Glacielle Frostweave's Arc

Chapter 8 of 15

The ridge was bare, but the frost-wolf still waited on the ledge. Glacielle knelt and checked the seal in its jaws. Aflred's magic had held. The scholar had answered. He would come himself, riding the wolf's return path under the tide line, in two days. She read the letter twice, then let the ice dissolve it. Two days, and she had nowhere to put him. If she led him through the dead coral door, he would see the half-built city. If she turned him away, she lost the only ally her project could still gain. She needed a room that showed nothing. So she built one. For a day and a night she froze a shell of ice against the canyon's outer wall, far from the frozen joints of the true city. She shaped it into a small pale castle, sea glass pressed into every surface, a winding path of packed snow leading up from the water. It looked like a hermit's folly, a strange dwarf's home and nothing more. Inside she set a single bench and, on it, a peacock she cut from coral branches and ice. Its tail spread wide, crusted with crystal feathers. A pretty thing to look at, so the scholar's eyes would rest on it and not wander toward the door. When he arrived, the wolf carried him straight to the false castle. He was younger than she expected, ink stains on his cuffs, and he studied the peacock a long moment before he spoke. "You froze living coral without cracking it," he said. "I came to learn how. I did not come to learn what you are hiding behind it." Glacielle went still. "There is nothing behind it." "There is a drift-veil over a dead reef, a scandal on the ridge, and a wolf that swims under patrols." He set something on the bench between them. A small silver charm on a chain, an ice prince and a mermaid caught in a kiss. "My sister wore this. The tide law took her union apart in a courtroom. I asked about stone and currents because I wanted a place that stone could hide. I think you are already building it." Glacielle looked at the charm, then at his stained cuffs. He was not the enforcer. He was one of the pairs her city was for. "Then I do not need a room that shows nothing," she said. She led him past the false castle, through the dead coral door, into the true canyon. She showed him the frozen joints, the walls rising, the seals she had made alone. He walked the half-built streets without a word, and at the far wall he pressed his palm to a joint the way she did. Glacielle had a builder now, and a witness. She also had one more person who could name the canyon to the wrong ears.