“I don’t care if you did, Raf.” A bit of amusement edged out the sudden anxiety, at least. “When have I ever not shared something with you?”
With a quick flash of a cheeky grin, Raf looked over his shoulder. Toward Kyrja’s igloo.
Nik moved to his side and gave him a laughing shove. “Something. Not someone. Find your own girl.”
“That’s what this is about. Sort of—I mean, not my girl.” Face twisting, Raf held out the box. Nik settled beside him on the pallet and pulled off the lid, even as Raf said, “Your father’s girl. Your mother, I mean. He had this crazy idea that she was still alive. Or what seemed like a crazy idea. Before.”
Nik’s breath left him in a whoosh. Pab had found out?How?He pulled out the topmost paper, squinted at it for a moment in the darkness and then brought the campfire up with a wave of his hand. Raf grunted beside him, but Nik ignored the noise of surprise. His best friend would just have to get used to such things.
Nik,
You’ll find this difficult to believe—I know I did. Your mother’s alive. She was taken by the Fjorders after a blood test showed an abnormality. The proof of it’s in this box. They’ve been doing this to us for decades, Nikanor, maybe centuries. I don’t know where it started, or how, or how they know who to test like this. I’ve found all I can—I don’t know books like you do. You’ll have to do the rest.
They stole her from us. And who knows how many others they’ve stolen from other families, or what they’ve done with them. The records I got my hands on didn’t tell me where she is now, only that she was Awakened and put into training.
Awakened. That’s what it said—your mamma. That means she’s young still, while I’m old. It means they didn’t just steal my wife from me, they guaranteed we could never reclaim our life together, not really. Even if I found her now, it would be too late. I have only months left, that’s what the healers say. Perhaps, had I found this information years ago, it could be different. But I didn’t. So it falls to you.
That’s why I called you here, where her trail ends. Pick it up, Nikanor. Find her. The king will question you after my death, probably arrest you—I’ll make sure of it. Be prepared. I’ve made a device for you, here in this box. It should melt the ice even in the Ice Prison. Wear it at all times after you reach Reykstoll. Use it to escape whatever cell they toss you in, and then find her. I’ll get you in, and then it’s up to you. Once you’re in the palace system, I know you’ll find a way. The thanes who serve there will help you. They know to watch for you.
I hope you find a way to help them too. The Fjorders take so much, and we let them. We think this is all there is. We think we’re lucky to have our little plot of land and our little bit of food and our little existence within the domes or serving them in the cities. The funny thing is that I was considering giving all this up, all the work with the Red Hands, before they took her. I just wanted to live with my family, enjoy what I had.
When others learn what’s being done with their family members, the complacency will end. It’ll have to. Once you show them your mother,everything will change. She’ll light a fire inside them, with your help.
I’ve done my part. I’m tired. I know you won’t approve of what I plan, but decades of talks have achieved nothing. The only way that tyrant will ever learn that he can’t just take other people’s family is if someone takeshis. Like the king in the Old Words, who resisted all the other plagues. But when his son was taken…then he let the People go.
He took my wife. So I’ll take his. And his son, and his daughters. I’ll take them, and I’ll leave him to realize the cost of his frosted policies. If anything can break his heart of ice, make himfeel, it will surely be this. And you, Nik—he’ll never see you coming. You, with all that cleverness you keep in that head of yours, will be his undoing. He’ll bring you in thinking you’re like everyone else, another slave to be executed. But I know you, son. I know you’ll do from the inside what I always failed to do from without.
In here you’ll find all the evidence I gathered through my years of searching, along with that bracelet to melt the prison bars. Use it, Nik.
I met a rebel a while back, out on the plains. Coming from the way of the outcasts. He said something that has been burning inside me ever since. Something I pass along to you.
Strike the flint. Fan the flames of freedom. Make them bleed.
Pab
Nik lowered the paper. Looked over to Raf.
His friend wore the frown that said he was concerned, not for himself but for Nik. “Did you know? That he was sick? Dying?”
Nik could only shake his head. He knew Pab hadn’t been a young man, not by thane standards. But if he had only months left, why hadn’t he told him? He hadn’t even had a chance to say goodbye.
Feeling a bit numb, Nik reached into the box, pulled out the bracelet. The outside looked like nothing—bits of metal, dull and worn. The kind of recycled rubbish thanes always used to make jewelry from, since it was all they were ever given. But on the inside, which would be invisible against his arm, he saw mechanical bits. It took only a moment’s fiddling to make it spark, producing not a flame but pure electricity that arced from one side to the other.
“Careful with that,” Raf said.
But Nik passed a hand through it, testing its heat, its intensity, casting his friend a crooked grin when Raf squeaked a protest before remembering that it couldn’t hurt him.
Then he tossed it to Raf with a shake of his head. “Useful for starting a fire on the Ice Plains, for sure—so you should keep it. But it wouldn’t have worked in the prison. It’s not hot enough, not for those bars of ice.” Still, it made him feel a little better, sort of. To know that Pab had named him for a purpose. That he’d had a plan. That he’dwantedNik to be arrested, but only so that he could escape and find his mother. He’d have thought Nik would go immediately to the inn, find this before the bomb went off, already be wearing it when the guards came for him.
He couldn’t have known they’d be delayed when they had to give the polar bear a wide berth that morning. Nor that they’d run into a princess that afternoon, and that their worlds would collide in a whole different way. That he’d be working at the palace in the aftermath of the attack, not hiding in the Gala Inn.
Raf sighed and slid the bracelet onto his wrist. “I went through all the documents. I don’t know how he got his hands on them, but they seem real. Transfer orders from the inoculation clinic in the village, results from a few blood tests, marked abnormal. Not just for your modur, either—for dozens of people over a couple decades. I thought…I don’t know what I thought. That maybe, if there was Blessed blood among us, it was the result of affairs, maybe, like Brother Gylfi suggested. But now…it’s this new magic, isn’t it? You inherited it from your mother.”
Nik nodded.
Raf leaned back. “Then maybe he’s right. Maybe she’s still out there somewhere. Maybe we really can find her.”
“I already did.” Nik pulled out the stack of papers, flipping through them more to get a sense of number than any particulars. He knew for a fact there’d only been six Aflame given to the volcano fully Awakened. Six. Out of dozens.
