Cold Steel

Page 90

“It’s just the wind.” He rubbed my hands between his. “You need to warm yourself at a fire before we try to cross the water. Your lips are blue. People can die just from exposure to cold.”
Through chattering teeth, I spoke. “You have to believe me about my mother.”
He paused, then resumed chafing my hands. “I don’t see why not. The chain that binds our marriage pulled you to me in Expedition.”
“That was the machinations of General Camjiata and James Drake.”
“Yes, that as well, but didn’t you ever wonder why you found me so easily the moment you stepped onto the jetty? The chain that binds us drew you to me. You’ll always be bound to your parents as well. We’ll rig these ropes so we can pull the boat over, then haul it down on the canvas. But once we get it down there with everything in it, then you must promise me if there are no wolves you’ll build a fire for long enough to warm up and dry out that wool a little bit, and my coat and gloves, which you so wisely brought. By the way the light falls I’m pretty sure it’s late winter or early spring. It’s still morning, so we’ll have time to cross before dusk. Catherine? Are you listening?”
“Yes,” I said, for the sound of his voice was so comforting.
We rigged the rope, flipped the boat, and dragged it over the stone beach to the water. The work warmed me but at the same time sucked all energy from me. Afterward, it was all I could do to stay upright, leaning on the stern, as he fetched our gear and arranged it as ballast. The cold gnawed through my flesh to the bone. He set the oarlocks and oars. Out of the dripping pack he unfolded the winter coat I had carried just for him and put it on me. He looked me up and down. He had the worst frown on his face, startling in its intensity. I had never seen that expression on him before. I had no idea what to make of it.
“Catherine.” He spoke my name with what sounded like anger. “You are now returning to the cave. I’ll build a fire and leave so you can light it and get warm…”
A howl skirled down on the wind. I watched him register the sound. His brow wrinkled. Anger flickered in the twitch of his cheeks. His gaze lifted to the rim of the ice shelf.
High up on the path, three shaggy wolves nosed into view. Four more wolves were already most of the way down a canyon path that led from the rim to the beach. In our effort to shove the boat to the shore, we hadn’t noticed them. They were huge. I smelled their hunger.
Desperation sheared through me. I braced and shoved, but the boat shifted barely a finger’s breadth. “We’ve got to go…”
“Wait.”
My cane stung my leg, woken by Vai’s cold magic. A change in pressure made my ears pop. I dropped to my knees, sure I was about to be slammed into the ground.
A crack ripped through the air. A weird moaning noise followed, succeeded by a rushing whoosh, and then by a rumble. His mouth curved into the sort of smile a man gives to his hated opponent when he knows he has won and can rub it in the other man’s face. It was the smile that had driven Drake to hate him so much that the fire mage had tried to get revenge on Vai through me.
“Move!” he said with a laugh, throwing his shoulder to the boat.
The rumble grew to a roar. Vai slung me into the boat and hopped in, scrambling to the oars. He rowed hard. I turned to look behind.
Ice calved off the high cliff. Caught in the collapse, the wolves tumbled and vanished into the crash of ice. The boom of the avalanche filled the world as it buried the canyon. White mist boiled up in sheets.
“Brace yourself, Catherine.”
A rolling tongue of ice and frozen snow spilled across the tiny peninsula, hissed over the beach, and slumped into the water with a crackling roar like a hundred muskets going off at once. A wave pitched us backward, but Vai kept the boat steady as we were driven partway across the channel. Out in the middle of the water, the choppy waves and wind caught us in a buffeting pitch and yaw. He set to, rowing hard, as I shivered inside his wet wool coat.
“Can you row, Catherine? It would warm you up.”
Looking at his bare hands on the oars made me want to weep. Cold had dug its claws all the way to my heart. Strangely, the bitter air and cold spray off the sea had no effect on him. If anything, he seemed invigorated. “I c-c-can try, but I haven’t before.”
“Then not in these conditions, love.”
The rocking and tipping of the rowboat was beginning to make me feel queasy. “Can’t you make a wind to blow us?”
“You don’t want wind out on the open water in a rowboat. Anyway, it’s not like that. Wind can’t be confined or channeled. I can shift masses of air and freeze rain in the clouds so it falls as sleet or hail…” He glanced past me, eyes widening.