Velar Tidemark spread his net across the black water of the twilight lake and knew it would fail. He had come to catch the luminous leviathan. The great beast surfaced only during Odin's brightest frost tide, and that tide was three nights off. Velar had waited two full cycles for this chance. But his net was made for silkfin, light as spore-thread. The leviathan would tear through it like frost through a leaf. He knelt at the shore and tested the mesh between his fingers. It held a fish the length of his arm. It would not hold a thing longer than his boat. Velar had no line strong enough, no hook large enough. His plan had a hole in it wide as the lake. "Your net won't hold it," a voice said behind him. "You already know that." Veska Silmara stepped from the tree line, spear across her back, its tip glowing faint purple. She fished the deep channels past the Roseus Rex line, and Velar had taught her once to watch glowflies instead of her line in the dark. She owed him that. She did not smile. "I know it," Velar said. "I have nothing better." Veska crouched beside him. She looked at the net, then at the water. "I do." She unslung a rod from her back and laid it on the stones. It was carved from pale frostpine, fitted with a lure of blade-like scales. Claw hooks curved from a heavy braided line. Cold-forged, mean, built for something that fought back. "A hunter gave me this," Veska said. "For work I still owe. The line holds a titanfrill. It will hold your beast." Velar picked it up. The rod was heavy, wrong in his hands after a lifetime of soft nets. "Why give it to me?" "I'm not giving it." Veska stood. "The die-off in my waters is spreading. My fish carry gray sickness now. I need my hands free to find what causes it." She looked at the deep lake. "You want the leviathan. I want it dead too, or caught, so I can read its belly. Take the rod. Land the beast. Then it's mine to cut open." Velar turned the lure in the twilight. Glowflies drifted low over the water, steady and blue. He crushed one against the scale-lure the way he'd once shown Veska. The mark glowed. In the dark, he would see the strike. "Three nights," Velar said. "When the frost tide brightens." "Three nights." Veska was already moving back toward the trees. "Don't lose it in the water like the last fisher did. That rod cost him his whole rig." Then she was gone into the understory. Velar set the net aside on the stones. His old problem was solved. His new one weighed cold in his hands. He no longer needed a net strong enough. Now he needed the strength to hold a rod that had already beaten one man, against a beast far worse, with the tide closing in.

Two nights of practice had not tamed the rod. Velar Tidemark stood at the edge of the twilight lake and worked the heavy line by hand. The frostpine rod fought him. Every cast pulled his arms wrong. The braided line cut his fingers. He had lost the scale-lure to a snag twice. He kept hearing Veska's warning: the last fisher who held this rod lost it in the water, and his whole rig with it. Tonight the frost tide brightened. The great fish would rise. If Velar could not master the pull, he would lose the rod the same way. Odin swelled overhead, its indigo light thick on the water. Deep down, a glow spread. Stars seemed to swim under the surface. The leviathan rose. Its armored scales shimmered like a living sky, longer than Velar's boat. He crushed a glowfly against the lure and cast. The scale-lure struck the water. The beast turned. Then it took the lure, and the rod nearly left his hands. The pull yanked Velar forward. His feet skidded on the wet stones. The line screamed off the rod. He braced, and the fish dragged him a full step toward the deep. He could not hold it alone. He knew it now, cold and plain. One more pull and the rod would be gone. "Let it run," a voice said behind him. "Don't fight the whole weight." Veska Silmara came out of the trees at a run, spear discarded, hands already reaching. Behind her came a smaller figure with a blowgun slung across her back and a fur coat too big for her frame. Sivara Frostwhisper, the poison hunter from the Frostbark forest. She had tracked game to this shore and found a fisher losing a fight. She grabbed the rod below Velar's grip without asking. "You pull when I say," Sivara said. Clipped. Final. "Not before." Three sets of hands closed on the frostpine. Veska set her feet against a rock. Sivara read the line like she read a wounded buck. "Now," she said, and they hauled. "Off. Let it tire." They gave slack. The fish thrashed, then slowed. They gained a arm's length. Then another. The great scales dragged into the shallows. The leviathan beached itself half out of the water, gills heaving, its glow guttering. Velar drove Veska's spear through its eye. The light went out of it. They stood breathing hard over the huge body. Velar had not lost the rod. He had landed the beast. But he had not done it alone, and all three of them knew it. Veska knelt at the fish's flank and pressed the gray-mottled scales. "The sickness is in it too," she said. She traced a long curved rib beneath the hide. "Someone needs a rib from this. For a weapon." She looked up. "The river fisher is coming to read the catch."

The hive racks were braced. The bees were loaded. Velar poled the heavy barge out onto the glowing river, eight hives humming behind him. The water carried him south toward the black mirror lake. His arms burned from the work, but the barge held steady. It would not tip. Thorn had built it true. All he had to do now was deliver the colony to the forest edge, and the vessel was his. The river narrowed between banks thick with shining mushrooms. Soft blue and violet light rippled on the water. Velar read the current the way he read it for silkfin. He kept the flat hull in the fastest line and let the water do the work. Behind him the bees settled as the barge glided. By the time the river opened onto the still, dark lake, the glow of the shore faded to a thin ribbon at his back. A figure waited on a flat rock at the water's edge. She wore black scaled armor and a hooded veil of fine mesh. A smoker hung from a cord at her side. This was Béyla Frostcomb, the keeper the bees belonged to. Thorn had built the barge for her crossing. Velar had only to bring it. He poled in close and held the hull against the rock. "You kept them calm," Béyla said. She looked at the humming racks, not at him. "Good. The last keeper to cross spooked his bees. The far side took him." She stepped aboard without waiting. The barge barely rocked. "I studied how he died. I don't plan to repeat it." They crossed the lake together. Béyla worked the smoker over the racks when the bees grew loud. Velar poled. Neither spoke much. Her calm steadied the colony, and the colony steadied the barge. They turned east along the shore until Velar heard falling water. Silver ribbons poured down mossy rock ahead, glowing soft in the mist. Below the falls, ordered rows of resin-sealed hives stood among tall trees. The apiary. The forest edge. They offloaded together. Béyla lifted each hive onto its stand and sealed it. Velar carried and braced. When the last rack stood empty, she closed her smoker and turned to him. "The trade is done," she said. "The barge is yours." She drank once from a horn at her hip, a flat toast. Then she walked into the trees toward her bees and did not look back. Velar poled the empty barge home alone. It rode high now, light and fast. His hands had earned it. Beneath him the deep water stretched dark and still, and somewhere below it the leviathan waited. He had a vessel broad enough to hold a hunting party and a spear. But the barge was slow. It could not run. When he found the beast, he would have to stand and strike, with no line to let it run and no boat quick enough to flee.

The thing under the ice did not rise that night. By dawn Velar had hauled the sled off the frozen lake and down to open water, where his barge waited. He stepped the frostnut mast into its socket and lashed the harpoon to its mount on the bow. The frost tide was near. But he still did not know how deep the leviathan swam, or when it would break the surface. He could not throw a harpoon at water he could not read. "You need it to come up," Veska said. She stood at the stern, spear across her back. She did not soften the problem, as was her way. "Then you need to know when." Velar remembered the silkfin. The leviathan had chased the run before. He gutted a basket of silkfin and threw the chunks over the side. The pale flesh drifted down and vanished. They waited. The water stayed black and still. Then the barge shuddered. A red glow spread far below, two crimson lines running the length of something vast. The leviathan rose. Its charcoal plates broke the surface. For one breath the whole beast cleared the water, gliding through the air as if the low gravity made it weightless. Velar saw the dorsal fin, high and dark, and he fired. The heavy toggle head struck. It drove through the dorsal fin and punched out the far side. The barbs spread. The braided line snapped tight and screamed through the mount. "It's hooked," Velar shouted. "Hold the line." The leviathan dove. The barge lurched forward and spun. It cut across the lake, dragged by the line, water peeling white off the bow. Veska braced her feet and gripped the rope beside him. The mast groaned. The cord bindings held. "Give slack when it dives," Veska said. "Pull when it tires." They worked the line together. When the beast sounded, they let the rope run. When it slowed, they hauled. The barge circled the lake twice. The crimson channels along the leviathan's flank dimmed as it weakened. Its breaches grew lower. Velar's arms burned. He did not let go. At last the beast turned toward a low shore. Velar steered the barge behind it, driving it in. The hull scraped stone. The leviathan thrashed in the shallows, then lay still, half out of the water. Its red glow faded to a dull ember. Velar climbed down onto the shore. The beast was longer than his barge. Its armored plates were cold under his hand. He had landed it. The hunt was over.

The leviathan lay half on the shore, half in the black water. Velar grabbed its tail fin and pulled. His soft soles slid on the ice. The beast did not move a hair's width. It was longer than his barge and heavier than ten frost elk. If it stayed in the water, the cold would not save the meat. The flesh would sour before the village could carry a single basket home. He had killed the thing. Now he could not land it. Veska stepped off the barge and crouched by the carcass. She pressed her palm against a charcoal plate, then looked at the water lapping its belly. "Too heavy for two," she said. "The channel will rot it from below." "Then we need more hands," Velar said. "We don't have more hands. We have the tide." She pointed at the water line, higher now against the stones. "It's still rising. Wait for the peak. Then we only drag the last of it." Velar understood. The frost tide would lift the beast for them. He fetched his coiled rope and looped it twice around the leviathan's tail. Veska threaded her spear shaft through the loop for a brace. They waited while the water climbed the carcass. The crimson channels along its flank had gone dark and cold. When the tide touched its highest mark, the beast floated a hand's breadth free of the stones. "Now," Veska said. They hauled together. Velar leaned his whole weight back. The low gravity lightened the lifted bulk, and the carcass slid. It scraped up the shore a body's length, then two. The water released it with a sucking pull. They dragged it clear of the channel onto dry, frost-crusted rock. The meat was saved. Velar dropped the rope and breathed hard. The beast lay whole on dry ground, enough food for the whole settlement through the famine. He had chased this creature across broken boats and lost gear and twelve cold cycles. Now it was done. He turned to Veska. Her chest heaved. Her skin flickered pale green with effort, the muted color of a fisher who did not often let her glow show. Something broke loose in him. Velar stepped forward and kissed her on the lips. He felt her stiffen, then her shoulders dropped and loosened under his hands. She did not pull away. He went down on one knee on the cold stone. "Marry me, Veska." She looked at him a long moment. Her filaments rippled. "I have wanted this for many cycles," she said. "Yes." Velar stood and held her. Behind them the leviathan waited on the rock, dark and still. The meat was secure, but the beast was far too large to butcher and carry alone. The village would need to be called, and the carcass cut down before the next tide rose to claim it back.

The leviathan was butchered and the meat carried home. Now Velar stood at the edge of the terraced amphitheater, the black basalt rings glowing with runes, and realized he had no proper clothes to be joined in. The Glowflight Festival was two cycles away. Everyone said the festival was the right time to join two hands. Veska stood beside him with her arms crossed. "We can't stand on the dais in fishing gear," she said. "Our clothes smell of leviathan." Velar had spent twelve cycles chasing one fish. He had not once thought about what he would wear to his own joining. "I don't know anyone who makes clothes," he said. Veska did. "Ike Frostthread," she said. She had worked his trap lines once for a frostnut shaft. "He turns pelts into coats. He made the seer's robe." They crossed to the forest edge and found Ike at his drying frames. He was scraping a frostglider pelt with a bone blade, fast and even, not looking up. Pale fur hung in rows behind him. "Another trade," he said when he saw Velar. His hands kept moving. "Everyone wants something before the festival. What is it this time?" "Joining clothes," Veska said. "For both of us. Two cycles." Ike stopped scraping. He looked at them a long moment, then at the pelts on the frame. "Two cycles is nothing. You know how long a proper robe takes?" He set the blade down. "But you." He pointed the bone at Veska. "You already owe me nothing. And you." He pointed at Velar. "You fed the whole village. Fine. Fish. Two moons' worth, once the famine breaks. That's my price." "Done," Velar said. Ike worked them both over with his hands, measuring their arms and shoulders by feel, muttering about frostglider softness and dusksnarl trim. He pulled pelts from the frame and held them to the light. "This gray for you," he told Velar. "Pale for her. You'll glow bright enough on the dais without me making it worse." He worked both cycles without rest. When he was done he carried the two garments to the amphitheater himself. The joining robe for Veska shimmered pale silver. The vest for Velar was soft gray trimmed in dark fur. They fit. Sylara Helion waited on the low white dais, horned skull-mask turned toward them, the ceremonial book in her hand. Behind her the geothermal arch framed the great planet in the sky, and the hearth threw warm steam across the stone. Sylara's voice was flat and plain. "You stand before the Helium Mother to join two hands." She did not waste words. "Then join them." Velar took Veska's hand on the glowing dais. The village filled the frostbuck seats around them. The joining was done. They were married now, dressed properly, witnessed by the seer. And ahead of Velar lay the brightest frost tide of all, when the largest fish run would rise.