Chapter 5
Never in his life had Nik been so cold. The cell was ice—floor, walls, ceiling, bars—ice as hard as steel. He’d heard tales of the legendary prisons of Reykstoll, so he hadn’t bothered doing anything as self-destructive as slamming his fists against the bars.
He didn’t need to. There’d be no escape. He knew that. And even if he managed to get free of the bars, then what? They’d led him through a maze of tunnels to get here, tunnels his brain had lost track of in about five minutes.
He’d focused on shivering. Praying, though when one of the guards had caught him at it, he’d laughed and said that the Giver couldn’t hear him through the ice, didn’t he know?
Ridiculous. The Giver of All could see the mer kingdoms beneath the waves, withstand the scorching heat of Soltierra, could hear above the clang of weapons and machines in Ellas—ice couldn’t keep him out.
Nik believed that.
Even so, he could scarcely hear his own prayers over the chattering of his teeth, and after four days in here, he was too numb to do more than wish for a quick death. How did anyone survive years in this place?
Maybe they didn’t. Maybe every other cell hosted naught but a frozen corpse. Maybe Pab had been right all these years, and the king’s “justice” was nothing but shoving his enemies into a frozen cell and waiting for them to die.
Thoughts of his father made him squeeze his eyes shut. He’d wanted to deny the venom the king had spewed at him. Wanted to claim that his father would never do such a thing, that it was all a ploy by the Fjorders to deny the thanes their fair share of resources and a voice.
But over the years, Pab’s discontent had grown into hatred. Bitterness. How many times had Nik begged him, first as a child and then as a man, to focus on the good instead of the bad? To dedicate his efforts to strengthening their neighbors instead of thinking up a new way to needle the Crown?
And when Nik had returned from the closest thing he’d been able to create to a university under the domes—an abandoned abbey, with Brother Gylfi as the sole professor—two weeks ago, the house had been a wreck.
Bits and pieces of things were scattered all over in such a haphazard fashion that he’d at first wondered if they’d been robbed.
Except nothing of value was missing. So unless a burglar had broken in and left a mess behind rather than taking things, he had to assume it was the work of Pab.
And a strange smell had lingered in the air, one that made him wrinkle his nose and open the windows. It had reminded him of the one time he’d visited another dome—Skellby, which abutted one of the smaller volcanoes, and which mined more than it farmed.
He hadn’t known what it was, exactly, that he’d smelled. But it had been in the air at the ruin of a palace the other day. And even still, he hadn’t made the connection. Not until King Isidor had said the word bomb.
Then the pieces had lined up. The chemicals he’d smelled were used in explosives in the mines. Chemicals that had clearly been in their house. And all those bits and pieces?
Nik had no clue about mechanical things, but Pab did.
The whole village had always joked that he’d have been better born to the warrior clans in Ellas, where he could build clever weapons and make a name for himself, instead of dedicating his time to farm implements that the government would never give him leave to build, that tore each one apart as soon as they got wind of it.
His father could have built a bomb. And his father could have somehow planted it in the residential wing of the palace knowing, hoping, it would kill the royal family he hated so much. His father could have told Nik to come to Reykstoll, knowing full well he wouldn’t be here to greet him.
Knowing he meant to kill himself.
For the thousandth time in the last four days, Nik recalled the hastily-written note that had been waiting for him on the litter-strewn kitchen table at home, anchored down with a piece of metal Nik hadn’t even tried to identify.
Gone to the capital for one more attempt to make them listen. Come when you get home. Join me at the Gala Inn. Turn right on Nordur Avenue as soon as you cross the bridge, then look for Fyrst Street. Walk a mile, and you’ll find it. I’ll have a room for you.
Don’t hem and haw this time, Nikanor. I need you there by the twenty-third. YOU need you there. Everyone needs you there.
If I’m not at the inn when you arrive, ask the innkeeper for a package I’ve left for you. He’s a friend. It will tell you all you need to know.
I’ve tried for so long. Tyranny stops now.
It hadn’t sounded odd at the time, not really.
Pab was always saying in one breath that every new trip to the capital would be the one that solved their woes, and then claiming in the next that the king would never listen, never change.
He was always chiding Nik for spending too much time in the Words and not enough doing something useful—and always claiming that if he would just get his head out of the snow, he could make a difference. Be somebody.
Nik had assumed the package would just have instructions on where to find Pab, or what pubs were welcoming to farmers or which stalls to avoid in the markets.
Now he wondered what it really contained. A confession? Plans? All the answers Pab had never been willing to give in life about the things that mattered most?
He was gone, really gone. Nik couldn’t wrap his mind around that.
So many of the past fourteen years had been spent apart that it was easy to think his father was just at home.
Or off petitioning the king again. That at Yule, Nik would go home and sit up long into the night with his father, warm mugs of nog in hand, and they’d talk about all that was wrong with the world, and what could be right.
They’d talk theology and philosophy and mechanics and crop rotations—alternating who led the conversations, of course.
He’d look over at the familiar, worn lines of the face so like his own, see the years of concern etched into it, and wonder if that was how he would look in thirty-five years.
He’d wonder if he, like Pab, was destined to live a lonely life.
And then remind himself that a life lived for others wasn’t truly lonely.
And for all his faults, Pab was dedicated to making life better for their people.
Footsteps echoed down the corridor. Two sets, which made him lean toward the bars. When the guards came with food and water just warm enough to be liquid for a few minutes, only one came. Two meant something else.
Raf? If it was to visit, he hoped so. If his friend had also been arrested merely because of association with Nik’s family, then he hoped not.
As the steps drew closer, Nik drew back. Not Raf, he could tell from the sound. His friend was an ox of a man, his tread heavy. Neither of the steps were loud enough to be his.
Still, surprise broke through some of the invisible ice encasing him when he saw the second figure that stopped in front of his cell. He tried to scramble up so that he could genuflect, but his frozen joints wouldn’t cooperate. All he ended up doing was spilling himself onto the floor.
Princess Valkyrja made a noise that sounded like concern, though logic said it must be mocking instead. Perhaps she’d been as kind as Raf always insisted she was that day in the city, and as they worked together to rescue whoever they could. But she wouldn’t be now, after all Pab had done.
Pab.
Nik shouldn’t be surprised she’d come, he supposed—she had every reason to hate him, to blame him for the deaths of the people she loved most in the world.
Why wouldn’t she want to look him in the eye and demand answers from him?
Or even spit upon him? A paltry vengeance, but he wouldn’t blame her for it.
“You may go.” Her voice rang out, clear and easy. No tremble, no shiver. Of course—these temperatures probably felt like a spring day to her.
The guard hesitated long enough for Nik to push himself back to sitting on wobbling arms. “Are you certain, Highness?” the man asked. “He is a terror-maker.”
The princess cut the guard a look as icy as the prison walls. “He is the son of a terror-maker. And I am the daughter of the king and the new warden of this prison. If you think me incapable of controlling one unarmed man, then you can consider yourself relieved of duty permanently.”
The guard paled and bowed. “Forgive me, Highness. I didn’t mean—of course.” He scurried away.
She watched him go, then turned to Nik. A wave of her hands and the bars shifted, moved aside.
Once she’d made enough space, she walked through and then returned them to their original position.
Only when she made herself comfortable on the floor beside him did he see she had a bag slung over her shoulder.
His bag.
He was too cold to process what that meant. Though even as he thought it, warmth crept in.
No—the cold retreated. He watched it go, watched what he thought were cloudy blocks of ice turned into stone, the frost retreating. Air warming. Not all the way to warm—such a thing was probably impossible in here—but no longer cold.
Though the ice seemed to retreat only as far as the bars, where it formed a wall so thick he’d have doubted anyone could ever chip their way through if its creator weren’t sitting cross-legged before him.
“I’m sorry.” Her voice was a bare whisper as she opened his sack and pulled out first the thin blanket he’d used during his journey, the one that would hold his body heat in and warm him up to full dome-temperature within minutes, and then the insulated container he’d made tea in each morning.
“I’ve never been down here before. I didn’t know it was so… ”
He wrapped the crinkly blanket around his shoulders and reached still-trembling hands for the mug. She unscrewed the lid for him and handed it over.