Ice Baron (Ice Chronicles, Book One (science fiction romance)) (3 page)

At the same time, she had known
this day must come. According to the Old Barons’ Law, it could be no other way.
Once she achieved a certain age, Joshua would discharge his duty of her. All
the better if he could successfully—from his viewpoint—marry her off to a territory
baron who would promise to become Joshua’s blood ally. Her blood, of course,
being the tenuous thread that would bind the two men and strengthen each of
their territories and power.

She stopped struggling. “I hate
you.”

His eyes gleamed a tawny color,
which matched his hair. A paradox, for his eyes were in truth a deep, velvety
brown. His lips curled back so his white teeth showed in a smile. “You love me.”

For a second her heart stopped,
and then it slammed harder. She felt cold, and then hot. “You mean nothing to
me. Just as I mean nothing to you.” She twisted her wrist, and to her surprise,
freed herself. “Isn’t that right?”

“I expect you to be on the next
shuttle.”

Anger tightened like a knot in her
chest. It felt like a fist squeezed her lungs so hard that she could barely
breathe. So Joshua thought it would be simple to get rid of her? That she was
still a child, eager to do his bidding, to please him?

No. At last, she had grown up, and
now she understood that the heart of a snow leopard lived in him. No warmth. No
laughter. Those fictions had been proven a lie. How quickly he was willing to
sell her. For power. For peace. Should she feel flattered it was to the highest
bidder?

Abruptly, she said, “How many
Detsk did he give you?”

He didn’t answer.

“I want half. It’s my life that’s
been sold, after all. Don’t you think I deserve something?”

Something flickered in those brown
eyes. Guilt? Grim triumph flared. So, she’d struck into the heart of this cold,
self-serving man, whom she had apparently never known.

“I’ll give you five hundred. It’s
all you’ll need for your travels. You will need no money there.”

A more than generous sum, if it
was just for travel money. But they both understood it was the bride price. Her
life price.

Silently, she held out her hand.

Joshua hesitated for a moment, and
then dipped into his pocket and withdrew a folded stack of bills. He didn’t
bother to count it. Neither did Anya. But it was clearly more than five
hundred.

Joshua silently watched her push
the bills into her pocket. “The shuttle leaves in two hours. I expect you to be
on it.” Abruptly, he turned on his heel and left her. His cream uniform, edged
with gold, stretched crisp and taut across his straight, well-muscled
shoulders. His tawny hair was so short now it didn’t even touch the collar.

Anya watched him go. With each
step, her heart broke a little more, until it felt like millions of pieces of
glass punctured her soul.

He had sold her.

He was finished with her.

Maybe this was the end of one part
of her life, but Anya absolutely would not marry the powerful Altai baron.

She wanted peace, just as Joshua
did. But she would not give her life to Onred to ensure it. Onred’s word could
not be trusted. History had proven that he was a bloodthirsty monster. His
moral character had been further proven in the hallway. He was cruel, perverse,
and corrupt to his very soul. Once he took all that Joshua had promised
him—goods, exchanges of minor sections of territory, and herself—the peace
would end. This, she knew.

All the same, she would get on
that shuttle, as Joshua dictated. It would appear to everyone, including Onred’s
watching men, that the terms of peace were being met. But on the trip to the
sky city of Bogd in the Altai Mountains, she would disappear. It was the only
way to ensure peace. Forever.

*  *  *  *  *

“I have to go,” Anya said again to
Marli, and stuffed another dress she would never wear into one of her mammoth
suitcases. The other four were already filled. She had known since yesterday evening
what her fate would be, and in the back of her mind a plan had emerged. The
battle with Joshua in the hall had been a last attempt to delay the inevitable.

Anya told herself that she hated
the cold, unfeeling man. She did.

“But
why?
” As the only
child with blue eyes and blond ringlets in the family, Marli was adept at
wrapping all of her older siblings around her little finger. Joshua, too, if
the truth were told. But the tears in her voice now were real. “You don’t want
to go! I heard your fight in the hall. Why is Joshua so mean? Why do you have
to leave?”

Anya stopped packing and pulled
her little sister into her arms. Marli’s tears soaked into Anya’s simple black
shirt. Underneath, Anya wore an even thinner polymer shirt, suitable for
regulating body temperature when subjected to extreme weather. She would need
it later.

“I’m sorry, honey.” Anya’s own
unhappiness gathered into an aching lump in her throat. “I’ll miss you. But I’ll
come back.” If she could. She fiercely loved her brothers and sisters, and
Astana was her home. She couldn’t imagine living anywhere else, and she couldn’t
bear the thought of parting with her family. Marli needed her. She was the only
mother figure the young girl had ever known. Anya blinked back tears.

Marli looked up. “You promise?”

Anya pressed a kiss into the soft
hair at her sister’s temple. Marli’s baby fine skin was damp from the
exhausting ordeal of crying. “Sometimes life turns in directions we don’t want,”
she murmured. “But I’ll get it back on track.” She bit her lip. She shouldn’t
have said that to her unusually perceptive sister.

“How?”

“I don’t know. I’m making it up as
I go along.” That was true enough. “Now.” She squeezed her sister tighter, and
then released her. “Will you get the others? I’ll need help to the terminal.” She
had to try to be strong. If she could project confidence to her siblings, they
would believe everything would be fine. It would give them a measure of peace.

How sorely Anya wanted to believe
it, too. But her plan was far from failsafe.

Her sister paused near the door. “Joshua,
too?”

Anya averted her face. “No. Not
Joshua.”

“I’m mad at him, too,” Marli said.
“I won’t talk to him for a month.”

“Listen to him. He wants what’s
best for you.”

“But not for you. If he wasn’t so
stupid…”

“Marli!”

“I’m going,” the girl sullenly
muttered, and the gun metal gray door slid shut behind her.

The dull gray walls of the room
matched the bleak feeling in Anya’s spirit. She had programmed the depressing
color into the paint’s tiny, diamonite silicon paint chips last night.
Normally, she preferred a warm, toasted almond hue, with a mirage of surging
and crashing ocean breakers on the wall across from her bed, but she couldn’t
bring herself to enjoy the scene any longer. She had even turned off the sound
system. It was utterly silent and barren in the room. It matched the desolation
in her soul.

Anya lugged the suitcase to the
floor to join the other four. Her fingers curled around her black overnight
bag. She would carry this one herself. In fact, she wouldn’t let it out of her
sight.

Don’t cry,
she told herself again. But that
was impossible moments later, when her siblings entered the room. The four were
her only family in the world, except for her uncle Richert (Rik’ ert), a baron
to the south, who had started a blood feud with her father shortly after Anya’s
mother had married him, instead of her uncle.

Her twin brothers, Damon and
David, approached first. They were fourteen now, and taller than she. Elise
held Marli’s hand. Elise was sixteen, and with her long dark hair and blue
eyes, looked very much like Anya. Elise’s features were perfect, whereas Anya
knew her own nose was too sharp, and her mouth too wide. Like all of the
inhabitants of Donetsk Territory, the five siblings were a mix of Eastern
European and Russian descent. Once the nuclear holocaust had decimated the
earth, the survivors had scrambled to claim new land. Eurasia, even now, was
barely habitable, and covered with a thick ice sheet, which covered the deep
scars in the earth.

Tears blurred Anya’s vision, and a
sob closed her throat. “Let’s say goodbye now. I don’t want to make a scene in
the terminal.”

Her brothers hugged her first,
their arms all gangly bones and lean muscle. “We’ll come rescue you, if you
need it,” Damon said. “The guy’s a jerk.” His face looked pale and sick in its
earnestness.

“Don’t,” she told him firmly, with
a rush of protectiveness. “Remember, I want peace. I want you to be safe. I’ll
be fine. Don’t worry.”

Yes, she would pursue peace, but
by her own means. In fact, in the days to come, others would label her actions
as selfish and immature. The truth was far different, of course, and far more
dangerous. Even better, if her plan succeeded, she would win peace with
all
of their enemies—not just Onred.

“Take care of them,” she whispered
to Elise, and then hugged Marli last of all. Her little sister sobbed without restraint,
and clung to her tightly.

“You can’t go. You just
can’t!
”

Anya held her for a long time, and
tears ran down her own cheeks. Then, gently, she untangled Marli’s arms. “It’s
time to go.” Her heart felt sick, empty, and fearful. She may never see any of
them again. Her plan had so many holes. So many uncertainties. “I love you.”

Words seemed inadequate to express
the deep emotions overwhelming her. It was a good thing Joshua hadn’t come. She
just might flay into him for forcing her to leave her family.

For peace, of course. But for once
in his charmed life, Joshua was wrong. The sweetest revenge would be to prove
it.

*  *  *  *  *

Anya sat with her arms tightly
crossed, struggling to barricade her emotions inside. She sat on a plush,
cushioned seat in the baron’s official government shuttle. Beside her, the
window radiated in the mercilessly cold, late afternoon sun. Tears slipped down
her cheeks.

Inside the terminal, her younger
siblings mingled with other well wishers, and waved whenever she managed to
look. Each glance at her family stabbed a fresh knife of pain through her
heart. Anya disengaged a hand and waved again. A hot lump closed off her
throat, and she stared down at the black bag at her feet, willing the tears to
stop. The bag contained everything she would need to survive in the snow for
several weeks.

Of course, her five monstrous
travel cases, stuffed with her superfluous belongings, had been checked into
cargo. To all appearances, she had packed for a permanent farewell. No one had
noticed her best winter boots on her feet, or the ultra thin, but heavy duty
parka she wore. Underneath her black pants and shirt, she wore fiber thin snow
wear. She had set the thermostat to cool, so she wasn’t too warm inside the
winter layers. A solar panel was built into her parka hood, and would provide
all the electricity she would need.

Onred’s men occupied seats nearby.
Anya had placed an electronic notebook on the seat beside hers, discouraging others
from sitting there. Her gaze strayed again to the terminal and she found
herself searching the dwindling crowd for tawny hair. When she realized what
she was doing, she berated herself.

The shuttle jerked, and then slid
forward, propelling her in a direction she did not want to go; taking her from
her beloved city of Astana, possibly forever. Childhood images tangled with a
flood of memories: Astana’s warm, sparkling walls when crisp, summer sunshine
streamed through the windows; the laughter in Marli’s eyes at Christmas time;
coming home after a two day military survival trip with her father and Elise…
How beautiful Astana had looked then, growing larger and larger as they’d flown
home; a silvery, saucer-shaped city perched on a steel stalk, far above the
earth.

And now she was leaving her home
and family—perhaps forever. Anya blew a flurry of emotional kisses to her siblings.
A flash of cream on the upper concourse caught her eye.

Joshua. Her hand froze, lips
puckered, still in the motion of blowing her last kiss. He watched as the
shuttle slid forward, faster, until he was out of sight.

Anya jerked her chin forward. Her
heart thumped in uncomfortable, erratic beats. So he had seen her off? It meant
nothing, of course. He had probably watched to make sure she had obeyed him.
Well, now his duty was fully discharged, and he could retreat to his office and
toast his success at having won the most important peace negotiation in Donetsk Territory’s history. And he had ensured his title of Baron for life.

Anya closed her eyes. She didn’t
care.

She
didn’t.

Time to orchestrate her
disappearance.

CHAPTER TWO