Coldmarch

Chapter One

‘Break in.’ Shilah stabbed the shop door with a sweaty finger. ‘I think after what we invented you should have no problem with a lock, Spout.’

I was still in shock and barely able to think, let alone tinker.

News of my father’s death had kicked my heart halfway through my chest. And watching Leroi being consumed by the Vicaress and her army had finished the job. I had a feeling if I turned around quickly enough I’d see a red lump gathering sand and dust on the street, thumping its final beat.

My cleverness was as slow as scorched honey. Despite staring right at one, I’d forgotten how locks even work. Shilah was breathing heavily, her braided hair pasted against her right shoulder with sweat. There used to be a blade hidden in those locks when she’d lived out in the sands, but she’d given that habit up after moving to the Tavor Manor. Something at the back of my mind whispered that a traditional blade would be too big for this job anyway, but I had no access to any other memories that might spur an alternative plan.

‘Spout,’ she said. ‘I know you can do this.’

The dark skin of her face was flushed, thick beads of sweat dripping down her neck and staining the waterskin slung over her chest. After getting used to the comfort of Leroi’s tinkershop, I think both of our bodies had forgotten how deeply the sky could bite.

Shilah, Cam, and I had somehow avoided the Vicaress, fleeing through the empty sands and making it to the centre of Paphos without getting caught. The hour was too early for the Street Jadans to be racing towards their corners, which meant only the eyes of the sky were upon us.

The enemy wasn’t far behind and was quickly gaining ground. Shouts and commands flooded the nearby streets and echoed down the alleyways.

‘I don’t want’ – heave – ‘to rush you, Spout.’ Cam’s words were mostly wheeze, pitched up and squeezed. ‘But I think I hear’ – heave – ‘them coming.’

If Shilah appeared overheated, then Cam was roasted and ready to serve. Unkempt yellow hair was brightly contrasted against the red of his face, making him look as if he’d been hanging upside down all night, his blood gathered in his delicate Noble cheeks. He’d somehow managed to maintain his gold-rimmed glasses, but despite his best efforts, they kept sliding down his nose, his skin as slick as Ice.

Shouting from the pursuers became more barbed as the taskmasters closed in. The Vicaress and her forces had been at our heels since our narrow escape from the Tavor gardens, where Cam’s father nearly had us cornered. If not for Leroi’s heroics, I imagine we would currently be strung up from the Manor gates, awaiting judgement.

Touching a Frost is punishable by death.

We didn’t just touch one.

We stole a Frost and used it to create an invention that could shatter the entire Khatdom. We discovered a secret that could save my people.

My mind felt gummed and cloudy, the lock impenetrable.

Our only stroke of luck so far was that my years of serving as a Street Jadan meant I still knew the best passages through the city, and I had been able to lead our group down a secret route that had been somewhat abrasive. Cam’s sunshirt was ripped in a hundred different places from the constant squeezing against tight bricks, and Shilah still had clay dust in her bristly hair from the roof of the Bathing Quarters Cry Temple. We were still in one piece, but time was running thin.

I cracked my knuckles, trying to figure out a way to pick myself out of the mental rubbish. My throat was parched and burning from the long run, most of which I didn’t recall. One moment I’d been watching Leroi battle the Vicaress with his explosive powders, the gardens of my new home consumed by fire, and then I was stumbling through the Paphos alleyways with the two most important people in the World Cried. It was Shilah’s idea to go to Mama Jana’s, as I had been in no state to form a plan. Neither had Cam. Little Langria had been burned to ash, and we couldn’t go back to my old barracks, so when Shilah suggested Mama Jana’s shop we didn’t argue. Hiding within her unkempt piles of treasures felt like the only place in Paphos that made sense.

If we could break in.

Shilah was right; besting the lock should have been a breeze. I’d been apprenticing under a master inventor for quite some time, and this should have been as easy as breaking a Khatnut with a giant hammer. But keeping focus was impossible, as my head was ringing from explosions and visions of a stolen future.

‘I don’t have any tools,’ I said calmly, patting my empty pockets for effect. ‘I don’t have anything. The supply bags. I don’t know—’

‘Spout, why aren’t you’ – heave – ‘freaking out?’ Cam asked, swallowing hard. ‘I hear them on the next street over.’

I twitched my lips back and forth, barely listening to him. The lock was baiting me, the metal blinding in the heavy light of day. I used to play with them, manipulate them, learn their secrets. Broken locks were a common find in the boilweed piles of my youth. I slowly rubbed the back of my hands, trying to remember what tricks they used to hold.

Shilah grabbed the side of my face. Her palms were slick with sweat and slipped along my cheek before taking hold. ‘We just made the greatest invention in the World Cried, dammit. You once talked with the Crier himself. You can break this stupid lock in your sleep, so don’t go losing yourself, Micah. I’m right here.’

I blinked, everything suddenly becoming more real.

Every line in her face was defined. I could see the tightness of the muscles underneath her skin, the veins in her neck standing up and strained. I could make out each individual rivulet in her braid. Her almond eyes were boring into me, drawing me home.

The shouting and sounds of whips against stone were getting closer, the taskmasters trying to flush us out of hiding. We needed to get inside now.

I took a deep breath and tried not to picture Leroi drowning in all that black smoke. I could still feel his sad eyes on us in the tunnel, presumably knowing the battle that awaited him on the other side of the door. I could still smell the crackling fire on my shirt.

A snap of Shilah’s fingers and a quick gesture reminded me that the Coldmaker was still by my side. We still had the machine.

‘This is bigger than us now,’ Shilah said. ‘And you’re not alone. I’m right here.’

Cam cleared his throat, checking over his shoulder. ‘Me too.’

I nodded. The streets themselves had once given me all the tools I needed. I used to trust that the Crier would provide.

So why did he keep taking away?

‘Keep watch,’ I said, gritting my teeth and balling my fists. I shifted myself into the shadows of the alleyway next to the shop, headed towards the boilweed piles. Almost immediately I spotted a trove of sunclocks, broken parasols, and a large pair of Cold Bellows that I’d once fixed for Mama Jana a while back. She didn’t used to have that much rubbish lying around in her alley, but I was guessing since I’d moved to the Tavor Manor, she was no longer able to salvage her broken goods.

Junked items sat piled up and dusted with morning sand, waiting to be plundered. Under any other circumstances I would have smiled at the notion that Mama Jana actually needed a Jadan like me, but right now I had no capacity for nostalgia. Emotions were only distractions. I did allow logic to surface, and almost instantly I spotted what I needed. Dropping to my knees, I snatched two skinny metal rods from a broken parasol, originally used to keep the shredded fabric splayed.

As I launched back towards the alley, something green and swirling on the wall made me stop. I couldn’t quite make out the symbol, but I already knew what the design would be.

The Opened Eye had been painted in that exact same spot once before.

I stopped just long enough to draw my fingers across the pupil.

The Open Eye was the symbol for Langria, the only place in the whole World Cried where my invention would be safe, as North as North goes. It was the land where truth rained from the heavens, and the Jadan people had all the Cold they’d ever need to remain free. The gardens there were more lush than anything the Nobles could dream of, with forests of sugar cane miles wide, and enough lush fig trees to feed everyone in Paphos. There were troupes of animals that hadn’t been seen since the Great Drought, and even such ancient things as birds. It was a haven for our lost culture, and songs and fruit were of equal abundance. I’d even heard the Langria river waters were cool enough to dive right into. Langria was hope itself, and seeing the symbol painted on the wall gave me enough to hold my tools high as I rounded the front door.

‘You think those will work?’ Cam asked, his nerves apparent. Wide eyes and a haunted look made him seem as good as Jadan at this point.

‘Yes,’ I said, shimmying the two small rods inside the hole of the lock and feeling for the pins. ‘I just have to …’

Loud orders were barked so close that I could almost smell the burning oil on the Vicaress’s blade. Either the Vicaress had a vision of our plan to go to Mama Jana’s – which seemed highly unlikely, considering she was a fraud – or she had gathered more of her army, flooding the streets.

‘Hurry,’ Cam pleaded, sucking down a swig from the waterskin slung across his chest. ‘Not that I’m rushing you.’

Shilah turned and gave him a stern look. ‘Save that water, it’s all you have.’

I closed my eyes and tried to recall how metal could serve as an extension of my fingertips. Leroi often told me a true Inventor’s reach could be measured only in imagination.

He was dead now.

My hands were shaking with fear and adrenaline. The metal rods felt like greased needles trying to stab a single grain of sand.

‘I can’t,’ I said, getting frustrated. The cloud had parted enough to let me remember that Mama Jana’s lock was a snap-pin set-up, which meant the pins needed to be lifted at once. My flailing fingers were only making things more futile. The knowledge alone of how the lock worked was not enough to steady my grip. ‘I can’t feel anything.’

Shilah reached down and placed a hand on my lower back. ‘What do you need from me?’

Cam was muttering to himself under his breath, his father’s name appearing no less than three times within the murmurs.

‘You can make it work,’ Shilah said, matching my calm. It was as if we were back on our cots, taking turns telling stories as the night waned. Back then, safe in the womb of the tinkershop, I’d never thought we’d be on the run, protecting one of the most important discoveries in the history of the Jadan people.

I tried to feel for the pins in the lock again, closing my eyes this time, but the answers wouldn’t reveal themselves. Over and over the proper technique slipped my touch, and I finally pounded my hand against the door out of frustration, a shock of pain ricocheting down my arm.

Shilah shot me a disappointed look, but the slamming noise had been drowned out by the blaring of a distinctive horn.

Three long blows.

Followed by two short.

And three more long.

I hadn’t heard that call in years, and even then it had been faint, sounded from the outskirts of the city. It was a harbinger of death. There was a reason why the noise was rare – important Jadan runaways were quite uncommon – but every once in a while a favoured Jadan Domestic would choose baking to death in the sands over what waited back at the Manor.

That’s when the beasts were sent hunting.

‘Shivers and Frosts!’ Cam exclaimed, eyes flitting around, almost as if he could see the echoes of the horn bouncing off the walls. ‘Is that what I think it is?’

Shilah’s eyes darkened, her chest rising and falling quickly. I didn’t blame her. Torture under the Vicaress would be bad enough, but getting stalked down and eaten alive would be another level of agony entirely.

‘The Khat’s hounds,’ I said, my hands shaking like loose boilweed in the wind. The needles clacked uselessly in the lock.

Cam swallowed hard. ‘Sun damn.’

‘You know about the hounds?’ Shilah asked him with a snarl. ‘You’ve seen what they can do up close?’

Cam wilted, taking his glasses off and closing his eyes. ‘He doesn’t let … I’ve only seen the ones he keeps in his chambers. But they’re small and harmless and … fuzzy. Just relics from before the Great Drought.’

‘Those runts are not his hounds,’ Shilah said, her voice breaking for what felt like the first time. She absently touched her throat, her arms flexing so fast that I wondered if she might try punching the door down. At this point that might have been more effective than my trembling hands. ‘The Khat keeps his real hounds in the basement of the Pyramid,’ she said between clenched teeth. ‘He starves them for days on end. And when he does feed them … guess what he uses for the meal?’

‘I’ve heard.’ Cam’s face went so red he might as well have smeared Khatberries on his cheeks. ‘But you have to remember. I have nothing to do with the Khat.’

‘Other than your name and blood.’

‘I’m only heir to the Tavors,’ Cam said, not meeting her eyes and changing the subject fast. ‘Keep trying, Spout. Please.’

‘Why did the Crier take us this far?’ I asked. The words came out lifeless, and I wondered who this stranger was using my voice. ‘Only to let us get caught. Why would he be so cruel?’

The taskmasters’ shouts were almost on top of us.

‘Spout,’ Shilah said, guiding my chin sideways with her finger, forcing me to meet her eyes. ‘Don’t worry about the Crier. I have faith in you.’

I followed the sweat beading off her face, which dropped quickly and flecked the stone at my feet.

Splashing up an idea.

I set the thin metal picks on the ground.

‘What are you doing?’ Cam gasped, hands pulling at his yellow hair. ‘Maybe let’s just go find a shop that’s actually open, and hide there?’

‘No one leaves their doors unlocked,’ I said, returning to the alley, not looking at the Opened Eye as I passed. Cam softly called after me, but before he could repeat my name I’d returned with a sharp slice of glass from the pile of trash.

‘Tears above, Micah. Are you going to try to fight the hounds?’ Cam asked frantically. I’d never seen him so worked up.

Grabbing an Abb from the bag, I sliced off a tiny golden sliver, small enough to fit under the pins in the lock. Shoving it deep into the hole with the help of a parasol needle, I gestured for Shilah to give over her waterskin. Her lips opened in the shape of a question, but after a moment her eyes lit up with recognition.

‘Do it,’ she said with a smirk.

‘Do what?’ Cam asked.

Shilah licked her cracked lips. ‘Ice. He’s going to open it with Ice.’

Cam paused, looking as though the two halves of his body were trying to flee in opposite directions. ‘How? What if the lock just breaks off? Or we get blocked out completely?’ I could feel the buzz of fear in his words. ‘This can’t be the best idea.’

A harsh voice shouted from the street next to ours. ‘Two of you go high and the rest of you lot go around! Check the rooftops and alleyway!’

Blood shot into Cam’s cheeks, the sunburn there appearing even more raw. ‘Do it.’

I nodded, holding up the waterskin to the lock and letting out a trickle of water.

Cam manoeuvred his hand to the bag on my shoulder, digging into the cloth and putting his palm directly on the bronze lid of the Coldmaker. He closed his eyes and muttered something under his breath.

The sound of Ice expanding rapidly crackled in my ears. I wanted to watch the beautiful crystals unfold, but mostly I just hoped the reaction would push all the spring-loaded pins up enough to trigger the lock. I had no idea how much force it gave or how fast it worked. Our lives depended on something I knew almost nothing about.

If the Crier really was watching, then this was his moment to do something.

Metal clicked, and the door opened a squeeze. A small peg of Ice jutted out of the lock, but hopefully it wasn’t enough to be noticed by any taskmasters.

Shilah grabbed both Cam and I by the shoulders and tossed us inside, just as the next round of horn blasts split the air.

Chapter Two

I barred the door, threw down the shades, closed the curtain of beads, and dragged the nearest cabinet in front of the entrance, sliding it flush against the door. Closed Eye necklaces jangled on the shelves, and if someone pushed their way inside, the resulting crash would at least let us know we needed to find cover.

My pulse was in a frenzy knowing the Khat’s hounds were charging into the city.

The stories said that Sun blinded the hounds to teach them pain, leaving them to stalk their prey entirely by smell. And the stories said a lot more than that too. The hounds were supposed to have breath like hot fire, and fangs as long as any rattler, and could smell a specific Jadan body even lying in the dunes.

Sometimes back in my barracks, Levi would get hold of sour ale, and would tell the Jadan children about the other things that lived in the catacombs of the Khat’s Pyramid. Things worse than hounds, that didn’t need to smell you. They already knew you. Things that saw only through Closed Eyes, slithering in silence. Without warning. Without mercy. To drag you into the black.

I stepped away from our feeble defence of an unlocked door and single cabinet, knowing it would be all but useless against such foul beasts if they caught our scent. If only I had my old Stinger, powered by the scorpion venom I used to extract. If I’d only been able to get my hands on some of that explosive power Leroi had used to demolish the Tavor gardens, we might have stood a chance.

I tried to force a real idea that might save us, but I came up empty. Mama Jana didn’t sell weapons. Nothing that we could fight an army with. I glanced around at all the Closed Eye fashion pieces displayed on the racks: reminders that Jadans deserve to be oppressed, that the Crier himself condemned us when he took away my people’s Cold. As if eight hundred years of Drought wasn’t bad enough, we were supposed to cower constantly to the fact that it was our fault.

I had recently stopped believing a word of those old stories, but my father and Leroi were now both dead. In my mind there was no worse punishment than that, except maybe also losing the two friends at my side. The enemy was coming: my mind had to make that a reality.

Shilah’s eyes narrowed and swept the edges of the shop.

Cam stood over a basket of figs on the glass counter. Already a handful deep, he groaned with relief, digging into the food with the kind of reckless hunger that I’d only ever seen in Jadans starving in the streets.

It was odd to think that all of us, Nobles included, were just a few meals away from such desperation.

‘It’s not stealing,’ Cam said sheepishly, noticing that I was watching. His cheeks were puffed with fruit pulp, leaving his words hard to discern. ‘It’s survival. I’ll pay Mama Jana back when I can. She knows I’m good for it.’

‘I don’t think your people are capable of seeing it that way,’ Shilah said after a pause, her eyes still scanning the floors. ‘Plenty of Jadans have been killed for taking less than figs.’

‘Stop saying my people,’ Cam said, a seed bursting out and sticking to his bottom lip. He gestured around him, arms waving wildly, almost knocking over a can of Closed Eye badges. ‘Am I not here with you? Did I not sacrifice everything for our cause?’

For once Shilah looked to be at a loss for words, but I could see her wheels turning even from the thick of the shadows.

I reached up and touched my forehead. There should have been sweat.

‘What exactly are you looking for?’ I asked her.