Winter, White and Wicked - Shannon Dittemore Page 0,80
myself.
“When her brother first approached us, he came offering information.” He flourishes the dripping envelopes. “About the Majority, about their movements, a conspiracy he’d uncovered while working at the Port of Glas. He was more than willing to share what he knew, but he had a single condition. Like so many that come to me for help, he wanted his sister freed from the Stack.” He spares Rayna a glance. “I took care of it.”
“You bought out her debt?”
“I did. And her brother’s intelligence brought the rebels more hope than they’d had in years. It was a fair exchange.”
Something about his words, about the twist of his lips.
“And if he hadn’t possessed something worth trading, would you have left her to die there? In the Stack?”
“Whatever I did,” he says, dropping the useless letters to the ice, “I did with the best of intentions.”
“For her? Or for the rebels?”
He pulls the square of cloth from his pocket and dabs at his crusted lips. “There will always be those who choose a blissful death over a hard-fought life. I can’t save them from that.”
Blisters line my gums, but at least my lips have been spared. “There was no need to use Kerce magic then. She was already dead.”
“You couldn’t have known that,” Kyn says.
“There was great need, Miss Quine. And you did well.”
But Winter has other thoughts.
AFTER ALL I’VE DONE FOR YOU, FOR YOUR FRIENDS, she squalls. TO BE FORCED LOW UNDER SUCH DEMANDS. ARE YOU MY BETTER? SHALL I CALL YOU MASTER?
On and on she whines, a tempest in my head. The others observe a moment of silence after Hyla and Kyn slip Rayna beneath the ice. But my head throbs with Winter’s complaints, and as we load into the Dragon one by one, I mutter Mystra Dyfan’s words once again.
“Est stiyee,” I tell Winter.
Just stop.
According to the diagrams tacked up in Drypp’s garage, the mines at North Bend have massive rectangular openings cut into the mountains. They’re nothing like the newer mines, with their small, rounded entrances and narrow tracks that rattle workers miles into the rock. Drypp said if you look hard enough, century-old Majority markings can be found carved near the openings, though the elements have worn flat much of the distinction in the mountainside.
The elements are the reason these mines were abandoned years back. Though it wasn’t the incessant hammering of storms or the swirling ocean fog that never lifts. It wasn’t the disadvantages of either Ryme or Blys that rendered the working conditions impossible.
It was the monsters.
The Seacliff Road is a flat thoroughfare, cut away centuries ago by explorers commissioned by the Majority. Before they invaded in full. Before they turned Shiv Island into Layce, their newest conquest. Like the Shiv Road, it’s not maintained, but the kol-flaked salt surfing the sea air keeps the ice on the road from building up. The road is rumored to be nothing more than crumbling rock, but the currents are friendliest here, and for the Abaki scaling the cliffs up from the waves below, it’s their preferred way to approach the island.
Thoughts of the mines and the black ocean beyond, the wind whipping hard against the blanket tacked over Hyla’s window—they’re the only things keeping my eyes from falling shut. I can’t count the hours I’ve been awake.
Dead ahead, the fog is heavy, a new layer rolling in. Tendrils of kol curl like smoke up from the tossing waves, twisting into a sky that’s only ever gray. I need sleep.
I blink but it’s hard to open my eyes now and the rig swerves. I overcorrect—slipping and sliding, catching the outside mirror on the rock before regaining control. My face floods with shame, but next to me Hyla snores, and behind me—his arms draped around my seat, fingers tangled in my hair—Kyn’s chest rattles with sleep. He’s worried about nothing in the world at this moment, least of all my driving.
It bothers me that I know his mood so absolutely. Despite Hyla’s thoughts on such things, I’ve only known Kyn for a short time. His feelings should not be as real to me as my own, though I am glad to know my blunder’s gone unnoticed.
Or not.
Mars’s gaze finds mine in the rearview. He’s awake and watching me drive, though he looks like he’s three nails short of a coffin. His waxen skin is pasty and the kol in his eyes is fading. I can see color there beneath the black veil—blue, maybe green—and a fuzzy gray distinction where