Page 78 of City of Stone and Silence

“Begin!”

I step forward.

Oh, Blessed’s rotting balls and all the Imperial mothers in a burning brothel, that’s cold.

It hits like a hammer as the Eddica barrier parts in front of me. Wind slashes against my bare skin like a thousand-tailed whip, as though each fragment of snow is a razor-tipped missile. It shrieks like a dying man.

Beside me, Gragant stretches, calm and unhurried, muscles shifting under ice-rimed skin. He strides forward a few paces, to where the snow gets deep, and lowers himself into it, sitting cross-legged. Then he just closes his eyes, hands settled in his lap.

I don’t know if he’s using a Well, or if this monastic discipline is everything it’s cracked up to be. Either way, he seems comfortable, which is the exact opposite of how I’m feeling. I thought I’d known cold, in the Kahnzoka winters, when wind and hunger were nipping at my heels. But this seems like another class of thing entirely, cutting into my flesh, worse than any powerburn.

Rot rot rot. Forget five hours, I’m not going to make it five minutes.

I activate my Melos armor, green energy shimmering faintly around me, but it doesn’t help much. It’s triggered by incoming threats, blows, or magic, and the rest of the time exists more as a potentiality than a barrier. It certainly does nothing to cut down on the wind, and only a faint shimmer of heat runs across my rapidly numbing body. I slam my fist against my chest, trying to get the armor to activate, but nothing happens.

Granted, armor that prevented you from touching yourself would be inconvenient, but this is a rotting awful time to experiment.

Igniting my blades provides a little bit of relief, at least for my hands. Green energy spits and crackles, each flake of snow that touches the Melos power puffing into steam, and my fingers and forearms feel a little warmth. Gritting my teeth, I lay one blade against my other arm, hoping to trigger my armor that way, but the blade itself shrinks away from touching my skin. Again, in the abstract, a useful quality, especially when monsters are tossing you head-over-arse. But not right at the moment.

My feet have already gone past pain and into deadened numbness. I remember the sailors in the Sixteenth Ward taverns who went on whaling voyages to the north, and how often they were missing digits or whole limbs. How long does that take? I’d never thought to ask.

The barrier shimmers behind me, seductive. All I need to do is take one step back, and the warmth of the Harbor will wash over me. It would be madness to do anything else, to spend one more second in this wasteland.

Gragant, sitting naked in the snow, is starting to steam.

Seeing that, seeing his serenity, just makes me angrier. Him and his Divine Being can both go to the Rot. There has to be a way to wipe the smug look off his face.

I raise a blade to my cheek. It brings a wash of warmth with it, but not enough. The problem is the wind, which tears away every scrap of heat. I need to get out of it.

The closest of the ice-covered hills is about twenty yards away. I start walking, kicking a path through the snow. It’s surprisingly light and airy, scattering like fine-grained flour. Gragant doesn’t even open his eyes to watch me, sitting now in a solid column of steam. I keep pushing as the snow comes up to my shins, then my thighs. My legs feel like solid, nerveless blocks of ice. If my toes fall off, I wonder if Meroe will be able to grow them back.

Getting in the lee of the hill at least cuts the driving wind. I start pushing at the snow, trying to clear an area big enough to stand in. There’s an overhang of rock, and long icicles have cascaded over the side until they reach the ground, like an irregular row of columns. At first they’re flush against the rock, but as I edge along the hillside the lip protrudes, and there’s a darkened space visible through gaps in the ice.

A house made of snow. Meroe’s phrase has been rolling around in my mind. I’ve seen that, too, now that I think of it—woodcuts of the savage icelings, invariably depicted alongside walruses and seals, living in hemispherical buildings made of blocks of ice. I’d always figured it was some explorer’s fancy. But …

None of the gaps are wide enough to admit me, so I raise my blade and let it dig into one of the pillars. Magic zaps and crackles, the heat of the Melos energy melting easily through the thick ice. Another cut at the bottom, and a huge chunk falls away, raising a cloud of fine snow all around me. I wriggle through the resulting hole and into the void beyond.

Calling it a cave would be generous. Really it’s just a lip of overhanging rock, with the ice pillars blocking off the open side, leaving a space just a little longer and wider than a coffin. But it’s already infinitely better than being out in the wind—not warm, but not quite as skin-shredding. I huddle on the bare earth for a moment, trying to move my toes. I’m not sure I can.

When I unfold myself again, something crackles. Steam, rising from where I cut through, has settled on my skin and frozen into a fine layer of ice. Bits of the stuff cascade away as I move.

It gives me an idea. Blessed, I hope this works.

I carve a chunk off the fallen ice pillar, a circular section about the size of a cookpot, and haul it into the hollow with me. A little more work with the blades carves it out, creating a deep bowl. I fill this with chips of ice and handfuls of snow from outside, packing it down as hard as I can. Then I ignite my blades again, take a deep breath, and lower them into the slushy mixture.

Just keeping the weapons active, in the open air, doesn’t take much power. This is different—I can feel Melos energy flowing out of me, and my hands and forearms heat up, a sensation which I positively welcome at the moment. More importantly, though, the mix of snow and ice rapidly slumps where the blades touch it. I push them down into my ice-bowl, which rapidly becomes full of slushy water as the smaller pieces melt.

I’ve never held my blades in water before, though I’ve seen rain spit and boil against them as if on a hot stove. Sure enough, after a few moments, the meltwater in the basin starts to bubble and froth. The steam that rises from it is tepid by any normal standard, but it feels balmy compared to the soul-killing chill outside. I lean over to inhale it, the first breath since I crossed the barrier without feeling knives in my lungs. I stir the water with my blades, until the whole bowl is frothing, then shift awkwardly on my bare arse and hold my numbed feet over the water. Sensation—burning, shooting pain—returns quickly.

Cold air is still gusting in through the gaps in the pillars. Once I’m temporarily thawed, I go to work filling in the holes with packed snow, returning to the bowl periodically to heat it to boiling and warm myself up. I prop the remnant of my cut pillar in the large gap I entered by, and keep packing snow around it until it makes a solid barrier.

With the wind hedged out, the next time I boil water, the cave rapidly becomes something close to actually warm. I wouldn’t be able to keep my blades in the bowl for too long—not unless I want to char my hands off with powerburn—but the puffs of steam stay in my tight little enclosure, coating the walls, the floor, and my bare skin with damp condensation. The snow barrier collapses in a few places, and I pack more in. It isn’t long before, naked and surrounded by snow and ice, I’m feeling almost comfortable.

Favor of the Divine Being, ha!

I have no idea how much time has passed, not without knocking a hole in my impromptu shelter and checking the progress of the sun. But it can’t be more than half an hour, and I doubt Gragant will have given in so easily. I put my blades back in the water for a few moments, generating a fresh cloud of steam, and settle in to wait.

I nearly die, of course. Stupid, stupid, stupid Isoka.