The Ascension (10 page)

“Forgive me, My Queen,” Devon said. “I did not mean to anger you.”

“But you have managed it. These are my children, Devon. Speaking il of them is
tantamount
to speaking il of me. You wil not do it again.”

“As you command, My Queen.”

Devon knelt there perfectly stil , but the Winter Queen could hear the anger in his voice. She didn’t care.

“Now get out. You have a task to perform, I believe?”

“I do, My Queen.”

“Then do it. Take as many men as you need.” The Winter Queen ignored Devon as he left, taking several of the others with him. She settled back onto her icy seat, trying to let the anger flow out of her. The courtiers continued to hang back, presumably knowing that the first of them to come to her attention would probably serve as a
surrogate
for her nephew, bearing the ful force of everything she currently felt towards him.

The worst part about it, of course, was that Devon was right. Since Jack Frost and her sweet Katherine had arrived, the Winter Queen had tried to make up for their shortcomings by starting them off make up for their shortcomings by starting them off with a series of tutors, but progress would take time.

They appeared to have almost no training in weapon craft, and stil less in cal ing down blizzards and snowstorms. It was enough to make you wonder what they taught human children in schools today.

The worst part was that the Winter Queen had listened in to their conversations, and had been shocked to discover that they had actual y thought fairies were tiny, winged things. Of al the stupid,
vacuous
things to think! Even knowing how the Summer Queen had snatched them from their birthright, that was hard to credit.

The whisper of voices among her courtiers brought the Winter Queen’s gaze up sharply, so that it fixed on one of the shadowy fey, dressed in an elaborate, laced edged tunic and hose. He tried to back away, and the Winter Queen’s eyes narrowed.

“Talking about my children behind my back, are you?”

“No My Queen…I would never… that is…” The Winter Queen didn’t have time for whatever needlessly
verbose
excuse the man would have come up with. Instead, she gestured towards the floor. Ice sprang from it, creeping up his legs like the tendrils of some climbing plant. The ice kept rising, quicker even than the fairy man could draw in breath to scream, encasing him in seconds. The result was a seemingly perfect ice sculpture
adorning
the middle of her audience room.

That, thankful y, did a lot to
assuage
the Winter Queen’s anger.

“He can stay like that,” she declared, “until the rest of you have learned to behave. The Summer Queen took my children and left me with a piece of old wood in their place, glamoured to look like them.

Is it any wonder that they haven’t the knowledge that they should?”

Since the fairies of the Winter Queen’s court were wel -practiced in the art of avoiding their queen’s anger, there was a general chorus of “of course not, your majesty”. The Winter Queen didn’t like to think of herself as a
despot
, of course.

People could say whatever they liked. It was just that what they liked had better agree with her, or else.

Through the renewed bouts of toadying came a
diminutive
shape, advancing in a remarkably
diffident
waddle. The Queen waved a hand and the courtiers parted with the speed of people who had just seen one of their number frozen, leaving a clear path for the advancing penguin. It halted a few feet from the Queen and attempted what was probably supposed to be a courtly bow. Never a good idea with webbed feet.

“Honestly… somebody help the sil y thing up.” There was a brief scrum as half a dozen courtiers attempted to do so together, but final y, the penguin stood before her. In place of a bow, it gave a sort of salute with one flipper, before launching into a series of squawks. The Winter Queen shook her head at the reminder of one of her few failures. It had been so easy to get the polar bears to talk, but penguins? Try as she might with her magic, they never seemed to get the hang of it.

Instead, as this one did now, they had to settle for communicating through a sort of frantic
semaphore
with their flippers. The Winter Queen watched closely, her mood darkening again.

“They
what?
”

The tiny wings blurred with the effort of conveying the ful message.

conveying the ful message.

“Oh, just show me.”

The penguin stopped, turned, and waddled towards the door. The Winter Queen set off after it.

Natural y, her courtiers set off after
her
, with the overal effect being of a parade making its way through the frozen corridors of her icy castle. As they passed, servants bowed, curtseyed or simply fel to their knees to show how much they
venerated
their queen, or at least how much they didn’t want to make her any angrier than she was.

The procession halted at one of the castle’s many dining rooms. Wel , most of it halted, while a few slid on a few more paces thanks to the icy floors.

The Queen stepped inside, and stood staring at the sight within. Katherine and her Jack Frost stood in the middle of an argument with the castle’s chef, an argument that had grown sufficiently severe for Jack to have clamped a restraining hand around Katherine’s arm.

At the sight of the Queen, not to mention half her court, two thirds of the argument stopped. The girl kept going though, like the one trombonist in an orchestra who hasn’t noticed the conductor waiting with increasing impatience.

“I don’t
care
what you cal it. I’m not eating it.

You can just go away and… what is it, Jack?” At a nod from her brother, she looked over to the Queen.

“Oh.”

“What is going on here?” the Winter Queen demanded. The chef got in first.

“I’l tel you what is going on, your majesty.

They refuse to eat al the food I have so careful y prepared for them, like there’s something wrong with it. Hours, I’ve worked, slaving over a cold stove, selecting the best blubber, the juiciest parts of the deep squid…”

At that, the Queen saw her daughter nearly break free from Jack’s grip.

“There is something wrong with it, you
sanctimonious
idiot! It’s not cooked.” The word seemed to ring through the room.

The Winter Queen’s brow furrowed. Even so, she tried to be reasonable.

“Cooked? Katherine, why would it be cooked?”

“Because it’s food, that’s why. If you can cal it that. What sort of food is blubber, anyway?” The Winter Queen could hear the faint sounds of disbelief from behind her, along with a quick murmur of “cooked? She wants it cooked?” that faded the moment she looked round.

“This is the Winter Court, Katherine. We do not heat things up.”

“Why not? And it’s Kat, not Katherine.”

“It is whatever I say.” So much for reasonable.

The Winter Queen let her voice go cold, which wasn’t difficult. “And we are not going to start
cooking
things.”

A flick of her fingers had a sheen of ice forming over the assembled food, the threat obvious.

For an instant it seemed that her daughter would stay
adamant
, but her son chose that moment to intervene.

“Maybe we could find something cold that would work?” he suggested. “Like ice cream, or even fish. People eat sushi al the time.” As if to prove the point, the penguin chose that moment to waddle over to the food and swal ow a fish almost as big as it was. It seemed to look up at Katherine imploringly. Almost as much so as her brother did.

“Please, Kat.”

Maybe the urgency of his tone was what made

Katherine
acquiesce
, the Winter Queen thought. Whatever it was, she nodded.

“Ok, but no blubber.”

“I’m sure that can be arranged,” the Winter Queen said, giving the chef a pointed look.

“Ice cream, right. Right away, your majesty.

Your Highnesses.”

The man practical y ran off. The smal penguin, apparently having identified him as a source of fish, waddled after him. The Winter Queen stalked out, her courtiers fol owing at a cautious distance. After al , they probably had no desire to be added to the list of things around there that could be frozen. The Winter Queen sighed. She would have her revenge on the Summer Court for doing this to her. Her army was almost in readiness, and soon she would be in a position to make her Summer counterpart pay. Of course, whatever the Winter Queen did, it would have to be harsh in the extreme to make up for turning her children into something so… human.

Though of course, there was one advantage to what had been done to them.
Immersed
in a world of iron, it would be in their blood now. Where most of her people would be harmed just by touching it, the Winter Queen guessed that her children would be able to wield it with impunity. Oh, they were stil weak as yet, but they would get stronger.

In the meantime, she would just have to rely on her other advantage, the one that had come to her so perfectly just a week or so before, and even now, sat in his metal contraption, imprisoned in her dungeons. Yes, the Winter Queen thought, with his
uncanny
knack for building worlds out of technology, the wizard they cal ed Henry Word would give her the decisive advantage, one way or another.

Gem did her best to
adhere
to obvious tracks as she kept heading north, but the landscape seemed determined not to make it easy for her.

Several times, the closeness of the trees and the difficulty of the ground made it hard for Gem to keep going perfectly north, forcing her to detour around the obstacle until she could find her original route again.

She tried to hurry, even so. When both the inhabitants of the Summer Court and the werewolves hated the Winter Queen for her
depravity
, there was no way that Gem wanted to leave Henry Word with her any longer than she had to. Even given everything that had happened, he was her father, after al . Gem might
deplore
the way he’d hidden the truth from her, but that didn’t mean she was going to leave him tucked away in some dungeon somewhere.

Gem pressed on, hoping to make good time during the day and not wanting to add
nocturnal
dangers to those she already faced. Already, she had the sense that something was watching her, though the reasons for that sense seemed to be
ineffable
, at least for the moment.

She had bigger concerns, though. Gem suspected that just wandering up to the Winter Queen’s home and demanding the return of her father wasn’t going to work, so she needed a plan to get him out of there. In books, of course, people always found a secret entrance, or scaled the wal s at night, or simply showed up with a conveniently recruited army. As someone who had recently checked her own castle for exactly that sort of thing, Gem couldn’t see the first option being realistic, while the second required more in the way of climbing ability than Gem suspected she actual y had. As for the third option, that would have worked better if she hadn’t just left the werewolves behind.

As far as Gem could see, that left either persuading the Winter Queen to let her father go, or simply hoping that the strength of her ruler words would be enough to defeat someone whose
innate
power meant the whole of Winter on her side. Put like that, persuasion had to be the better option, but how could she do it? What would convince a fairy queen to do as Gem wanted? Gem couldn’t think of anything that would sound like more than empty
platitudes
.

She was so busy thinking that, when the forest gave way to snow dappled moorland, Gem forest gave way to snow dappled moorland, Gem nearly stepped out onto it without thinking. Only the sound of voices ahead gave her pause. Heather grew in clumps over the ground ahead, and low dips and rises could have disguised a smal army, so long as that army didn’t mind sitting down. Wanting to judge the potential danger, Gem crouched low and crept forward, ignoring the spongy softness of the ground beneath her feet. At least it
mitigated
the sound of her footsteps.

Taking up a position among a clump of gorse bushes, Gem peered down into a low depression that seemed to be the source of the voices. From where she crouched, she could see a smal group of the fairy men pitching rough tents and bantering among themselves as they kept out of the sweeping wind. Horses stood nearby, sleek looking things whose breath steamed in the air. A couple of the men sharpened weapons, while another put roots and vegetables into a pot. One of them, a
bard
perhaps, started to sing softly until another of them, dark-haired and even more handsome than the rest of them told,
censured
him, reminding them al that the last thing they wanted was to be spotted.

That made Gem take a closer look at them.

She had assumed on first spotting them that they had to be some of the Summer Court’s men, simply because they looked so much like them. The Summer Court, however, would hardly have any reason to be secretive so close to the werewolves’

home. It was only when Gem’s eyes picked out a snowflake insignia on their clothes that she realized who these men had to be. They were Winter Court knights.