The door was just opening as she approached, a mother and three children scooting out. Recognizing them from last year, Kyrja said hello and commented on how much the little ones had grown, then slipped inside once the blushing mother urged her brood back out.
“There you are.” Dania looked up with a grin and shoved a handful of silver-and-gold curls away from her face. To look at her, one would think she’d already been at it for three days straight. “I thought you’d never get here.”
Kyrja chuckled and moved to her usual place beside the patient’s chair. “I’m early, you’ll note.”
Dania checked her clock. And frowned. “Why are you early?” Of course, even as she asked, she let out a long sigh, expression going even tighter. “I take it your penultimate showcase for your father didn’t go well?”
To distract herself from the sting, Kyrja tugged the sheer sleeves of today’s gown down. “Turns out it was my last one. He deemed them pointless and cut off the last of my training, saying Einar is needed at the palace.”
“Oh, Kyrja.” Dania moved to her side and settled a hand on Kyrja’s wrist. She was a Fjorder, one of the aristocracy, without magic but born to wealth and privilege—and yet she’d chosenthis, serving the poorest of Reykstoll, as her life’s work. Though more immune to the cold than her patients, shefeltmore than most Fjorders Kyrja had met.
It was, perhaps, what had made them such fast friends when they met in school. Neither of them were quite what the elite of Fjordlandi were supposed to be.
Kyrja summoned up a smile now for her friend. “It’s all right. He didn’t mean it as an insult, it’s…it’s just fact. There’s no reason to get upset about facts.”
The breath Dania blew out said she was none too sure about that. But she let it go. For now. “Well. I know how to distract you from it all. Sven is dining with us tomorrow night—you should come. Bring your mother.”
Kyrja chuckled at the thought of another evening of food and conversation with Dania’s brother—a professor at Reykstoll’s university. He certainly always gave her something to think about…though in this case, his “thought experiments” hit a bit too close to home, given the meeting her father and Einar would be having with the leader of the rebel thanes this afternoon.
None of which she said. The nurse showed a new patient in, and the little one looked none too happy to be here. He clung to his mother’s skirts, eyes wide with fear.
Time for Kyrja to do what she came to do. Grinning, she leaned down to catch the little fellow’s eye. “Hello there. I’m guessing you’re not looking forward to the shot, are you?”
The boy shook his head and tried to back out of the room. His mother shut the door to keep him in.
Kyrja kept her smile bright. “Understandable. Did it hurt last time?” At the boy’s lip-quivering nod, she gave a solemn one of her own. “I thought so. But that’s because I wasn’t here. Come and sit here beside me, and I’ll stop it from hurting.”
He edged closer, though warily. “How?”
“May I see your hand?” Her usual introduction. The boy held it out, and she took it gently between her own. Wiggling her pointer finger in illustration, she touched it to the top of his hand, watching as his eyes went wide.
“It’s getting cold!”
She chuckled. “Exactly so. And when I do this to your arm, it will get cold enough in that one spot that you won’t feel a thingwhen the needle goes in—and it will stay cold for a few hours afterward, which will even keep it from aching later.Plus”—she leaned close, cast her voice into a whisper—“while the doctor is giving you the medicine, I can draw you an icograph on your shirt. Anything you like.”
The boy’s eyes went wider still. “A polar bear?”
Kyrja grinned and lifted her finger from his hand. “Polar bear it is. Let’s get started.”
2
Nikanor Tristansson drifted to a halt, his eyes too busy taking in the sight before him to keep his feet moving along the Ice Bridge. All his life, he’d heard of Mt. Helviti. He knew it was the highest, the fiercest, the most active volcano in the Ring of Flame that encircled Fjordlandi—hence its reputation for being the very gate of the underworld. He knew it loomed over the capital city, just as he knew that it was only the king’s ice that kept the constant streams of lava from overtaking Reykstoll.
He’d always known it. But seeing it for the first time was something altogether different. It towered so much higher than Mt. Radsla, outside his home dome, some sixty miles distant.
“Whoa.” Rafnar stopped beside him, his friend’s gaping expression no doubt a mirror of his own. Raf shifted the weight of his pack and craned his neck back.
Nik did the same, trying and failing to see the top of the mountain. No use, of course. He didn’t know if it was snow or cloud or smoke or some combination of the three that obscured the summit from view, but the mountain vanished into the white. “I think I always thought the lava streams in the images were just artistic renderings.” His breath made its own cloudwhen he spoke, his gaze following the lines of glowing red-orange as they snaked down the mountain. “I thought they couldn’t possibly be there all the time.”
Raf made a noise that was half laugh, half snort of breath. Then shivered. Maybe exaggerated—but maybe not. Neither of them had spent much time outside the greenhouse dome. Usually their ventures lasted no more than a few hours, as they went out to skate or gather snow. Nothing like the days of hiking across the Ice Plain, going the long way to skirt the edge of the wildlands of the Great Forest.
Someone jostled into them, and Nik reached instinctively to his own pack, pulling it out of the reach of whoever had bumped them. Pab had warned him time and again that thieves preyed on unsuspecting visitors to the capital. Though he knew even as he turned that if the thief looked hungry, he’d gladly share his provisions.
The man, however, didn’t have the look of a hungry thief. He glared at them from pale blue eyes, fairest skin visible around the lightweight clothing that was proof he wasn’t just a cold-immune Fjorder, but a magical one. “Stupid farmling,” the man muttered, backing away, “stopping in the middle of the road.” He shifted a crystal reader from one palm to another, waving away whatever projection he’d been distracted by.
Raf’s chin came up at the slur they all hated—thanewas acceptable, meaning “commoner,” but something about being called afarmlingalways chafed. Nik felt it too, yes, that quick flame of anger. But he banked it just as fast and edged in front of Raf. “Our apologies, my lord.” He didn’t know who the man was, but every Blessed had a title—and magic that could push them right off the Ice Bridge and into the frozen channel below if they had a mind to. “It’s our first time in Reykstoll. We were struck by the majesty of it all.”
The Fjorders rarely left the cities and flocked especially to the capital, so he had to think they liked it here. Were proud of it.
