Queen of Frost Page 7

  “I won’t. I’m good at finding my way around.”

  “Okay.” Another slip of his grin, another catch before it disappeared entirely. “It’s been fun.”

  “It has,” Ember agreed, meaning it. “Thank you.”

  He dropped his hand and looked down at his feet. One boot scuffed at the street beneath it, and his pale cheeks flushed to almost the same color as his hair. “Can I see you again?” he asked without looking up.

  Ember smiled, hopefully hiding the way her own face began to feel unusually warm at the question. “I’d like that.”

  Felix glanced up at her without lifting his head. A twitch at one corner of his mouth made it clear he was trying to still a grin. “Really?”

  She nodded. “Really.”

  The momentarily stilled grin broke through his hold on it, and he beamed at her, the smile as bright as the electric lights casting a halo of red around his face. “Okay. I’ll see you around, then?”

  “Yeah.”

  She hurried away before she could say anything more but glanced back once before turning down the next street. Felix was watching her, still beaming. He lifted one hand in a silent wave as she went around the corner.

  * * *

  It was no trouble to find the Queen’s Cross Cafe, and from there the building with the matte-black metal staircase and the hallway lined with doors. She slid into the room and closed the door softly behind her, not wanting to wake Eli, who she figured was still asleep in the next room.

  “Where have you been?”

  She jumped and spun around, though the moment she did, she realized it wasn’t necessary. The voice was Eli’s, and it was only because she hadn’t expected to find him behind her that he’d startled her.

  He was sitting on the couch, but he stood, his arms crossed, when she turned to face him. His expression was accusatory, almost angry.

  Ember lifted her chin. “I told you. I was going for a walk.”

  “A walk? Ember, you’ve been gone for hours!”

  “You could’ve come with me.”

  Eli let out a breath and unfolded his arms. “I was worried.”

  “Why? You’re the one who’s been trying to convince me that there’s nothing to be worried about.”

  She started to move past him, aiming for the door that lead into the bedroom, but he came after her, grabbing her arm when she didn’t stop to look at him. “Where’ve you been?” he asked again, gentler this time.

  “Out. Seeing the city. That thing I would’ve thought was your interest.”

  He didn’t rise to the bait, instead asking evenly, “What did you see?”

  “Lots of things. People, buildings. The palace. They have electricity here.” She glanced out the glass wall to her left, and yes, she could see the nearest light pole, shining a steady bluish light onto the cobbles and glass around it. “Did you see those bulbs? They’re electric!”

  He was quiet for a moment, looking at her through slightly narrowed eyes. “Anything else?”

  She reflected his expression back to him. “Are you being suspicious of me?” She wasn’t sure why she didn’t want to tell him about Felix or the old city. There was nothing to tell him about the cathedral or the things inside it.

  But Felix felt like her own thing, and not even the least bit of Eli’s business.

  His face cleared. “Of course not.”

  “Good.” She smiled and pulled her arm away from his hand, but then tried to disguise the motion by reaching up and patting his cheek in the way that annoyed him the most. “Otherwise, I would have to kick your ass.”

  He moved away from her hand, but he was grinning now, too. “You think you could take me?”

  “I know I could.”

  Mischief glinted in his eyes.

  Ember took a step back. “Don’t.”

  He lowered his head and closed the two steps of distance between them at an awkward not-quite-run. His arms went around her in a playful facsimile of an attack, and his momentum sent them both stumbling into the side wall of the room.

  “You’re such a little boy,” Ember said, but she was laughing, and that softened the scolding edge of her words.

  “Someone has to keep you from becoming a mean old woman before your time,” Eli said. His voice cracked over his own laughter.

  She slapped his shoulder. “Get off me.”

  He laughed again but let her go.

  “Do you feel better now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Am I allowed to go to bed? I’d like to look my best while paying tribute to the queen.” Those last words came out of her with a faint but hopefully detectable bite of sarcasm.

  Felix had told her to think of it as saying hello to her host, but there was something about the phrase of “paying tribute” that made her uneasy.

  Eli waved a hand toward the bedroom as if to say she could do whatever she wanted.

  Ember pulled off her sweater and kicked off her boots, then lay down in the bed farthest from the glass wall. A few minutes later, she heard Eli crawl into the one at the center of the room, and a few minutes after that, the deep, steady breaths that meant he was asleep. He’d always been the sort of person who could just go straight to sleep pretty much the moment he lay down, as though he never had anything on his mind.

  But Ember couldn’t fall asleep. The bed was delightful: as soft as a cloud, with a thick and equally soft blanket and two pillows so fluffy she doubted anyone had ever put their head on them. None of it was thermal, but maybe that shouldn’t have surprised her — she hadn’t seen a speck of thermal anywhere in Frost, which might actually be all right since they had a force field over the city and plenty of heat indoors to keep them all from freezing to death without it.

  Still, despite the comfort of the bed and the drowsy noises of Eli just a few steps away, she couldn’t relax enough to sleep. Her thoughts ran over all the things she’d seen and heard during the day, and they kept getting snarled on the strange way Felix’s eager curiosity kept changing to indifference or denial over questions that seemed completely innocent and reasonable to her. Where did Frost keep the machines that made the electricity that lit its streets? Why did the queen move Atalanta’s altar out of the old city? How was there someone who didn’t understand what she meant when she mentioned Before?

  What were copters, and why did they spook Felix?

  It was that last question that kept circling back to her, even as she was able to dismiss the rest with the idea that maybe Felix just wasn’t interested in machines. Which wasn’t at all unreasonable — there were things she didn’t care about, and if someone were to ask her a question about those things, she wouldn’t know or feel inclined to answer. But Felix had called the old city his favorite place, and even the thought of the cathedral gave him shivers. He hadn’t been afraid when he’d taken her into the trolley or down the street to point out the building. He’d only started to get nervous when he saw the copters.

  He didn’t want anyone in the trolley knowing that either of them had seen anything, but he also didn’t tell her what she had seen.

  It was all just a little too suspicious for Ember to dismiss.

  Chapter Ten

  Ember dreamed of the end of the world.

  She knew she was dreaming from the moment she opened her dream-self eyes and looked around her to see nothing but white in every direction. It wasn’t like the whiteout that had preceded their discovering that they’d made it to Frost — it wasn’t a whiteness made by snow and wind. It was the whiteness of nothing.

  This was surprising. She’d always thought of nothing as being dark. Black. An absence of light like the space between the stars.

  But this was something else. It wasn’t light — at least, she didn’t feel compelled to squint against the glare — but it wasn’t dark, either. It was just … nothing.

  There was someone beside her. She turned, expecting to find Eli, and was surprised by the shock of fiery orange that cut through the absolute whiteness
around her.

  “Felix,” she said, her dream-voice echoing strangely in the void.

  He didn’t turn. His eyes were fixed on something straight ahead, over her shoulder and to the right, but when Ember tried to see what he was looking at, there was nothing there.

  Nothing but nothing.

  Here there be dragons.

  She knew that phrase. But she couldn’t figure out where she knew it from, or why it kept banging around inside her skull like something she was supposed to know and didn’t. It just sat there, humming beneath her consciousness, drawn up in her dreams, impossible to understand or place.

  Felix had made a reference to dragons outside of Frost’s walls. She didn’t really know the word dragon, didn’t really have any concept of what he meant — something about monsters, she thought, monsters who had been driven snow-blind and insane from being out in the unprotected tundra. But still the words echoed, meaningful but unable to be grasped. Half-remembered like the sensation of a dream fading out of consciousness.

  Ember woke with a start. For a moment, she wasn’t sure where she was; all she could see was white, as though she were still trapped inside the void of her dream. There was something wrapped around her body, pinning her arms to her sides. She yelped and kicked out, but the thing only tightened.

  “Ember? It’s okay, it’s me.”

  Eli pierced the whiteness in front of her eyes, and it all came rushing back to her. The trek across the tundra, Frost, the too-soft bed and too-white blanket. She dropped her head back against the thick pillow with a sigh.

  “Bad dream?”

  She tried to laugh in an effort to dislodge the panic still caught in a fist-sized lump in her throat. “You’d think I’d be used to them by now.”

  He rubbed her shoulder where his hand was already resting, and she realized that he must’ve been shaking her awake. “Get up,” he said, straightening. “Maudie’s here.”

  “Ugh. Why?”

  “To take you to the queen,” said Maudie’s too-cheerful voice through her too-big smile. “You have an appointment at sunrise.”

  Ember didn’t groan, though the urge to was strong. Instead, she rolled out of bed and landed barefoot on the floor.

  Eli stepped away from the edge of her bed. He’d changed at some point since they’d gone to bed, and now he was in the light pants and sleeveless top of a Frost man, the hat held in one hand.

  Ember scoffed. “You look ridiculous.”

  “Maybe. But it’s very comfortable.” He gave a little shimmy of his hips. The motion swirled the loose hems of his shirt and pants. “Don’t look so horrified until you see what Maudie brought for you.”

  Maudie, who’d been standing at the doorway to the bedroom and smiling brightly at nothing, stepped forward at the sound of her name. Folded up in her outstretched arms was a piece of white cloth and a wide-brimmed hat perched on top.

  Ember stepped away from the offering as though it were poisoned. “I’m not wearing that.”

  “The queen requested that you be decent when you arrive.”

  Ember looked down at the thick knitted sweater and pants that she hadn’t bothered to take off when she went to bed last night. She couldn’t have possibly been more decent, especially compared to Maudie’s exposed ankles and bare shoulders.

  Eli took the bundle from Maudie’s arms. “I’ll take care of it,” he said like a dismissal.

  Maudie’s smile seemed to thin, like it was a moment away from breaking. Ember was tempted to push it, to find out what the other woman looked like when she finally got angry enough to stop smiling. But then Maudie turned away from the door her foot had been propping open, and it snapped quietly closed between them.

  Ember turned to Eli. “I’m not wearing that.”

  Eli sighed. “Don’t argue. You’ll just get yourself in trouble.”

  “I thought they didn’t care what I did.”

  He still wouldn’t take her bait. Instead, he dumped the cloth and wide-brimmed hat into her arms and said evenly, “Come out when you’ve changed.”

  Then he followed Maudie out of the room and shut the door behind him. She could hear him talking on the other side of the door, his voice too low for her to make out any specific words.

  Ember scowled down at the clothes. She didn’t want to wear them, but she didn’t really want to argue with Eli, either. The last few weeks, it felt like pretty much all they’d done was argue. Over whether or not she’d leave with him. Over supplies to take. Over if his quest to find this maybe-mythical city was a stupid suicide mission. Over how long each day they could walk. Over the strangeness she’d seen from the people in Frost. Over how long she’d been away yesterday. It was exhausting, and she didn’t want to do it anymore, especially over something as trivial as clothing.

  She let out a breath, long and careful, emptying her lungs as completely as she could before filling them all the way back up again. It wasn’t like they were taking her own clothes away. She could put on Frost garments for a little while to get through this one errand, and then change back into her own clothes afterward. So she changed, folding her sweater and pants and laying them neatly on the end of her bed — they weren’t manufactured thermals that needed special care, but they were wool, knitted by her father’s mother, the grandmother from Before that she’d never met, from her own small flock of sheep, because apparently, even before, it would get cold enough in the winter to want a warm sweater. Even the great Engine couldn’t keep everywhere free of dark and snow.

  The Frost clothes were surprisingly comfortable; the linen of the dress was light and soft, and though she felt exposed and naked with her extremities out in the air, it wasn’t entirely unpleasant. She liked the way the knee-length skirt moved when she did, and she liked how her dark arms and calves stood out against the white fabric.

  She felt … pretty. Exposed, embarrassed, worried about the skin that only rarely and briefly had direct contact with air, but also pretty.

  It was a strange feeling, and one that she tried to fight down before she opened the door and went out to meet Eli and Maudie.

  Both of them looked at her with smiles when she came out of the bedroom. Maudie’s was bright and plastered on as usual, but Eli’s was almost appreciative. “Frost suits you, Ember,” he muttered.

  “Don’t get used to it,” she muttered back.

  Maudie opened the door into the hallway and waved them out after her. “Come. We mustn’t be late for the queen.”

  Ember and Eli followed her without a word; from the corner of her eye, Ember could see Eli still shimmying around inside the new clothes, taking too-large steps or holding out his arms as if testing the limits of the cloth. Ember kept her arms firmly down at her sides, hoping that keeping them in toward her body would keep the exposed skin warm and the skirt from shifting around too much and showing off parts it was supposed to be covering.

  The air outside the building was biting, far too cold for the thin linen and amount of skin it failed to cover. Maudie’s steps quickened, and Ember was plenty eager now to keep up. There were a dozen intersections between here and the palace square — the faster they could cover them, the sooner they’d be back inside.

  But Maudie turned away from the street Ember had taken yesterday into the square, led them up the street past the Queen’s Cross Cafe, then paused at the next corner near a small collection of others, all loosely gathered and looking in the same direction like a group waiting for the next trolley.

  And indeed, just a few minutes later, a trolley came rumbling up the street. Beside her, Ember heard Eli pull in a breath, and she remembered that it was Felix, not Eli, who’d taken her on the trolley last night.

  She smiled. “Just wait until you see how fast it goes.”

  He looked at her, eyebrows raised. “You’ve been on one?”

  “You should’ve come with me yesterday. I did all sorts of things you wish you’d had a chance to do.”

  The trolley stopped at the corner, several
people hopping off and the small crowd waiting for it replacing them. Maudie dropped three coins into the driver’s little metal box and then led them to two open seats in the middle. “Take those,” she said, pointing. “I’ll fetch you when we get to our stop.”

  Ember sat and tugged Eli down beside her. The driver disengaged the brake lever, and the trolley rolled forward to its next stop.

  Eli stared out the open side of the vehicle, his jaw slightly loose with awe as the buildings whipped by at a speed at least twice as fast as a dead run. Ember fought back an urge to giggle. She probably hadn’t looked much more dignified on last night’s trolley ride, and Felix hadn’t laughed at her. It seemed only right that she extend Eli the same courtesy.

  Still, she couldn’t help but smile. “You going to catch a fly in that trap?” she whispered, teasing. It was a saying in Dusk, one of those that sounded like they meant something until you stopped to think about it and realized that it meant nothing at all.

  The man sitting in the seat in front of them turned halfway around at her words. His smile was wide, but not overly so — more friendly than unnatural. “Where are you folks headed?” he asked.

  Eli was able to pull his eyes off the passing buildings long enough to answer him. “The palace.”

  “Oh?” The man lifted his eyebrows. His expression went from politely idle to genuinely curious. “Got business there?”

  “An appointment with the queen,” Ember cut in.

  The man’s smile never faltered. He made a small noise somewhere in his throat and immediately turned around to face the front of the trolley again.

  The trip wasn’t long — they weren’t going far. Ember had strolled the distance between the apartment and the palace in less than an hour, and though they stopped frequently and were taking a route that was much more winding than the one she’d done yesterday, the trolley was more than a mite faster than her strolling. Between the buildings and down the open stretches of street, Ember could begin to see the vast mountain that sat behind the palace, and then, after a few more stops and one new turn, the bluish spires of the palace and open square in front of it.