price.”

“Let’s get something to eat,” Arvi said. “Are you hungry?”

“As a wolf’s tit,” Farisa said.

Arvi chuckled. “I should have never taught you that phrase.”

“It doesn’t make any sense at all, but it’s fun to say.”

Arvi spotted a tavern, a single-story stone building with arched windows and an oaken door. “Good, it’s still here.”

As inclement as the weather had been on land, it had been worse at sea, evidently, as dozens of foreign sailors had been locked in port here. Rowdy men speaking a foreign language, one Farisa had never heard, wagered on a dice game, which a blond teenage boy seemed to be winning. She was, for the first time in years, not the only person in this room with her dark color; there were sailors from Terosha, Lorania, and the Umber Islands to the west of Mount Alma. These men were unlike the quiet, endearingly awkward sorts one met in Tevalon—wide shoulders and a hardened face seemed to be requirements to join a boat crew. Several of these men “accidentally” bumped into her as she followed Arvi to an open table.

“The Globbos back there,” Farisa said. “Do you think they were looking for me?”

“It’s possible,” Arvi said. “It’s more likely that they thought we were smugglers.”

“You, a smuggler?”

“No, I don’t seem the type, but they hate competition.”

A long-armed, raven-haired woman came to the table. By the lines on her face, she looked thirty-five. “What’ll have ya?”

Arvi asked, “Is there a round-the-cape?”

“Eighty cents,” the waitress said.

“We’ll start on one, to sample the offerings,” said Arvi.

She looked at Farisa. “Anything else?”

“A hot apple cider,” she said.

Small dishes arrived at various times. At first, neither Arvi nor Farisa said much, both being exhausted from being in the cold for several hours; in truth, it had taken them ten minutes to get warmed up enough to be hungry. The doctor sampled everything but the beef tibs; Farisa tried everything but a fish dish that smelled of vinegar.

“Cait Forest,” Arvi said. “That’ll be an enviable experience. What do you think you’ll study?”

“Chemistry,” Farisa said. “Hard to learn from books alone. A lot of the magic happens in the lab.” As the waitress came by, Farisa jabbed her on the bare upper arm. “These salmon frites are delicious.”

“Shall I bring a full plate?”

Farisa and Arvi looked at each other. “Yes,” Arvi said. “Make that two,” she added.

“Chemistry’s a fantastic choice,” Arvi said. “Some in the medical profession believe we’ve seen the end of new cures. Nothing left but better selling of old ones. I disagree strongly with their opinion.”

“You should.” Farisa put a small piece of blackened cod in her mouth and swallowed it. “They're wrong.” She put a hand to her mouth, having failed to stifle a burp. When the salmon frites arrived. Farisa gave the waitress an appreciative smile. “Just think of all the plants and animals no one has ever seen. Only what—twenty-five?—percent of the world is even accessible.” She drank cider from her glass. “No, twenty-seven percent. I forgot to count the Bezelian highlands.”

“You love argument so much, you argue with yourself. Have I ever told you that?”

“Sixteen times.” Farisa smiled. “Seventeen, now.”

“You’ll love Cait Forest, but don’t put all your study into one subject.”

“I won’t, but chemistry’s where the cure is. It’s personal.” If a cure for the Marquessa existed, she reasoned, she would find it in a laboratory. “Chemistry or the Antipodes.”

Arvi chuckled. “If those are the choices, I’ll pick chemistry.”

The Antipodes existed, of course—the world’s spherical nature had been determined, and even its circumference had been calculated, four thousand years ago—but, in effect, they were a rhetorical place only, an impolite place to tell a person to go. The equator, eight flags year round with rains that burned the skin, was too hot for anyone to try to cross and survive. The Antipodes, where cats fly and trees walk. The Antipodes, where children’s lost toys go. Southwest Never-Was; the kind of place you go on the Nineteenth of Never.

“My reasoning as well,” she said. “They’ve found fifty-six solid elements, but they know there must be others because there are sequences that have gaps in them.”

“Just don’t blow anything up.”

Farisa laughed. “I’ll be careful not to burn the place down.”

She felt a gust of cold wind as the tavern door opened.

Claes, face and beard covered in snow, rushed in. “We have a boat.”

“That’s good,” Arvi said.

The man looked around. “How’s the food?”

“It’s excellent,” said the doctor. “We were just talking about the Antipodes.”

“When I was young, I considered taking the Road,” Claes admitted.

Arvi put a hand on his back. “My friend, I’m glad you didn’t. I’ve got two patients who took the Road during the gold rush. One insists he made it to twenty-two degrees latitude.”

“Oh, yeah? Twenty-two?”

“Based on the shape they are in, I don’t think the Mountain Road goes anywhere good. The body isn’t meant for ten-, twelve-flag heat.” Arvi stood up. “Now, speaking of the body’s limitations, it’s nearing midnight, so mine are coming upon me.”

“It’s eight o’clock,” Farisa said.

“The cold adds four hours. It feels like midnight. I’m going to sleep.”

Farisa said, “Good night, Arvi!”

Claes laughed, then shivered. “Remind me never to get that old.”

Arvi said before leaving, “If there’s a way around it, she’ll find it.”

The waitress came by, interrupting them. “Kitchen’s saying last orders.”

Claes said, “Already?”

The waitress’s long forehead wrinkles were deep but pleasing to look at. “It isn’t my call.”

“It’s just...”

“We’re a small town. One man fewer, and I would be the kitchen, the whole thing on top of this job. Can I get you anything?”

Claes ordered pale ale and paprika beef, Black Harbor’s specialty.

Farisa’s gaze tracked the waitress. Something about her commanded the young girl’s attention. She ran a tavern full of men, some twice her size, with the competence and calm of an Igna seamstress. As she walked, her bare arms pointed slightly out, giving an aura of confidence that Farisa could not place, but knew she wanted to have. Her eyebrows were expressive but not eager. Her lips were not ashamed of their motion as the woman talked. What really caught Farisa’s eye, though, was her wavy hair and the way her dark locks bounced on her shoulders, suggesting adventure.

“You’ve been looking at that waitress a lot,” Claes said.

Farisa put a hand over her mouth. “She, uh, has a... looks like...”

Claes laughed. “You don’t need to apologize. I imagine I’m the only one who noticed, having had to survive on my sense of subtlety.”

“It’s nothing. Really, it’s—”

"What you’re feeling, it’s not uncommon. When I was your age, I had stirrings for a man, though nothing came of it.”

Farisa leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Does your wife know?”

“If she were to object to my conduct before I met her, I suspect she’d have more issues with a hundred things that did happen than one that did not.”

“So...” She looked around herself. “Are you saying I’m normal?”

Claes drank from his ale mug. “It is nothing to be ashamed of, and it is more accepted in the South that, sometimes…”

“Can two women live together?”

“Of course.” His eyes moved. “Wait, by ‘live together,’ do you mean…?”

“For a long time.” Farisa looked around. “Like they’re married.”

Claes stopped eating and looked down. “Right, that.”

The tavern noise, a blurred rolling roar with no direction of origin, separated into its numerous component sounds, for a moment, then swirled back together. A dog barked outside.

He continued. “Certainly, I would not think less of anyone who chose that, but it's a hard life, what you’re talking about. If you’re not sure, and you are young.... I’ll tell you what. I’ll just say this. Cait Forest has a thousand boys your age, maybe two thousand. You’ll have so many suitors, the choice will drive you insane.”

Farisa laughed. “What a problem to have.”

The waitress came to collect their used dishes and asked if they wanted more drinks. Claes said no and closed out their tab, then told Farisa, “I’m going to bed early. I suggest you do the same. Seas are rough this time of year.”

“Good night, Claes.”

He left, but Farisa lingered for a while. An old man played a haunting melody on the piano, collecting pennies and threes and the occasional dime. The waitress cleaned a glass behind the bar, then filled a pitcher with brown ale. Farisa tried to figure out what had caught her eye about this very pretty but ordinary woman; it could not be put in one place. She had, in the set of her chest, and in the brightness of her shoulders, and in the soft features of her face, such a sense of purpose that made this place feel not like a small-town tavern, but the center of some secret country.

Farisa pushed her way through the crowd to the bar.

“Good evening.”

“I’m not ordering anything,” Farisa said to the older woman. A salt-haired man on a barstool glared at her.

The woman’s nostrils flared.

“I just wanted to say there’s something about you I admire. I don’t know what it is, but…”

“I am flattered, but as you can see I am extremely busy.”

“I’m sorry,” Farisa said before she slipped back into the crowd, hiding her face, then ran down the hall connecting the bar to the inn, then hurried upstairs to her room, key in the lock before she finished what she was saying: “I really miss someone. That’s all.”

#

The inn called itself “Kings Wayhouse.” The apostrophe had fallen off and never been replaced. One could have safely bet, by the institution’s location and ambience, as well as the rather recent date on its establishment sign, that no king had ever slept here.

Farisa’s room was tiny and the bedsheets were thin and scratchy, but a private room was no cheap find in such a small town, and she was glad to have it. There was a flint lighter next to the heating stove, but it had already been turned on and would keep her warm for the night. She looked around for a lamp but did not find one.

“A king always sleeps alone.” This had been said since olden days, when kings and dlayos really existed, and the motto sat on her mind as she tried to catch rest. At first, she had found the saying ridiculous, it being a king’s prerogative to sleep wherever he want, whether in private or surrounded by company of his choosing, but she had come to suspect the saying must be true, because to sleep soundly made a person vulnerable, forcing every king to rely on a thousand shields against a million daggers, but could all of those thousand be trusted? Of course not. A king did not choose to sleep alone and a king did not choose to sleep surrounded. It was always both. To know this to be the nature of power made her glad not to have it.

And yet, she knew she had won Raqel’s affections but not her love, and that Raqel would soon be married off—she was right about this, as she’d learn a year later—to a man of her father’s choosing and with child. Duriad had won, Farisa had lost. Could it have been made to happen differently? Could she have entered Raqel’s mind, driven force to a happier ending? No, she reasoned. It had been done by scores of mages, of course, but the ones who used their talent to demand love seemed to ride fastest on that black sapphire road to madness, for in the gaining of control over others, they lost it over themselves.

Still, losing was painful. She wanted to scream loud enough to wake the ocean.

Farisa found herself pacing the room, feet freezing on the stone floor. The inn’s snow-covered courtyard was throwing too much light for sleep, but too little to read by. She rummaged through her knapsack and found the portrait Raqel had made of her, which she had laid between two heavy books so it wouldn’t crumple. She looked at it again. The girl staring back at Farisa really was a girl—only eight months younger, but without heaviness. She checked twice that every drawn line matched a real fold of skin. All of her slight asymmetries had been copied faithfully, but with no exaggeration or unflattering accent, being instead made beautiful. The picture, lit through a single-pane window by moon and stars on snow, was one of her, but seemed worlds away. Farisa doubted she’d wear the past’s smile again.

At least I have the scar. The scar is beautiful. And it is mine forever.

She knew though that Duriad, traitor of Tevalon, would control the next five moves on this corner of the board. He would choose a husband for Raqel to keep her close but far enough away to gain total control over Beth’s daily life. He would not poison his wife, not exactly, but he would whittle her will back down to the weakened state he had seen and found he enjoyed. Farisa’s eyes closed and she could still see the man’s off-center rictus of contempt and triumph.

A flash of heat stung her hand. The corner of Raqel’s portrait had caught fire and blackened. Shit. I’ve let emotion get me. Farisa blew the flame out.

“I hurt so much, Raqel.”

#

She heard the knock on her door. She had struggled in getting to sleep, but slept well in the six or seven hours she’d had. The sun was never high in February, and could not be seen from her north-facing room, but the sky’s pastel blue made clear that morning had come.

Arvi said, “I wanted to say goodbye before going back to Tevalon.”

She put on a pair of socks before she opened the door. The doctor, dressed unusually finely for a man who’d be going home in a hired stagecoach, held his leather-strapped bag. She gave the man a hug. “I will miss you. Tell Skaya the same.”

“I will miss you too.” Arvi smiled, then turned around. As he walked down the corridor, his body took on a slight hunch that she had never seen in him before, that of an old man, the sort who considered that every goodbye stood a nonzero chance of being the real one.

“Arvi, wait!” Farisa reached into her pocket for the only money she had, a tan five-grot note.

“Don’t be silly,” Arvi said. “You don’t owe me anything.”

“I owe Raqel. Use this to buy pencils.”

“You owe her a debt of pencils?”

“Exmore cedar, 7F graphite. As many as this buys.”

“I will do that.” Arvi put the money in his pocket. “That’s going to buy a lot of pencils.”

“It’s a big debt.”

“Very well, Farisa,” Arvi said as he left. “In any case, I wish you the best of luck in Cait Forest.”

She nodded in thanks.

After this, she went back to bed and tried to get more sleep, but failed to do so, so she went to the inn’s common area, which she found deserted, then walked outside and followed the dock to its peninsular extent. The sun rose obliquely, skimming the orange horizon on such an arc to make clear it knew it was winter tentative. She kicked snow into the ocean and watched it melt.

She had horizon-length view in all directions, there being no fog. She wondered if she had landed her when taken from that black-forested island, Medvesziget. She hardly thought of that place, the orphanage, the old buildings, the children who had bullied her. A phase of life had ended there; a new one had begun here. This, she would go through again, and she was glad to be putting so much girlish silliness behind her.

Cait Forest would give her a new life, a chance to step beyond her past. She had, for so long, been defined by events others had caused. Orphan. Refugee. Witch. She had been living like a fugitive, as long as she could remember, though she had committed no crime. She had not once in her seventeen years felt like a normal girl. In Cait Forest, she could be exactly that, as the university was neutral by law, so the Global Company had no more rights there than a mouse to a dog’s bark.

She would find a group of friends in her first month. She would try out for the hylus team, and she figued she’d make captain in the second season if not the first. She’d study and struggle for grades, but ace every class. She’d be invited to all the parties; hell, she’d throw parties. She’d meet a boy who’d write sappy love poems for her. After a year or two of courtship, she’d let him take her virginity, and they would marry in the summer after graduation. Their lives would go on without a single worry in a house on a vineyard surrounded by maples that, every autumn, would take the color of bright flame against an ultramarine sky.

No more hiding. No more running. No more madness.

Farisa, a normal girl.