Maximum Ice (17 page)

She stroked the boy’s head and spoke to him softly. “Where are your parents?”

He jutted his chin at the tower. His lip trembled, quashing his attempts to speak.

“You can tell me, it’s all right.”

“My dad doesn’t want me to go. He
doesn’t,”
he said with some defiance, huddling against her.

Struggling for decorum, Zoya turned to the nuns. “This boy is terrified. What are you doing?”

Zoya held on to the boy, cradling him in front of her, arms over his chest, daring the nuns to intervene. Worley stood behind, shaking his head.

“It’s a done deal, Zoya; the price has already been paid. Let the boy go.”

“Price?” She turned on him. “You’re
selling
him?”

Worley’s face was red in the cold air. “We got a fair price.”

She gripped the boy even harder. “You… don’t… sell… children.” Her words came out like bullets.

Worley drew himself up. “
I
didn’t sell them. Their parents did.” At her look, he shrugged. “I told you we were a poor preserve.”

Around her, the black robes herded the children into the other cabs. The sun shone in stony brilliance. The children marched into the white cars, quietly, obediently. Everything was calm and orderly. Shivers ran in waves over her, but not from the cold.

She fixed her gaze on the circle of nuns that had grown around her. “This boy wants his father.”

From behind the group of black robes came a voice, saying, “I’m afraid it’s not mutual, actually.”

It was the sister that Zoya had seen when they first arrived, Sister Patricia Margaret Logue.

She was leaning on a cane, gazing at the scene with bemuse-ment. “The boy’s father is sending him to us for his education.”

Zoya said, “Why is that so hard to believe?”

The nun came close. “Because you are from a quite different world, my dear.” She glanced at the sky. “Such a nice ship. All the comforts?” Her tone changed. “And how did you like the preserve, where this boy was destined to live?”

Sister Patricia Margaret firmly took the boy by the arm and met Zoya eye to eye.

Zoya knew what Anatolly would have her do. Slowly, she released her hold. Diplomatically it was the right thing to do.

At that moment she hated diplomacy

Handing the child off to the waiting nuns, the sister turned back to Zoya. “The boy’s father is twenty-eight years old, and has already lost half his teeth. He had the boy working in the mines, though the child tests high in mathematics and language. Our resources are limited, or we would take them all.”

The sister nodded at her assistants, and they firmly pushed the boy back into the cab.

Zoya met his eyes, and it brought her anger back in full. “These children will pay a terrible price—for their
education.”

The nun shrugged. “ ‘We live in the middle of things which have all been destined to die.’ Best prepare when we are young.” She raised a white eyebrow. “You know Seneca?”

“The philosopher.”

Sister Patricia Margaret nodded. “A great consolation. I recommend him to you.” She turned and walked away

Zoya was so surprised by the summary dismissal that she hesitated. But only for a moment. She charged up to the sister, cutting off her path. “I’m not going away, Sister. You may wish I would, but my captain has urgent business with you. Or your superior.”

“Our
business, Zoya Kundara, is of the spirit. I leave enterprise
to the preserve.” She glanced at Worley, and he bobbed his head in reply

Zoya held her eyes. “My captain is a determined man. I’m afraid he will insist.” Anatolly might be quite incapable of insisting anything of the sort, but it wouldn’t do to admit it.

“Even a determined man must await the right moment.”

“Seneca?” Zoya asked dryly.

“No, that was my own.” She smiled at Zoya, and her face took on a more approachable aspect. “Be patient, Zoya Kundara. We’ll be back to this preserve in a few weeks. Meanwhile, I’ll bring the matter up with Mother Superior.” She turned to go.

“Can I come with you?” Zoya blurted out.

Sister Patricia Margaret turned back to gaze at Zoya. “Sorry, our sled is full.”

Worley trotted forward, saying, “But Sister, this woman is of high standing, and her ship…”

“Full,” the sister repeated, and hurried on.

Zoya wondered if the sled would have been
full
if she’d been more conciliatory. It was a damn hard line to walk, diplomacy

Worley walked back to join Zoya, as she muttered, “There’s room on that sled.”

He shrugged. “The nuns do…”

“… what they will. Yes, I’ve heard it before.” She paused. “Who’s in charge at the… Keep?”

Worley’s eyes looked rounder than usual. “That would be the Mother Superior Solange Arnaud. She never comes here.”

“I imagine she doesn’t.” As the cab doors began to close, she noticed a tall black woman. The young woman who’d tried to give her the robot. She was watching Zoya, and nodded to her from her seat in the cramped sled. Apparently not all the new acquisitions were children. Zoya nodded back, mustering a smile of reassurance. It felt as hollow as it was.

“Did you sell that young woman too?” Zoya asked.

Worley glanced in the direction Zoya indicated. “Kellian Bourassa. She’s old enough to choose. But I won’t miss her, she’s a troublemaker.”

Good, Zoya thought. Make lots of trouble, Kellian.

The door slammed shut on the young woman. All down the line, doors clanged shut. The nuns flapped to their lead cab, and the engine started with a high-pitched whine of its presumably electric motor.

The great sled began to move off, its runners creaking on the Ice, its covered cars bearing the children to a better life—in the nuns’ terms, at least. The boy who had clung to her had never had a chance. Bound by diplomacy and outnumbered, Zoya couldn’t save him.

The sled left two parallel tracks in the white sand. It was a trail that she intended to follow.

Beneath the sound of the sled motor Zoya heard an awful, muffled bellow. It came from the innards of the white sled.

The snow witch was still alive, God help him.

PART II:
Forest of the Night

CHAPTER EIGHT

A hatchet-faced nun threw open the door of the cab, flooding the interior with blinding light.

After the cramped journey it was a relief for Kellian to get out and stretch her limbs. Blasted by the frigid air, Kellian gazed straight into the face of the Keep. It loomed massively, even at this distance of a half mile or more. Its smooth stone façade mirrored a fiercely crimson sunset.

Children piled out of the sled onto the barrens. One cab remained closed. Everyone knew the nuns had a snow witch. Its cries were louder, absent the drone of the caravan’s motor and the scraping of runners over Ice.

The nuns were giving orders, herding the girls to one side of the sled, and the boys to the other. They were made to disrobe and stack everything into neat piles, even underclothes and any other possessions they had managed to bring with them. Kellian clutched the tronic file in her hand. The wafer held her diaries and research notes. Contraband now.

She had time to gawk at the terrain, so different from Ancou preserve: the ruined city of Seetol in the distance, with its skewed towers; and Mount Raneem in the south, larger than any one thing in the world—in her old world.

A little girl with unruly black hair stood next to Kellian, her arms wrapped around her little chest. “I’m cold,” she said in a blameful voice, as though anyone would care.

Down the length of the coupled sleds came the nuns, handing out new garments, while Kellian slipped the wafer into her thick hair, just above the clasp that held her braided locks close to her neck.

All eyes were on the nuns’ castle. Built from stone quarried deep below Ice, they said the place took one hundred years to build. Each stone was perfect, placed by the brothers who served the nuns. In the center of the edifice, massive twin pillars framed a doorway large enough for a giant to pass through. The rest of the nunnery spread out into two wings, with slick black walls slanting toward crowning parapets. Slits of windows squinted at her. Apparently the nuns didn’t look out much.

They called this the Keep, or sometimes, the Zoft, after the gigantic uplift of Ice called the Zoftian Rise, against which the Keep huddled. It was said that long ago an earthquake erupted on the barrens, creating this great escarpment. Along the massive vertical fractures of the rise leaked stains of light. Ice sometimes spoke to the nuns, so the legend went, and so it looked, with colors flickering like lightning strikes.

The lesson of this stop on their journey was clear. In front of these adamantine walls you were a suppliant; you were nothing. It seemed an ominous beginning for her great adventure.

She looked up at the sky, searching for a telltale gleam of the great ship. The vessel was cloaked in dazzling blue sky. But Kellian knew it was there. She had met the lady of the star ship. What knowledge did the sisters command, she wondered, and what more did the ship know? So despite the cold wind sweeping over the land, despite the forbidding aspect of the Zoft, Kellian could barely contain her excitement.