City of Ice (5 page)

With a laugh, the prince lifted the visitor from the deck and swung her around in a circle.

Scirye felt a small twinge at that. She was wondering what her own father was doing at this moment. He must have taken an airplane from Bactra, the Kushan capital, to San Francisco to tend her mother. She'd been injured during the same robbery that had killed Scirye's sister, Nishke.

Even now, Scirye felt a stab of pain when she thought of Nishke—Nishke so brave yet so kind. Because their mother was often so busy with her consular duties, Nishke had been a second mother to Scirye, playing with her, reading to her, and putting her to bed.

Not only had Scirye missed her sister's funeral, but she hadn't been there to nurse her mother either. Scirye fought back the wave of guilt. She'd made her choice and would have to live with it.

As soon as the prince had set the girl back on her booted feet, his grin changed to a frown. “What are you doing here, Roxanna?” he asked in Common.

“I knew I'd be safe as long as I didn't travel farther than the pass,” the girl explained. She looked to be twelve, the same age as Scirye.

Roxanna's face was round, with the same sharp nose and lively, intelligent eyes as Prince Tarkhun.

He reached under her cap and pinched her ear so he could tug it playfully. “Humph, you went no farther because the Mounties wouldn't let you?”

Roxanna drew her eyebrows together in a stormy expression. “They weren't reasonable at all.”

“Because they have more common sense than you.” Prince Tarkhun let go with a chuckle.

Roxanna folded her arms in a huff. “I was worried when the caravan told me they'd left you behind.”

“It was my order,” Prince Tarkhun said.

“Well, you should have taken me along. You needed every gun you could get, and I can shoot as well as my brothers.” She paused for breath and then spoke rapidly, driven by the injustice of it all. “And I beat them in dogsled races and navigation. Yet you take them.”

“Because they don't give me half the arguments you do.” Prince Tarkhun laughed and, wrapping his arm around her shoulder, turned her to face the companions. “And anyway. Who needs more rifles when heroes like these come to my rescue? These noble folk fell out of the sky and saved me and the caravan. I feel like a boy in a fairy tale. This is Lady Scirye of the noble Kushan House of Rapaññe.”

When Scirye greeted the prince's daughter in formal Sogdian, Roxanna bowed from the waist and replied in the same tongue, “I have never met a noble lady before.”

“Don't let the fancy title fool you, kiddo. Her Ladyship's cute little schnozz snores just like us common folk,” Koko commented.

Kles poked his head out of Scirye's coat. “Heed not the vermin,” he said in formal Sogdian.

Koko scowled. “I don't know the lingo, but I know you said something nasty about me.”

Roxanna gasped and then slipped into Common. “Is that really a griffin?”

“He's a lap griffin,” Scirye explained, also in Common.

Kles lowered his voice to a seductive chirrup. “It's a pleasure to meet you, my dear.”

Poor Roxanna was not able to resist any more than many other people and started to pet him. As she stroked his head, Kles let out a low series of even deeper chirrups and Roxanna smiled in pure contentment.

“Don't you have any shame, Kles?” Scirye scolded him.

“I have no idea what you mean,” Kles said, blinking his eyes innocently, “for I am simply a humble worshiper of stars, for that's what ‘Scirye' means in the Old Tongue and what ‘Roxanna' means in Sogdian.”

“If you get any oilier”—Scirye scowled—“I'll have to put you in a petrol can.”

“Please, Lady,” Roxanna begged. “This wonderful creature is only trying to be polite.”

“Wait. The miracles do not end yet,” Prince Tarkhun boasted. “This is Lady Bayang. I wish you could see her in her true form, but we were afraid that would attract too much attention.” He dropped his voice: “She's a fearsome dragon.”

Roxanna stared at the woman in front of her suspiciously, as if she thought her father was playing a prank, and only remembered to bow when her father tapped her on her shoulder and told her to mind her manners.

In turn, her forehead wrinkled in puzzlement when her father introduced the pudgy boy as “Koko, the badger-badger-badger.” Prince Tarkhun tapped the side of his head as he grinned at Koko. “You see. I've a good memory for names. My brain is like a treasure chest. Once I hear a name, it never gets out.”

Koko opened his mouth for a retort, but Leech gave him a pinch. “Iet-quay. E-way o-day ot-nay et-gay im-ay ad-may,” Leech warned.

Koko rolled his eyes resignedly. “Just call me Three-B for short.”

Prince Tarkhun had saved Leech for last. “And this is Lord Leech. Such a hero! He flies through the air faster than the wind. Whoosh!” And his hand shot out in illustration.

Roxanna didn't hear the derisive snort from both Bayang and Koko. Her eyes widened with excitement. “Show me how you soar through the sky like an eagle,” she said in Common, speaking with the confidence of someone used to having others obey her—with the exception of the Mounties and her father.

“Sorry, I don't understand,” Leech said.

Roxanna slipped easily into only slightly accented English. In her eagerness, she forgot her formal manners. “I said you must show me your skill.” She seized his wrists in her hands. “In fact, please take me flying right now.”

Prince Tarkhun laughed and, wrapping his arms around her, made her step back from the startled boy. “And this little savage is my daughter, Roxanna, the delight and curse of my life. And now if you'll excuse me, I must get the caravan ready for the last leg of our journey.”

Bayang bowed politely. “With all due respect, Your Highness, is there any way we could go on ahead?”

The prince rolled his eyes skyward meaningfully as a Mountie passed overhead on an urgent mission to the city. Two more were coming from the city on their own errands. “I know you are in a hurry, but you would be noticed if you flew now.”

Roxanna hooked her arm through Leech's. “Lord Leech, let me take you in my sled. And on the way, you can tell me all about your adventures.”

Though she wanted to scream with impatience, Scirye said, “Yes, tell us, Lord Leech, about
your
adventures.” The Sogdian girl's pushiness was rubbing her the wrong way.

Prince Tarkhun nodded to his guests. “Then I leave you to my daughter's capable hands. I just hope she doesn't wear out your ears with all her questions.”

As he walked toward his caravan, several large wind sleds with Mounties on them were setting out, probably to pick up the prisoners. Scirye hoped the freebooters went to prison for a long time.

Roxanna gripped Leech tightly as she led them away. The Sogdian girl did not bother to check to see if the others were following.

“She's awfully pushy,” Scirye whispered to Kles. “The sooner we get rid of her, the better.”

“I think you just resent having to take orders from someone like yourself,” the griffin commented.

“I am not bossy,” Scirye hissed.

“You could have fooled me,” Kles said with infuriating calm.

“You don't know a thing.” Fuming, she stamped along through the snow.

“I lead such a humdrum life up here, Lord Leech, that I thirst for excitement. Simply thirst.” Roxanna gave Leech a friendly little shake.

Leech's cheeks blushed a bright red. “It's just plain Leech actually,” he said to Roxanna.

Koko shuddered. “Believe me, kiddo, adventures aren't all they're cracked up to be.” He ticked off the items on his fingers. “So far, we've nearly been turned into hamburger, barbecued, and drowned. I'd rather be bored to death any day.”

Roxanna waved her free hand breezily. “Your deeds have indeed proved you're a lord.”

Leech told her about the attack at the museum by Badik the dragon and several monsters, the theft of the ring, and the death of his friend Primo. “We were friends as soon as we met,” Leech said. “I felt like I'd known him all my life.”

“How terrible to lose him,” Roxanna sympathized.

“Scirye's mother got hurt and her sister died too,” Leech said.

Roxanna glanced over her shoulder at the other girl. “I'm sorry.”

“Roland will be sorrier when we catch him,” Leech insisted.

“Roland?” Roxanna was as worried at the mention of the rich man as her father had been. “Roland? What does he have to do with it?”

“Badik works for Roland,” Leech said. “And he's probably behind the attacks by the freebooters.”

“I'd like to get my hands on him myself,” Roxanna said grimly. “His freebooters have kept everyone bottled up in the city. There are shortages of everything from food to fuel.”

Her mouth dropped open when Leech went on to stowing away on the clipper to Hawaii, meeting Pele, traveling through the volcano, and then confronting Roland only to have him steal Pele's necklace and trap them. When Leech and his friends had helped her escape, she'd summoned the Cloud Folk to weave the flying wing for them and then Naue the wind to carry it to here.

“And then we saw your father was in trouble, so all of us”—Leech made a point of gesturing to his friends—“came to the rescue.”

“You are too modest, Lord Leech,” Roxanna said.

She stopped by a little wind sled the same size as the one Prince Tarkhun had used to pick them up. But the mast had been taken down and lay horizontally, tied to one side, and the sail rolled into a neat cylinder and stowed away.

A pair of musk oxen were hitched to the bow, with a short drover holding their reins. The shaggy beasts stood stoically, their breath rising in streamers from their nostrils and twining around the tips of their curved horns.

Curious, Koko strolled over toward them. “They look like hairy sofas with legs. And we'll be staring at their backsides. Not my idea of a scenic view.”

The drover said something and Roxanna translated. “‘Please, Master Koko. Don't get so close.'”

“Yikes!” With a yelp, Koko hopped backward away from the gnashing teeth of one of the oxen. “I thought he'd be a vegetarian.”

The drover laughed loudly and then spoke some more.

“The drover said that Old Pushtar bites,” Roxanna explained. “And he's trying to keep his weight down.”

Bayang beckoned impatiently to Koko. “If you're finished feeding yourself to Old Pushtar, come on.”

As they climbed onto the sled with Roxanna, she pointed to a deep cleft ahead of them in the hills. “Beyond that pass is Nova Hafnia. The sails can't take the caravan any farther, so Father will hire oxen and haul the sleds the last few miles. And we'll do the same.”

She said something to the drover, who clicked his tongue to the musk oxen. He had no whip but only a small stick with a tuft of fur on one end. He used it now to tickle their muzzles.

With loud snorts that sent steam spiraling upward like locomotives, the oxen lurched forward. The bells on the great team's harness chimed all along the red-leather straps and then the sled moved forward.

“He's a Laplander,” Roxanna whispered. “They're said to have a magical way with animals. His people come from a long line of herders. The Danes brought them in centuries ago to tend the huge bands of reindeer here.”

They passed by a corral for a small reindeer herd as well as the fenced-in kennels for dogsled teams. Next to the corral was a huge pen with posts as thick as telephone poles. From it, more Laplanders were leading teams of oxen down to the caravan, and their own drover spoke cheerfully to them in their own tongue.

“The pass hasn't seen so much business in a long time,” Roxanna observed. “Father's caravan was one of the first to make a round-trip, so the city was getting short on everything. It's almost like we've been under siege.”

At first the slope was so gentle that the musk oxen had no trouble, but as the path steepened they had to dig in their hooves and really pull, snorting and tossing their heads as if they would rather have thrown off the harness and rid themselves of the weight.

As they plodded along, Scirye missed the speed that the sails gave a wind sled. Suddenly, the sled's runners bit deep through the slush into a layer of ice below and the sled began to slide backward.

The drover was everywhere, tickling, scolding, urging his oxen forward, and Scirye and everyone else got off and pushed from behind until they were on a firm patch again and could climb back on.

Just before the mouth of the pass, Roxanna explained softly, “We have to be quiet from now on because of the danger of avalanches. The city tries to take care of any heavy accumulation of snow, but it's impossible to handle all of it promptly.”

“Why is everyone looking at me?” Koko whispered in a grieved tone.

“Because the warning applies to you especially,” Bayang snapped in a low voice.

The pass was a narrow valley where dark rock formed the steep sides. Snow pillowed on the ledges and crevices, but mostly it was dark stone walls that seemed to swallow up the moonlight. The wind forced into such a narrow channel whistled past them loudly.

As they entered the pass, Scirye felt as if she were entering a strange, hostile place where the rocks resented all life, where the earth was just as it had been when it and the stones had been the masters of the world. Knolls seemed like the heads of brooding giants, ready to crush them at the first excuse.

Salene the Moon was just rising when they reached the mouth of the pass. Roxanna pointed proudly. “Nova Hafnia. We call it the City of Diamonds.”

Scirye gasped when she saw the city filling the little bowl between the mountains and the sea. City of Diamonds was a good name for Roxanna's home, for it did indeed glitter like a jeweled necklace laid on white velvet.