Chapter 1
708 years had transpired since the construction of the Divine Gate. 169 had transpired since the august reign of Emperor Manfried Dwendal, whose distant successor had now dispatched Keir to Icehaven, with an attache of shipsmen and a Julous mage. They had made their coming by carriage and by horse up the Zemni fields from Odessloe, where Keir bade them gather. In Icehaven waited an icebreaking ship, equipped with blasting powder and rations should the Frigid Depths offer scarce mercy. No; Keir prayed the Duskmaven still had aught favor for him and the mission. For his Empire.
The cadre of shipmen were Righteous Brand, old bannermen of the Halsteads, Keir’s family, or oathmen from Bladegarden. The Julous mage was named Brumewick. Six years prior, Keir came to know him as Graeme, when he traveled north from the Zauberspire to find fortune as a wizard in the capital. Halstead had scarcely known a mage of his stature apart from the wizards of the Assembly, whose draconian schemes posed an eternal disruption to Imperial life. Graeme was always wiser than that, and more attuned to the needs of his Empire. It had been refreshing, then.
Snow fell hard over the house at Odessloe, that winter of 702. It weighed at the eaves, it tumbled down past the windows in clumps when it came. Keir was sorely glad to be inside, though at times he wished to return his estate house to its proper state, that of solitude. The planning of this function had taxed his efforts well into the past two weekends, but the King himself had suggested his interest to attend with his two young sons. Inside, it was cheery. The fire livened him, and he mustered the stomach to pull away from the window for another round of introductions.
He had just fitted his best doublet with a new pair of cufflinks, struck with a pair of wolfhound figures– Gulvain, who stalked on the family crest. He thumbed the brass heads a moment, sterning up, and moved out through his own ballroom. The biting cold of the world outside was only evident in the frost sticking to the corners of each window, with big, clear, oblong thumb-prints that gave view to the snowfall beyond. Candles flickered their defiance just ahead, where they could be spotted through the flocking guests. Keir could be struck blind, he thought. There were simply so many guests.
As though feeling for the lamp atop his nightstand in the dark, he made his first stop the buffet tables, for no small measure of comfort. Keir was chastising himself for feeling the guest in his own home when he spied another man, paused stock-still by the hors d’oeuvres and wine-flutes. A pair of circlets hung at his wrists, his shirt seemed rented. He had a short coiffure of near-white hair, but was young in the face. Critically, Keir did not know him. So, he flashed a smile, gauging the smile the man returned, and moved to play the host.
The guest seemed ill-at-ease, though not in a particularly untoward fashion. Keir imagined he might have continued on, looking out at the gathering, if not for his approach. As Keir arrived, he raised his own flute, topping it up from the plate– another, stamped with Gulvain’s head– and positioning himself under the cheery lighting. To his slight dismay, the streamers were coming undone from the ceiling. He teased a lock of his own hair, where it had grown tight in his updo.
“Penance,” the guest said, and not in a way that suggested he was particularly devout. He looked up, past the cheery little lights, to the rafters, and the dark wood eaves. He didn’t comment on the streamers, if he even noticed them. A mercy, Keir well thought, because they were bothering him sorely. It ruined the airy feel he had been hoping to convey. “What a relief it is to see another soul who seems not quite sure what to do with himself, here. I think I may be the only one here who doesn’t know the host. Do you, my sir?”
“Yes, and I think it appropriate that you change your assessment. You’ve just met him,” Keir replied.
The guest was momentarily transfixed by his drink, then, cheeks flashing rosy for a split second above his freshly-shaven face, admitted, “I’m afraid I’ve done both of us a terrible discourtesy, then.” Ponderously, he set down the drink, and stuck out his hand as if to dry, a half-step between them. Keir took it, and the shake was hasty. “Brumewick, my sir. Graeme Brumewick. My friends have all abandoned me for more… interesting parties, so I’ve taken up with the refuge of the buffet,” he said, and gestured to the table, and his own plate, which seemed hardly picked at.
“Halstead,” he returned, “Keir Halstead. I hope you’re finding my house comfortable, lively as the night has grown. I sense a certain kindred… reclusive spirit in you.” Keir glanced at the plate, smiled a brief appreciation and almost asked how he liked the food, but thought better of it. “Well, be welcome anyway, my friend. Who are these friends? We may yet know the same people.”
“Ah, that’s right,” Brumewick said, with a light and self-directed scoff and smile, and he gestured: Keir followed his hand, and felt his smile tighten. It passed by the Martinet– Duskmaven be thanked, and doubly so–, eventually settling on a human man, apparently a wizard, whom Keir did not know. “I’ve come from Zadash, from the Hall of Erudition. I’ve come in the company of Morwyn Wylock, and I’m afraid I can’t imagine why. He said there’d be an introduction to the echelons of magic in Rexxentrum in it, though he left me to attend the cheese platters for the past two hours. I’ll be plain, I think there’s liable to be more in the Brand for my talents, humble as they may be, at this point.”
Keir felt his anxiety ebb somewhat. Here stood a wizard of nearing common mind with him; he found relief in that, and picked up his drink.
Graeme evidently saw the flash of momentary consternation in his face, because his own expression soured somewhere past embarrassment. “I’m sorry, have I said something to offend? I’ve not been up north before, it may be that things move differently in this…” he gestured for time, “…sphere.”
Keir fortified his smile. “Oh, certainly not, Mr. Brumewick. Certainly not. It’s merely refreshing to meet a wizard of such keen appraisal of what part he may play for King and Empire. If I’m plain, intersections with the Assembly are in my belief one of the great exhaustions of my stature, but while the King requires stiff competition to keep his wizards on the level with those of other countries, in my assessment there is often too little certainty in the way of who serves whom. Moreover, while there is less esteem to be had in the Brand, I find service to be its own reward. It is what sets our Empire apart from the other nations of the world.”
Graeme hummed at that. “I sense I’ve clumsily stumbled into something of a contentious subject,” he said, and cracked a all-too-self-conscious smile. “Might I ask your advice in avoiding these in the future? I share your sentiment– foremost because I am merely not brave enough for these Assembly types, I’m afraid, though I’d hate to alienate my good friend, either.”
Keir felt disappointment creep into his smile, and glanced away, recomposing the shine in his eyes. He clapped a hand on Graeme’s shoulder and turned him to the party. “Of course,” he said, a little too haltingly. After a short huff, he offered Graeme’s drink back to him, and offered further, “I had no intention of throwing you so quickly into politics, for your first outing. Still, you spoke glowingly of the Brand. Do you mind taking the rounds with me? I might introduce you to a few of my friends. With the right introductions, I’m sure you’ll go far.”
Graeme huffed, faintly, perhaps a little surprised. “What a wonderful suggestion,” he remarked. “I ought to be stolen away from the platters, otherwise I might pilfer the rest of your desserts.”
Keir eyed the uneaten pastries on his plate, and the fork which had tugged a few scones apart, now massacred and clinging to the fork, though for the most part untouched too, and internally bemoaned the waste. He found himself agreeing with Graeme, but not before his counterpart remarked again.
“Shall we?” Graeme said, and let Keir lead him out through the ballroom. Keir was much relieved when he was back nestled between the throngs of the party rather than the sparse flow of guests which stalked the desserts table.
Following his introductions, Graeme had risen far, though not to the heights he later revealed he had hoped. Disappointment seemed a perpetual character in Keir’s new friend, at least for the next half-decade. Even so, there was pride there. Here stood a brilliant man, a mage Keir believed on par with many of the devious characters embroiled in his perennial contentions with the Assembly, diverted to the service of the Brand. Keir often reminded him of service’s own reward, which, eternally, was met with a smile and a response of “Too right, my old friend, too right.”
The matter of Graeme’s dissatisfaction didn’t worry Keir in the slightest. In the time since, they had both taken wives, and the support of the Brand had bought Brumewick a home as well in Odessloe. For the past matter of years, Graeme was routinely called between the garrisons at Ashguard and back. When he was away, his wife, Fiona liked to join Keir and Elspet at the estate. Keir found joy that the women had become quick friends, as well, and had found himself looking forward to Graeme’s return at each assignment.
He spoke of work unraveling the cricks’ night-making magic at each assignment, making use of Keir’s confidance as a born officer of the Brand. Of course the wizard was drawn in by magical pursuits, but it suited Keir far better to think of him as a friend, not a mage. There were far fewer wizards which Keir had tolerated in his time. Had it not been for his good fortune, when they met, that the man was amenable to joining the Righteous Brand, Keir fearfully doubted they would have ever become friends.
707 came and went. As it waned into Duscar, Keir was again attended in Odessloe by a broad swathe of Rexxentrum’s aristocracy, particularly the ascendancy of the Brand, and he found himself drawn back into the old pattern of fretfully setting up the ballroom. It weathered long periods of disuse, standing stern and austere, full of cold, gray light in the rafters. It made him feel tiny, and before he dragged out the tables with Elspet’s help, he busied himself with pacing in front of the gallery. He paused in front of the pinnacle– Tristen and Gulvain, the former holding the head of the gorgon. Keir matched his pose, for a moment, then shook his head, abashedly, and went to find Elspet.
By the end of it, some amount of cheer had returned to the ballroom. Between Elspet and Fiona, the latter at the urging of Graeme, who seemed to pity Keir, the tables were all set with hand-stitched doilies. Little cakes were set out, brought down from Uthodurn, and a whole drove of roasts was brought from the Pearlbow Wilderness by a brother of his. He almost threw his back out putting the damn streamers up. Amidst Keir’s complaints on the subject, Graeme finally revealed he had noticed the streamers falling down that night in 702, but delivered a bushel of wreathes for the windowtoppers as apology.
Keir took solace in the simple fact that he was not tasked with party-planning on his own, even if the Martinet was coming again. The only scarce anxiety Keir had, really, was his friend’s– perhaps predictable– excitement at the prospect of seeing Wylock again. He tried to keep his distaste for even his friend’s alma mater far from mind, because it remained a scarce, if certain, point of contention between the two. Otherwise, the day approached all the same, and he prepared himself for the dreadful task of welcoming both cherished friends, awkward company, and hated rivals into his Odessloe home. As the ballroom grew warm and cheery, his home ceased to be his own. It felt strangely counter-intuitive. Perhaps he ought to liven up the estate after all, but it was so much work to keep tidy. Graeme, through it all, remained a source of reassurance.
The evening came. As the first guests were arriving, Keir felt already exhausted. The party from the Brand came early. Keir had to be hasty with his coatee, which Elspet buttoned up around his throat as they approached the ballroom-side entrance. He took a breath in that he knew he wouldn’t let go until the function ended. Several hierarchs in the Brand arrived, escorted from Odessloe’s gates by Graeme, who had started trying to wear a beard and mustache. It was trim, but Keir rather thought it would take a few more shapings to take full form. Even still, he had no cause to tease him on the subject until they met again as friends. He was confident there would be the opportunity following the toasts, even though some of the hierarchs had suggested there would be Assembly members and perhaps Imperial courtiers in attendance. He rued the thought of alienating Brumewick in front of such an audience, and in such company.
Keir hoped that tonight the Brand would present a united front in front of the Assembly, and that the Imperial court might see that loyalty to the Empire inspired even a wizard of modest decoration such as Brumewick. He presented the hierarchs with the first of the mulled wine and tried to content himself with losing track of the hours. There was paranoia, too. He was nervous that guests might be dissatisfied with his hosting, or worse, that the damn streamers might come down. Worst of all, he thought he spied a coiffure of white hair– Graeme, Duskmaven forbid– in conversation with the Martinet. Ah, and he’d forgotten what that wizard, Wylock, looked like. That would have been the damning detail of it all. Inevitably, though, the anxieties of hosting pulled him in dizzying arcs around the room, until at long last, Graeme stepped out to catch him. He had a plate of tea-cakes and he stuck it right in Keir’s hand.
“General Saugiss has a proposition. Thought I’d save you the trouble of another round, eh, old dog, since the party’s been dragging you around so? You,” he pointed a finger, then picked a tea-cake up from the plate he’d given Keir with his fork, and ate it whole. “Need saving. And Elspet’s catching up on councilroom gossip. So I didn’t foresee help from that department.”
“Is that a fortune-telling, you weasel? There’s hardly enough to stroke ponderously on your face. It’s like a tree with half of its leaves,” Keir countered, then broke out into a smile. Brumewick seemed struck dumb, a frown stuck on his face until Keir started to worry it was real. When his own face dropped, Brumewick animated, and slapped him on the back.
“Good to see you, old dog,” he said. “Easy on the beard.”
Keir clucked at the rejoinder, then countered, “Were that true, you would have seen me as soon as you got back from Ashguard. You’ve had a week, now haven’t you? I’ve seen nary a gray hair, but your hair’s been white since I’ve known you. Can’t imagine that it’s I, too old for you.”
They sidled up under one of the gables. He’d stuck a wreathe up there just this morning, and it was starting to come askew. Good humor glittered in Graeme’s eyes and he pulled back. “Truly, Keir. You’ll want to hear this. Think of it as an… outgrowth of my work at Ashguard. Caught word from a crick, the Kryn, they’re sniffing around the Biting North. The Trust knows what for, too, but Saugiss has a mind that we ought to catch up. But,” he said, and raised his glass, gesturing out at where the hierarchs of the Brand had clustered. “I won’t steal Saugiss’s chance to explain his idea. He needed a wizard. I imagine… when the Martinet finds out, he’ll seethe that he put one of his own before King Dwendal for the expedition.”
“You’re saying…,” Keir replied.
“Your introduction panned out, Halstead. Took its time, I mark, but it panned out. Now, come on, I told him I’d pull you into the conversation. Give a nod to the guests as you do, though. Hate to give the Martinet any ideas,” Graeme said. Keir nodded along, slightly taken aback by his seemingly newfound savvy for the echelons of Rexxentrum aristocracy. His clothes– robes, in the colors of the Brand coatees– were tailored and well-fashioned. The fabric looked new. It was a far cry from the Graeme of five years prior, and made Keir almost feel shabby by comparison.
Swallowing his reticence, he came along with Graeme, stopping to kiss Fiona’s hand as he did. Graeme paused for a moment, stealing a hushed word with his wife, and he attended, politely a few feet away.
General Saugiss raised his glass as the two joined his tidy circle. His hairline had receded since Halstead had last been to Bladegarden, but he was every bit the barrel-chested old brass he remembered meeting fresh out of the academy. “What a… delight, this room,” Saugiss said. He had a trost in his hand, his cheeks already ruddy with what Halstead had to assume was only a polite amount of drink, and he paused to smile and point out every wreath Keir had hung up. The whole gathering clustered under one of the chandeliers, the one that hung a little askew. “I see why the Halsteads have remained a… household name, even in the royal councilroom.”
Keir nearly swallowed his tongue, then nodded, madly composing a response. Every option felt like a bad option when speaking on friendly terms with a superior. Graeme squeezed his shoulder, and put a flute of light wine in his hand. Finally, Keir nodded. “The credit must be given to my lady wife, Elspet. You’ve ah, met, haven’t you? I hear your son and his wife are expecting soon, General. You must be very proud.”
Saugiss grinned, his ruddy cheeks lifting into a well-worn rictus. “Ah, yes, Elspet. She… sent flowers for my son’s wedding. Holly and crocus, I recall, it was a touching gift. A boy, the doctors believe. Oh, but let me rescue you from such pointless small talk. I’m sure Mage Brumewick has already spilled some of the good news, tight-lipped as I know he’s tried to be,” he said, raucously, and nudged towards Graeme. “Wizards never can quite keep quiet about what gets them ticking, can they?”
“Nor can a general refrain from dressing one down, it would seem,” Graeme riposted, settling into an easy expression by Keir’s side.
“Not nearly enough, sir,” Keir replied, ignoring Graeme’s comment.
“Oh, please!” Saugiss interjected, “I will not be called ‘sir’ by a man of your quality, while a guest at your comfort, while standing under your roof. You will call me Mr. Saugiss, or you can call me Otto.”
“That’s as well, Mr. Saugiss,” Keir said, and the General nodded and raised his glass.
“Now, as I’m sure the Mage has implied, we’ve intercepted news of great interest from the cricks at border skirmish,” Saugiss began, then turned to one of the junior Officers. “Go on, boy, get the good Sir Halstead some more mulled wine. He looks parched for comfort, and we’re at his invitation!”
The boy ran off, and Saugiss turned, briefly glancing to the painting in the gallery. Keir thumbed his now-empty wine flute, and piped up, “Yes, something about the Biting North, was that it?”
“Right you are, or otherwise Mage Brumewick has spilled more than his due,” Saugiss said, shooting a dark look in good humor. “The Assembly has long opined that hints to the Calamity may yet lie on Eiselcross, but have seemingly not leapt at the opportunity to confirm it. Brumewick tells me it’s to do with the failure of teleportation magic to reach the islands, and otherwise the great difficulty of sailing northward. But King Dwendal, at this new intelligence from the cricks, has just commissioned a top-of-the-line icebreaker that can brave the frigid depths. And that’s where we have those damned wizards beat! Present company excluded, of course,” he added, and Graeme merely bowed his head, with a glint of returned humor.
“Exciting news, to be sure,” Keir said, and said a soft thank-you when the boy Officer placed a mug of mulled wine in his hand. “The Empire must needs stay competitive with the Dynasty, of course. Seems an odd time to be telling me about this all, though.”
“Good Sir Halstead,” General Saugiss said, with a jerk of his hand towards Graeme, “Why, I hardly agree. Inform the gentleman, if you please?”
“At Mr. Saugiss’s recommendation,” Graeme said, and took a long sip from his own mug for effect, “the King is willing to move forward with a plan which vests you with command of the expedition.”
Keir’s head spun, and he next remembered the whole group coming raucously around him, a toast from Saugiss, and everything growing difficult to follow until he ended right back up by the dessert table with Graeme. He hadn’t lost consciousness, merely, the whole of it had sorely overwhelmed him. He felt adrift at sea, with only the platters of tea-cakes, scones, and cookies to anchor him. Rather, their wives’ wondrous needlework, which lay undisturbed under the platters. He’d had servants act as buffers to prevent any overzealous revelers spilling wine over the doilies. It had happened once years ago, and the thought was wretched to consider.
“Not one for acclaim, I take it,” Graeme said, with a pitying, faint smile.
“Not one for crowds, I’m afraid,” Keir said. “If the soldiering life could be all ranging, horseriding, and travel, I think that’d suit me fine.”
“Oh, it can be,” Graeme said. “If you’re a grunt. But you’re a Halstead, and I’m a War-Mage in the Brand now. It’s a privilege we’re not sucking up mud for desserts in the Ashkeepers, I say.” There came a long pause.
“You never stop to sample your own hospitality. Awfully dogged, I say, too. Like an… old dog.”
“Lay off, you pest,” Keir said, and tidied up his plate to pile on a slice of hot pie. “It’s… merely a surprise. I’m no navyman, you know.”
“The King doesn’t want navymen serving his expedition. The navymen spend their days on loan to the Menagerie Coast, fighting pirates, and that. The Brand know the cricks. Know how they fight. And you’re decorated, Keir.”
Realization dawned in Keir, in equal horror and awe. “This was your recommendation, to General Saugiss,” he said, exhaling gently.
“Well, yes, ‘Good Sir Halstead’, he was going to assign me to be someone’s second, and I’d hate for that to be Truscan. King forbid, Denzala or Sauer…,” Graeme said, and drank long. “They weren’t going to take any other option. I’m hardly the only War-Mage they have, but I have the most experience in the Ashkeepers. And there was no chance any of the Brand hierarchy would have accepted an Assembly member. So, me. And so, you, old dog. Can you learn a few new tricks?”
Keir huffed through his nose. “For King and Empire.”
“You don’t want the glory?” Graeme countered. He was starting to pull away, angling off from the platters. Keir would soon be abandoned to his anchorage at the tableside, he knew. It was just as well. Rather, it was a natural part of the ebb and flow of the function… but he resented it for the short moment he could afford to resent.
“Perhaps it’s just been a long night, old friend,” Keir answered. “I’ll think more fondly on it in the morning, I’m certain. The glory, in no small measure, would well-suit the Halstead name. But tonight… for King and Empire, tell Saugiss I accept.”
“That I cannot do for you, I doubt he’d have it. But, Halstead, I’ll keep your company until you’re charged with seeing him out, if that suits you.”
Chapter 2
Graeme came up to flank Keir as they made their final approach on Icehaven. Snow was coming down hard, even in Thunsheer. The Biting North would be worse, he knew, but even now he clung to his cloak like a babe in a swaddle. Sheepishly, he’d briefly asked Graeme if he had spells to banish cold. He hadn’t, of course. There wouldn’t be any point to the magic, once they reached Eiselcross, Graeme claimed. Magic worked weirdly past the Frigid Depths. That was why the Assembly mages couldn’t just teleport in. It’s also why it fascinated them.
The first port recommended had been Uthodurn, but Saugiss had rejected the idea out of hand. There was too much risk of bald-faced interference on the Assembly’s part leaving from an independent port. Despite the more treacherous journey, Keir was glad to be leaving from Icehaven. They had a party of 45 good men to crew the ship, which was named The Zeideler, which had been tested twice now in short journeys into out between Icehaven and Bysaes Tyl.
Keir’s heart sank as they passed through the gates of the port. A whole battalion of Brand soldiers stood at parade to flank their journey to The Zeideler, headed up by Saugiss. It threatened to drag him into the same spell that afflicted him during the party. A spell he rather preferred to call ’loathing attention’. Further, the details of the expedition gave him cause for concern– a long stay in the southernmost isle, before Brumewick could develop means to push through what he described as a ‘dangerous magical disruption’.
Graeme was in good spirits, which was about the only consolation the day could offer short of a break in the snow, which didn’t at all thin in its driving fall. With a pang of ill humor, Keir remembered he had been forewarned to prepare a speech. He’d just hadn’t hoped to give it before half a thousand men or more. Hurrahs accompanied them down to the docks, where the shape of the bay whipped up the snow squall into a fierce, biting whip. Vested so with command, with a captain, named Werner Tressala, for the expedition at his subordinate, he was first onto The Zeideler, and when he stood with his hip at the bulwark the whole of the party waited on the quay. His heart sank further.
Graeme looked up. Keir could almost imagine the man’s words, complete with a good-natured jeer of old dog. Keir looked across the ship. Several huge chains ran down into the water, down past the bobbing plugs of ice that filled the span from quay to ship. They were piled over with snow and frozen to the anchor-lines. Hoarfrost ran up the ropes. The cold bound them to the masts, and the sails in kind. He spared a glance out towards the sea, which ran thick with floating, white-topped mountains, like the caps of murderous waves.
He cleared his throat, and began: “I’ve prepared a few words, ahead of this journey…” And those words were the last he remembered before being roused by the sounds of cheers, repeated exhortations of For King and Empire!, in an apparent echo of his own words. Captain Tressala was the second aboard, and then came Graeme, who said exactly what Keir had heard in his head. The rest of that day went by, bidding the crewsman to keep the deck clear of snow, and learning at Tressala’s hand the workings of The Zeideler. When it came down to the moment of pushing off, Keir found he could only rely on the Duskmaven’s favor, which he begged, inwardly. That the seas should be kind.
Their good fortune lasted until the end of the first week. Icehaven was surrounded by a quintet of barrier islands, which made ward against the worst of the Frigid Depths. The bay within alone, even in Thunsheer, had drawn the icebreaking mettle of The Zeideler into an echo of its tests out towards Bysaes Tyl. The great white floes made an awful shudder as they cracked through. The bow was enchanted to weather its scraping, but when the bergs grew tight, passage reduced to a crawl. At Keir’s order, Graeme blasted apart the ice with bolts of magic. At each splitting burst of force, he’d remark, chipper as ever into the biting wind, that things would grow worse once they fell beneath the spell of Eiselcross.
“As I’ve ever heard tell,” Graeme’d say, as sleet lashed their faces raw. “The cricks only know why the ice keeps magic at bay. The best of the Assembly, mark me, know less than I, and that’s only for the tell from Ashguard.”
Then Keir would give the word again, and Graeme threw his hands out wide, a staff clutched in his right, and the ice gave way another five yards. By the end of it, it was blue– the heart of it. Nights came and went. Through each night, the blue heart of the floes would stop their running, and grow thick with crystal teeth. When they lurched through at long last, Keir could scarcely spy the pair of islands, their last guardians, through the blowing of the gale. It threw piles of snow across the deck, staggering the men from their work.
On that day, the seventh, the end of the first week, The Zeideler made past the islands, and when they came about windward the gale hammered the ship’s pitch almost to the waterline. The deck was blown clear, and the ship was thrown skating tens of fathoms to the north, just clear of the islets’ icy bounds. The crew aboard was left clinging to the ropes, blasted by snow. All sound– if indeed any arose– was deafened, drowned beneath a new kind of silence entirely. And then, the spar came about.
If indeed any sound arose, it was deafened. One of the men, a decksman, was struck in the trunk and thrown into the sea. The ship was keeling too far towards the lee, coming about in a dragging arc already tens of fathoms from his fall for any to hope for his salvation. For Keir to hope for his salvation. They had all braced; Tressala had raised the call, and Keir had echoed it, high into the wind. The spar which ought to have been lashed had come loose and alive and there had been nothing to be done.
When the sea at last gave mercy, it was of a piteous sort. The bellowing winds still ran the deck, port to starboard. A pittance, Graeme said. The deck swabbed itself. Keir called up an assembly with a medallion from the hold. One of the Duskmaven’s, the last token to be afforded those who died without remains. Tanzer had been his name, Aurel. Keir smacked his lips to warm them, clasping a whistle to keep it from freezing raw, and blew a charge. Despite his faltering warmth, it still nearly froze to his lips. Graeme and Tressala came to his flank, cloaks flapping.
The spar groaned its mournful, doddering apology, cowed by the ropes that now– refastened– drew it down towards the larboard. Through it, Keir divined the Duskmaven’s attendance, and looked up, past the flurries to the airy eaves from which the gales had come and the great blue beyond them. The wind changed and swirled their coattails. Keir exhaled, like the rattle of the grave, and unstuck his tongue where it seemed doombound to chill to the roof of his mouth.
“The whistle will have to suffice, for the horn,” Keir said, faltering a breath. He gestured for time and swallowed. “Seaman Aurel Tanzer has been lost to us. We gather with heavy hearts to honor and bid farewell, as fellow charges in the King’s name, to one of our finest. Seaman Tanzer, in full knowledge and unbidden except by the charge of loyalty to his Empire, joined us on a journey he knew to be treacherous.”
The words came in pieces. Keir had them as a matter of recall, the aggregate memory of a thousand such ceremonies. But now they seemed to freeze as soon as they passed his lips, no matter how much he smacked them to keep them from freezing, like the flurries on his mustache. His skin felt like leather. His breath returned warmth to the inside of his mouth, each time he tried to speak. It was a losing battle.
Instead, it felt like the cold was getting in, freezing down the inside of his throat. It came as a sharpness within his nose and mouth. His breath rattled again. “And he did so… willing and ready to make the ultimate sacrifice, should the Duskmaven call him back to her side, to be free from the toils of life. In war as in duty, Seaman Tanzer made manifest the very meaning of valor. He proved himself a champion of the Empire, dauntless and unwavering in his commitment, in his keeping of Imperial virtue.”
His eyes felt glassy, as though frost clung to his lashes. The assembly around him furtively rubbed their hands. Even Graeme, constant, shifted around in his discomfort. Keir mustered his voice for a third and final bout, just as the wind started to well back up and the clouds started to pull in. “This day, we salute Tanzer and all others who have given their lives for the Empire. Let us recall their sacrifice, not solely in sorrow, but in glory. And may their souls see us safe on through to the end of our journey.”
He unfolded the parcel, with the medallion. “This medallion stands in for a last token of Seaman Tanzer. A tribute, to signify his passage beyond. A tithe, for the Duskmaven’s kind guidance,” Keir said, finally bidding his limbs to animate and to skirt over to the rail, overlooking the dark churn of the sea. “I bid it go now, carried by the depths to join him,” he said, and he spilled the medallion from his hand. Only when he rejoined Graeme did he notice a chill by his wrist. The cufflink, stamped with Gulvain, had come undone. Perhaps lost to the churn as well, Keir mused, and the wind redoubled.
Soon again the Frigid Depths revealed their ravin. The floes were inescapable, hounding them on all sides as they pitched ever further north. A pair of funerals came and went, the first tolled to hammering ice, crushing first the leg and then severing clean through an artery as a petty officer strained against the weight of The Zeideler, the second trying to free him, as the ship tipped back about. Both wrenched from the clutches of any who could save them. Any sound drowned under a howling across the ice. Two more medallions given to the sea.
There’d be an ice sheet ahead of Eiselcross, Graeme said, on the windward side of Frostbogen, where the sheets piled up in the winter. Frostbogen would be their first and best hope, solid ground from which to catch herring and restock for the return. Then, Keir recalled, the wizard would have to get to work. The Wizard. Graeme stood by the prow, most days, and they shared what few words were necessary, and scarcer still which could make it through the howling of the wind.
They had lost only three by the entrenchment, as the ice sheet split ahead of The Zeideler. On the far edge rose what could have been the white peaks of an islet, or perhaps rather frigid spires rising from the sea. Day by day, blasting powder stole a few fathoms further inland, but Graeme remained unconvinced. He hadn’t felt any slippage of control in his magic. This proceeded until mid-Unndilar, when at last the two sheets parted and The Zeideler passed, almost merry in the toss of its masts, through a lagoon in the sheet. With a slow release of breath, Graeme intoned what ought to have sounded like good news– he had felt the first stutters in his arcane power. They had reached Eiselcross.
And in Eiselcross, it seemed, as flurries relentlessly lifted from the horizon and brushed across The Zeideler, they would summer. The ship plodded along, spurred by a weak southerly drift, no doubt far crueler to the north, where it slung the great hunks of ice around them from the glaciers. With a tightening in his gut, Keir once again entreated the Duskmaven for kindness. A kindness that he hoped would be offered. Ahead, Graeme stood at the prow, unflappable. Perhaps Graeme was the one to entreat– their fates rested with the Brumewick mage, now. And with the King’s curiosity.
Keir wondered whether it had been that Graeme had thought him too simple to follow what explanations he might offer for the perplexities of this place, or the fault had been his in not asking. He felt as though frozen to the slick of the deck, only ten fathoms removed from his friend, but kept apart all the same. When the feel of the spell at last ebbed, he turned, keen on discerning if Tressala’s preparations were on schedule. When he made back over, Graeme had fastened up his cloak and moved on towards the interior.
Whatever had transpired between them in that briefest of spans, though only Keir had actually been facing Graeme, his counterpart brought about as though scrying the deep black sea, or the battered plugs of ice, it had welled up and ended. There was nothing more there.
Chapter 3
Dark. Dark was the word which best befit an Eiselcross summer, for a dour Brussendar of black skies at night which wheeled into gray dawns, nearly bleeding into their dusks, until each darkness’s return. Keir had spoken of the Duskmaven’s embrace, a coldness, a coldness beyond warmth and a relief from all toil. That was what Keir thought of as he warmed his insides with a tight ration of liquor, each small and aseptic sip from a jigger-glass rationed over the minutes he spent on perimeter around the encampment they had made on the southernmost spur of the islet. It was hardly an islet, in truth, more a convergence of the vast sheets around Frostbogen and the bars running off of its windward side.
The nights were spent watching the cetuses take their wide arcs. Perhaps, was a thought Keir might have busied himself with, they knew better than to come so close. Graeme spent most of his days busied from waking to long after dusk entrenched in his work. Keir had spent two weeks now in the process of building up to ask for the cliffnotes, for anything that might assure him something at all was being done. He’d stopped shaving, but Graeme had kept with it. He was always in that same tidy way, as though timeless. It perplexed Keir in the extreme.
There was a long passage that they’d carved into the ice, about a foot deep, from where The Zeideler sat moored, cupped on all sides by the ice. Tressala claimed the water its keel touched was still liquid, and on days when the sun made a brief procession from behind the cloud cover, Keir almost believed it, when the ice around the walls of the ship welled up as though weeping. The trench ran all the way to the encampment, where a canopy of skins stood over a pit several feet deep they had cut into the thaw and packed down. It defied all sense, but the ice was shockingly warm when it surrounded on all sides, and when the weather turned bitter, all 44 of them huddled in.
In the taut splay of the canopy, with the whole of the crew gathered underneath, Keir saw the suggestion of the rafters and the gables of the Odessloe house. The men busied themselves with working songs and chatter. Tressala sat opposite him, wringing a bundle of warming herbs through his hands. He had a wizened sort of look to him, honed in the Frigid Depths, there could be no doubt. There were lines like riverbeds in his face where the wind had driven sleet through. He was dour. Keir found him a difficult subordinate, though not for any matter of disobedience.
Keir stoked the fire with a blackened iron rod. “Sir Halstead. Your wizard,” Tressala said. The span between words was lengthened by a plop, plop, plop, as snow bowed the canopy, and the man worked the herbs through his hands. “The men are relentless in asking. How soon can we pass onward?”
“I spoke to him just this morrow,” Keir said, more into the fire than anything apart. The smoke rose through a tight o in the skins overtop. Where the snow piled on, the skins seemed to shrivel and grow whitish, like the windows at home. “Mage Brumewick remains at work, and longer hence will.” Tressala’s features grew thin, perhaps weighted in disappointment. “Tell the men, yourself,” Keir continued. “We simply must entrench.”
The wind drove for weeks in vain, rallying against the canopy. Where the snow-filled bouts of each gale had previously carried with them the strength to throw men bodily into the sea, in attempts to thrash The Zeideler to splinters. Now, it only forced snow up and over the ice in huge dune-like piles. The trench-path had been buried, and The Zeideler was brought closer as the ice began to ebb. Graeme had begun taking long spells closer to the land, though cautioned them from moving onto the shore, even as the ice grew thin.
He came upon Graeme by the rim of the sheet, where the ice had stacked against the shore. He had struck a canopy there, and underneath, into the ice, he had drawn a contrivance Keir had no description for. There were books splayed out, and a chisel Brumewick had which he gathered was intended for carving into the sheet. Keir stopped at what he made to be a stoop. “Mage Brumewick,” he said.
A steady chink-chink-chink, the work of the chisel, came to a stop. Graeme straightened his back and came about, and replied, “Keir.” Then he spread his arms, indicating the circles under his tent, scoffing faintly to clear his throat. “My handiwork,” he said, with a waggle of his hand, playing at humility. After another pause, Graeme turned his chin up, coming to look at Keir fully. “You need another report, for the men. The information we gained, at Ashguard, it was incomplete. The crick didn’t understand it any better than I did, several weeks ago,” he finished, but faintly narrowed his eyes.
“No,” Keir said. “That isn’t quite it, Graeme. They do, they’ve been asking,” he continued, stepping a little past the stoop. He set his eyes on a bench that Graeme must have been using to rest, if not to sleep. Graeme gave him a little nod, with a firmer look reserved for him than he had fixed when Keir entered. “But the expedition is you, Graeme. For the glory of it, maybe, but I can’t say you’re just my charge, here. I’ve not made your work my interest before, and that’s partly for lack of understanding it. Today, though. Thought I’d repay the honor back.”
Graeme slipped the chisel into a leather sheathe and folded up his books. For a worried moment, Keir realized the extent of how far they had drifted; indeed, it had been weeks since they’d shared more than brief company at mess in the mornings, though Graeme kept that distance with everyone as Keir knew it. That moment drew on as Graeme stood, as he looked around, appearing almost small and lost, with his white hair a little askew on his head. And then he sat down next to Keir with a dogged look in his bleary eyes.
“So, a report for you. I can do that, old dog, but I can’t understand it for you,” Graeme said, and then a smile split through his face. “That means you’ll have to get faster on the uptake, I should think. But–” a beat, as the smile dropped, and something more like genuine affection took its place– “I see the respect, Halstead. The typical War-Mage’s command has never much taken an interest,” he finished, and he wet his lips.
Keir pulled back, then for the briefest of moments, Graeme put a hand on his shoulder, and with the other picked up a journal, split it face-open, and put it in Keir’s lap.
“I told you the Assembly thought the storms around Eiselcross, the unseasonable coldness of the Frigid Depths might have its roots in the Calamity, and the Age of Arcanum. That would have suggested a divine origin, but the magic is… arcane. It resembles what was spoken of in the Halls of Erudition as ‘wild magic’. The ice is hiding something,” Graeme said, and a presence came to his eyes as he spoke, one Keir had never before seen in his friend.
“You mean this metaphorically, of course,” Keir said, “or should we treat the ice itself as a foe?”
“No. Not yet, anyway,” Graeme answered. His eyes went askew, to the sigil on the ground. “I’ve nearly finished tracing it, the cross-section of the magic. You can’t feel it, but we’re caught in a storm, one that rages purely within the weave of magic. It’s like… pulling the fibers on a loom taut, stretching a blanket, and snipping some of the threads. They curl and snarl, and between here, this island, Frostbogen, and Foren, the bigger one, I don’t think we can pass. It’s as though magic itself has gone mad. If nature alone were not enough, convinced and set for our demise as it is, so too is the magic here. We would be beset from the land, from the sea, from the air.”
Keir strained to follow, but the wizard made less sense as he proceeded. Still, one indelible fact became perfectly clear to him, and he gave it voice. “You are doing your nation proud, Graeme, and I by it. Should the King hold the means to travel and study these islands, he will have yet another tool arrayed against the Assembly’s proliferation. Their reach eclipses his too thoroughly. But you, Graeme, are an exemplar of the Imperial mage. Do not let the men’s treatment of you let you forget it.”
Graeme laughed, but did not share Keir’s enthusiasm. Keir looked off briefly, but the sound of Graeme’s voice called him back, even as he took his hand from Keir’s shoulder. “Remember, we are beset on all sides, whether or not we feel it. It will be around us in full once the ice thins and we must stand on dry land. That is the kind of storm I tell you surrounds us. I have its shape, but shape alone isn’t enough. Tomorrow, I will need parties to take me onto the islet. I need to inscribe a kind of stabilizer, something to weigh down its winds.”
“You have explained it, as you can, then, Graeme?” Keir inquired, and Graeme nodded, his breath coming suddenly short. Keir huffed. “I have tried to understand. But, its as you said, fortune-teller. You can’t understand it for me.”
“No,” Graeme said, with a distinct slip to his grin. “It’s a fact that has stymied many a professor, at the Halls and elsewhere. The aptitude isn’t learned in a conversation, and certainly not by a dour old boor like you.”
“Yes, well,” Keir said, and then he took out his jigger-glass and whiskey, proffering some to Graeme, “I can’t say you don’t look or sound the part for the wiry old tutor.”
Then, Keir very nearly pulled away, and crossed back over the stoop for the canopy. But Keir instead asked a question which, in a less fraught environment, he might have blamed Tressala for: “How much longer will it take, Graeme? The work on Frostbogen, after the thaw.”
Never before had Keir more clearly perceived defeat in Graeme. He scooted back along the makeshift bench, and with unreadable blue eyes, replied, “Fessuran, the end. Or Quen’pillar. The cricks did not understand it as I do now, I say this, Sir Halstead.”
Keir heaved out a low sigh. “The freeze will have begun, and deepened still. We allotted provisions to winter, but the men are not prepared for it.”
“Then we won’t winter,” Graeme shook his head. “That assumed no magic, but we’ll have magic, Keir. If I can assuage this… storm,” he said.
“If,” Keir echoed, resenting how low the response felt.
“Fine, when,” Graeme retorted, and Keir broke off, shaking his head in disbelief.
“You’d chance the lives of 43 men, and I, on if,” Keir began. “I entreat you, Graeme, think clearly. The Brand already recognizes you for your… singularity, as a mage. You needn’t be a miracle-worker, too. That’s more than we can demand of anyone, more than I can demand of you.”
Graeme shook his head in turn. “Not on if, Keir, on my magic. At Ashguard, they entrusted whole centuries on my magic. If a crick’s spell broke through, if I couldn’t counter it in time, fifty, sixty dead. I am equipped to guard the lives of forty, my conscience is clear.”
“Against the cricks!” Keir retorted.
“We no less understand their magic, Keir. The Assembly’s just too proud to tell you. Ashguard… it might as well be the Calamity out there.”
“Three are dead already, Graeme,” Keir said. “Men you ate with. I will take word to Captain Tressala, and we will return, not as victors, but as valiant servants. Then we will return. For King and Empire,” Keir said.
“And the cricks will have beaten us,” Graeme replied. Keir began to pull away, and Graeme leapt to his feet in a flash, returning his hand to Keir’s shoulder with surprising strength. His arms were thin as ever, but there was a steely fervor in his eyes. “Fine, yes. You speak truly, Quen’pillar is too much to ask. But I entreat you, let me make the first stabilizer. I…” Graeme stumbled, “I know the place, I just need a party, on the islet. If the first takes too long, I will go back with you. This I swear to you, Keir, on Good King Dwendal.”
Keir paused, and he let his head fall. Defeat was a bitter thought to him as well, one he did not relish. His mind returned to Saugiss, at the party. His remarks. That ‘Halstead’ remained a household name in the Imperial court, the dress Elspet saw in Rexxentrum, for the coming-of-age of the Crown Prince. The invitation he returned, stamped with Gulvain’s face. Tristen, in the gallery. “Fine,” Keir said.
The black waters that had grown between the sheet of ice and the islet, full of big, bobbing plugs of ice, rippled gently beneath them, pacific in the absence of wind. They were loaded into dinghies, rowed out from The Zeideler, where it was anchored against the sheet. The spray from the sea leapt up and into the boats. It turned to ice along the oars, and frost along their cloaks. The cold was worst where the surf inside that ice-floe lagoon met the shore, which was piled high with ice and snow.
A party of marines were first onto the shore, with Graeme at their heels. When all of the dinghies had been pulled up onto the beach, Keir stood a moment unceremoniously before realizing that the men had assembled for his direction.
He took a shaky breath, then glanced at Graeme. The wizard seemed even more trimmed than he had been prior, stately and ironclad in his course of action. Keir scried him for any hint of wavering, then settling his gut, began: “Mage Brumewick has convinced myself and Captain Tressala that the magical phenomena exhibited further into the Biting North are of arcane origin, and can indeed be controlled by the practice of magic. A party of six marines and six seaman will accompany Mage Brumewick for his work on the northern part of Frostbogen. The remainder will remake camp here until his signal.”
Keir looked out at the assembly. His look garnered only a nod from Graeme.
“Good. On his completion, we return to Icehaven. Prepare statements for the King.” He paused, as though his tongue had frozen to the roof of his mouth. “Until then, Mage Brumewick is vested with command. For King and Empire,” Keir said.
For King and Empire, came the response. Graeme nodded further approval, then selected 12 companions, and set off.
Late Fessuran arrived, with no word from Brumewick. The brief reprieve summer had bought them from the driving snows and wind was starting to ebb. At Tressala’s word, Keir set out with another dozen for Brumewick’s last location, drawing sleds and dinghies for fear of risking the waters where the ice tightened up around the shore. It took two days to reach the site Graeme had indicated, and they came upon a much reduced camp by morning, where a pair of marines and a seaman sat preparing breakfast.
“Where’s the Mage?” Keir demanded. The men roused, and staggered to attention.
“A week gone now,” the senior marine said. “Mage Brumewick said we had completed our work far faster than expected, that he might manage both necessary before the freeze comes. The… sigil, he said. It’s just over the hill,” the marine finished, indicating a nearby rise.
Keir waved terse refusal. He pulled out the journal Graeme had stuck in his hands, and suppressed the seething anger in his chest. There was a second feeling, too, one he resented in himself: the hope that Graeme might have succeeded. As they traveled west by northwest, the wind picked up. Across Frostbogen, snow swept like a great white blanket. They brought the two marines and the seaman with the party, drawing the sleds along. The ground cambred up, cutting off sight just ahead. Keir swore; his cloak had come undone.
Bereft of his sight, Keir’s attention restricted to his hearing. They trudged onwards, as a distinct whistling began to pick up in the air. The shape of the islet, as they had seen it earlier in Brussendar, lent its shape to the howl of the gale. It made it seem alive. Disquieted, Keir recalled what Graeme had said about the storm. The storm he could not see. The storm that promised to meld with another storm entirely, the one that was present for them all.
He found himself walking in a white void. The marines were all around him, in a tidy circle. He shouldered Taibhselann as he shoved on, and he kept patting his cheek, when the wet of the snow, the sharpness of the rivulets, brought to mind the distinct fear he was bleeding. In time, the screams became their new silence, as had been the case on The Zeideler, before Tanzer was lost to the Depths. When it ebbed in its violence, it was as though silence itself grew quieter. He could feel his extremities going.
Worst was the cracking. It was only sometimes audible, like a splitting in the ice somewhere beyond immediate vision. It could have been under the snow, and there would have been no way to tell. For the time being, the snow did not give way. It merely quieted, or otherwise grew too far away to hear. Their surroundings returned to that odd sort of silence.
Their camp suffered the same conditions. Dinner was carried out in silence, and as they piled into their tents, they were subject to the drifting of the snowbank beneath them, and piles of snow as they tumbled down over the tent skins. Sleep was fleeting until the void around them turned from dim gray to white, with no great improvement in visibility. The night was fraught with that same continuous sound of splitting, though its source avoided making any appearance.
Late into the morning, the snow faded, and was replaced with a thick and dismal fog. The wind at last quieted, sparing his ears, but leaving his imagination to grapple with a far worse, deeper silence. In that quiet, Keir could more keenly hear the clink of every shifting section of ice. In what visions he strained to make out, through the dense fog, assisted only by the worried huddle of his men and the guesswork his ears could support, he sensed the entire island coming apart, like the ice sheets splitting apart in summer. But that higher splitting sound did not resurface.
There came no confirmation of any rapid, horrifying fate, drawn into the sea by the ground beneath his feet. Instead, a different sound made it through the fog– the sounds of toil. Graeme’s voice. Immediately, Keir shoved forward. “Mage Graeme Brumewick!” Keir shouted, animated by a rage that didn’t quite feel his own. “Explain yourself!”
“Keir,” a voice replied from the fog, somewhere ahead and just left. Graeme’s. “It is still Fessuran, by my count– the work is done!”
Keir rushed forward, until Graeme, crouched over something indistinct, beside a shabby little lean-to, became visible through the fog.
“It’s all done,” Graeme repeated. “It just remains to…” he nodded, as though making an understatement. “Test it. Now, there were a few issues…”
“The issue–” Keir cried out, in a high pitch– “The issue is insubordination, Mage Brumewick! Done or not, you have exploited my trust and the command I have vested you with!”
His voice echoed across the ice, to join that strange clinking sound. Keir trudged up and picked the wizard up by the lapels. Graeme shrunk back, forming a protest on his lips.
“You have dishonored yourself and your Empire. You have jeopardized the lives of these men!”
“I have saved the mission,” Graeme said. “I have–”
A searing red flash cut through the fog. It came from the south; the main camp. Tressala. The Zeideler. A flare. No, a signal. Keir let Graeme down, and stepped back, shaking his arms out. “Go!!” Keir shouted, and rushed past the lines of marines. Shaken from his stupor, he thought he spied Graeme sprinting after him, but couldn’t be sure.
He couldn’t have been sure how long they ran. All supplies were left at Graeme’s camp, which was indeed nearer to the anchorage of The Zeideler than Graeme’s point A. The sound of the camp at muster arose, as the fog broke and was replaced by upswirlings of snow from the sea winds. Through the clearing, Keir saw Tressala and the rest of the marines standing at the lip of a high hill. The ice before them was split, as though large chunks had fallen towards the sea. No, it hadn’t split– it was splitting.
Keir met Tressala’s eyes, his frenzied rush carrying him to the edge of the rift. “The signal,” he made out, breathing hard. “Tressala. You signalled.”
The man turned his head, indicating the far-off shore with his look. The tent was in tatters. Bodies. Seared black. Keir counted the men with Tressala. Nine remained. Then, that cracking sound returned. Tressala backed up; Graeme began sweeping his eyes in a wide, frantic arc. The wind billowed, and Tressala passed behind another curtain of snow, before Keir’s vision cleared again.
Then it changed direction. The wind wasn’t towards them now, it was up. The snow lifted from the ground in a huge shower. No, not wind, something else. The ice shelf fractured. Keir couldn’t see the marines on the hill. He caught a stray look at Tressala, and then something blue as the ice itself. There was a horrible hiss, like steam, and then there was quiet, but for the shuffling of the men on the hill. Keir counted seven, now. And then he pulled Taibhselann.
There was a glimmer of blue in the crack ahead, and Keir swung down. There was a hiss as a spray of scalding blood struck his arm. He fell to his knees and punched through snow. Graeme followed his lead. Keir saw the glint first, as a swirl of sigils came up around his hand and streaking magical stars drove forth. The creature pelted back.
“That’s tested,” Graeme said. “We…” he breathed heavily. “Must have disturbed it.”
The creature came about again. It came down hard on his party, now, which had fallen out in a loose line. Two marines took the brunt of its rush. The smell of cooking flesh filled the air– three scalded, fatally by any assessment– as more of the thing’s blood hissed, rapidly cooling in the cold. Matron, the cold. His fingers were freezing to the haft. “What is it?” He bellowed, rage still welling from his chest.
“Remorhaz,” Graeme said. The creature bore down. Graeme swung his arms wide, the sigils returning like crystals suspended in the air. The smell of ozone, a hideous crack, and several segments of the creature’s body burst open. Keir swung his axe down into its chitin, and it writhed, horribly. There were little skittering legs underneath that pulled it along the ice, as though driven to cool.
Graeme shuddered forward. “To the shore,” he said, sounding more uncertain than Keir had ever heard. The bulk of the men, those that survived, those that weren’t charred yet, were cowed by the bank. Tressala’s men were looking about with wild eyes.
Keir resolved himself. “Do it,” he said. Graeme seemed to be shaking, even as they clustered with Tressala. Keir straightened his back, struggling to hide how shaken he felt. Matron, his hands were shaking, and his tongue was as though frozen to the roof of his mouth. He shouted, from a raw throat, “Marines, form a line. Weapons against shields! Clamor! Now!!”
Graeme stepped back, as though making a discreet exit. It wormed through Keir’s head, the way he was backing up. But Keir was already angry. He gave Graeme a nod.
Graeme cast a spell. The splitting sound continued, but there was no sign of the creature, that… Remorhaz. Nothing immediately transpired.
“What’s the plan, Brumewick?!” Keir said. Graeme made no response. And then the air split. It happened again, two white flashes. In an instant, there stood Morwyn Wylock and another, whom Keir did not recognize. Both wore Assembly robes. The disquiet in Keir’s gut deepened. Both came forward.
Keir heard Graeme cry out, “Fifteen men remain!” Keir counted them– it was true.
Wylock and the other came forward. “Join hands,” he ordered.
“Do it!” Graeme echoed.
Keir turned towards him, incredulous. His mind was spinning; he hardly felt the cold. He bellowed out, “Was this your plan, Graeme?”
“No,” Graeme said, joining hands with Wylock, and with nine others. “Not at first,” he said. “Not like this.”
“Not until you made it so,” Graeme said, and then he, Wylock, and the seven others vanished. And then Keir felt a strange tugging sensation, and Frostbogen, too, vanished.
Epilogue 1
Soon, it was Duscar again, and all throughout the Odessloe house ballroom, Elspet was busy with needling the doilies for the tables, and the streamers. They put up wreathes over the inside siding of each gable. They put up cheery little candles, and when Keir passed in front of Tristen, in the gallery, he looked Gulvain in the painted eyes with a dour little look. The wolfhound seemed to look knowingly back. Whether it was loyalty or disgruntlement, Keir could never quite tell.
It was the size of the room, Keir concluded. The distance between the walls, the space between the rafters, the height of each window. Those qualities were to blame for how drafty the room got, how it could never quite keep out the chill in the winter. Elspet kept moving between the tables, furtively. She was thinking something sad and discreet, but Keir knew the form it must have taken. She was wondering why Fiona couldn’t be here to help her set up.
Keir pitied her that. He could never impress upon her the weight of the insult Graeme had done him, then. He had hijacked the expedition. Had they returned in late Sydenstar, as Keir had impressed, 29 men would have kept their lives. 29 able soldiers of the Righteous Brand. 29 funerals, 29 effects that a token of the Duskmaven had to stand in for. And he had sold it to the Assembly, those underminers of King Dwendal’s reign. Graeme Brumewick bought a house in the Tangles. They had spoken on the topic much earlier, even picked out a house. It was a house which faced the Candles, with high windows and spacious rooms. It was three doors from Keir’s manor in the city.
He banished the thought from his mind, and set to bringing out the tables. There would be no dessert table, this year, he decided. Keir had hired a chef in lieu. Dinner would be eaten seated, in several courses. He busied himself with the utensils, rejoining with Elspet to fix their outfits. King Dwendal and General Saugiss would be in attendance, and he would have to meet the Brand’s party at the Odessloe gates. He looked forward to that most of all, only second to the relief when it ended, and he could rest. When he could release the dogs from the kennels, and they could pad inside, and he could sleep in front of the fireplace. The room still had two chairs, ahead of the painting of Malcolm Halstead, but Elspet never used the other. Even the dogs preferred his lap.
He and Elspet were in their evening attire long before the runner came to alert him of Saugiss’s arrival. As they turned the corner to the main road towards the gate, he cheerily recounted the faces in the party, Saugiss, Denzala, Truscan, and a retinue of lieutenants. There was another face, in Mage’s attire, a new face he didn’t recognize. Cheerily, Saugiss introduced her as Ingrid Meer. They shook hands, Elspet hiked her skirts, and they all returned to the ballroom.
Much of it was a reserved affair, in the end. Dwendal’s party were the next to arrive, and finally several other nobles from around the Zemni fields. As the dinner bell neared, most guests settled down to their assigned tables. Elspet’s skill, it turned out, was evident in the harmonious conversations which seemed to fill the room. The time before dinner wound down to ten minutes, and a runner announced a late arrival. Keir made for the door.
Just beyond stood Wylock and the Martinet, with a coiffure of white hair further back– Graeme. The retinue from the Cerberus Assembly. Keir began to pull away from the door, with a thin smile spanning his features. Graeme gave him only a courteous look as he withdrew, and the Assembly sat down on the far side of the room. Still, amid the polite conversation, the constant rounds of meetings, and the frost-speckled windows, Keir caught his vision finding the dessert tables, where they would have stood. But never once did his gaze wander across the room.
When it was all over, he found Malcolm in the gallery, and tried to match his expression.
Epilogue 2
Dawn came to the Candles. The academy dorms were shabby, in her opinion, but she’d gone from her home in the Tangles, which was large, and empty, to this room, which was small, and full. She wriggled over the edge of the bed, still adjusting to height, to being long enough that her feet stuck off the end of her bed. She looked down at the bunk below, where there was a whorl of red hair rammed straight into a pillow.
“Annie?” She said.
“Eddie?” Came the reply, muffled by the pillows.
“I think I have to leave soon, Annie,” she said, and rolled until the ceiling spun overhead, but not so much that she fell down from the bunk. Her trunk was disassembled on the floor, but it was her kind of dissassembly. Everything was in stacks, so it was different, but still a blatant protest against this injustice. “I don’t want to leave soon, Annie.”
“It isn’t fair, Eddie,” said the mass of red hair and sheets.
“I know it isn’t fair, Annie, but it’s really not that far. It’s three times as far as Odessloe,” she said, matter-of-factly, “but not half as far as Zadash. And you go to Odessloe four times a term, so you can go see me once every term, plus a second time every third.”
There was a shuffling from the bed beneath, and what started as a low groaning, “Ohhhhh, that’s not how that works, Eddie!”
“Sure it is,” she said, “I’m plenty important, and you said you’d rather stay here with me than go to see your Malcolm and his mean old dog.”
The bottom bunk creaked, with another groan of protest. She wasn’t sure whether it was from the mop of red hair or the bed. “Be reasonable, Eddie! It isn’t fair. You should get mad. Professor Margolin has to help. If you told Miss Elspeth to ask, I bet Dad might do something…”
“Annie,” she groaned. “You know I’m a Brumewick…”
“Eddie,” the mop said into the bed. Then it rolled over, and Henriette Brumewick looked down at Annetta Halstead, with wide blue eyes. “You know I don’t really see you as a Brumewick. Not one of those Assembly lapdogs, anyway. Just… fight it, please! I hate when you give up, because… well, that’s magic! You said you believed it could do anything.”
“Yeah, but Old Marg doesn’t teach any debt avoidance magic. Plus, all Mom’s ancestors were decrepit old wizards. If they could do debt avoidance magic, they totally would have,” Henriette said. She looked down, morosely. “Please say you’ll come visit me, Annie.”
“Gods, okay. I’ll come and visit you, Eddie, in Nogvurot,” Annetta replied, and reached up to the upper bunk. “Now come on down.”
“Once a term, and twice every third, Annie,” Henriette said. “Gods, just give me a hug, alright?”
“If you come on down, Eddie,” Annetta replied.
Henriette fiddled over to the ladder, then swung over the edge until she could lower herself to the ground. Finally, she wormed her lips into a little grimace, and got over to pack up her trunk. “Now come hug me,” she said, having a hard time mustering the resolve to turn around. She felt freckled arms tighten around her midsection, and she twisted about, and buried her face in Annetta’s big mop of red hair. Then she tipped her head down so as not to get any snot on her shirt.
“Are you crying, Eddie?”
“Gods, just shut up, Annie,” Henriette replied.
“We can say this year is one of the third years.”