Page 106 of Ice Like Fire
I drop to my back, hidden by the point in the roof, the chakram to my stomach. Arrows pierce the roof behind me with sturdythwacksand a few graze the point just over my head, sending sprays of tile raining down over me.
“Hold!” Raelyn cries, and the arrows cease.
I stay down, one foot lodged in a few clay tiles to keep me from sliding off the roof.
“Winter queen?” Raelyn calls, her voice taunting, and I curse myself for letting my aim falter. “I won’t kill you,Winter queen. That honor has been reserved for another Rhythm. I will, however, deliver you to him, so be a good child and surrender now. There is no escaping this revolution.”
My lip curls and I pull whatever strength I can from revenge, for Raelyn’s treatment of Ceridwen. From horror, for the murder of the Summerian king. From the hard, unavoidable realization that all of this, every moment of this trip, was a trap. A trap I not only fell into, but helped build. Who else has been swayed by Angra’s power?
Raelyn saidAnother Rhythm.
Noam. Cordell.
I whirl to my feet and wind my chakram, knowing this time, I won’t miss. Raelyn will die, her smug grin the last expression her face will form. But as I rise above the peak in the roof, my body lurches back, instinct realizing the threat before my mind has time to comprehend it.
Ventrallan soldiers. Five of them, climbing up the roof. Raelyn distracted me long enough for them to scale the building and gain on me.
I take off across the roof and slide my chakram into its holster. Arrows whizz past as I hurl myself onto the steep roof of the next building. My boots twist awkwardly and I slam onto my elbows, rolling down the incline. One arrow slices across my arm, a deep gouge that makes me wince, but I don’t have time for it to hurt before I’m thrown off the roof, flailing through the air.
Another building, one story shorter, stops my fall, a few tiles crumbling when I crash onto it. But this one is infinitely flatter and I take off running again, ignoring the way my arm screams. A quick glance tells me the Ventrallan soldiers are just behind me, one roof away and getting closer. I leap into the air and grab the edge of the next building. Once I’m on it, I spot the palace to the northeast, its riot of colors standing out against the sweep of dense green park. I reel toward it and push myself into a sprint, aiming for the next building, a story taller than this one but easily reachable—
Until a Ventrallan soldier hops up in front of me, swinging to his feet and drawing a blade in one smooth movement. I rip my chakram out and let it sing through the air, but the soldier sees it coming, knows it’s my weapon of choice now, and deflects it with his sword. The chakram drops with aclunkagainst the curved clay tiles, and the soldier kicks it behind him, sending it clattering to the street below.
I whirl to run back the other way but jolt to a stop. The other four Ventrallan soldiers stand at the edge of the roof, swords drawn. I’m surrounded, I’m weaponless, one of my allies is imprisoned—or worse—by the people closing in on me now. . . .
Which is why, when the soldiers in front of me start falling, one by one, I have trouble understanding what’s happening.
Hands swing up from below the edge, grab the soldiers’ankles, and yank two of them down, while a knife whirls out of nowhere and lodges in one man’s gut. Another soldier drops when a girl leaps on his back, slashes a blade across his throat, and spins her whole body around his, her legs whirling as she twists, shoves, and sends him flying over the edge.
I barely have time to register who these people are when the soldier behind me shouts. The roof trembles beneath his stomping feet, and I swing around into a crouch, arms up as if I’ll be able to fight off his sword with my fists.
But he stops, body rigid, mouth lurching open with a gurgle. He grips a spot on his chest, a hole that slowly saturates his uniform with blood, before he collapses on the clay tiles, revealing a man behind him. A man holding a bloodied sword in one hand, my chakram in the other, his sapphire eyes pinned on me.
“Are you all right?” Mather asks.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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Mather
ONE WORD FUELEDMather all the way from Winter to Ventralli.
When he and the Thaw reached the Feni, saw dozens of Cordellan ships freshly docked, soldiers disembarking to swarm Winter with reinforcements—go.
When they crept aboard the smallest ship, launched it out into the water in the dead of night and bobbed away from their newly enslaved kingdom—go.
When they sailed up the river, packed on that maddeningly small boat, nothing to do for days but pace the deck and stare at the passing scenery and plan, think, worry—go.
Go,move, fight—Mather’s whole body was an arrow pulled more and more taut against a string, ready, so ready.
None of the Thaw tried to talk to him about what had happened. No one mentioned Alysson’s death, or Cordell’s takeover, or Meira’s possible fate. They just patrolled theboat, quiet, obeying Mather’s sailing orders—which were rudimentary at best as he’d only been on a boat a handful of times in his life.
When Mather had started training as a child, it had seemed more like an elaborate game played with wooden weapons and clunky armor. It wasn’t until his first kill, when he was eleven, that he realized the seriousness of it. He’d gone out on what should have been a simple reconnaissance mission with William and they’d run into a Spring patrol. Only three men, but while William dealt with the two who swarmed him, Mather drew his blade, instinct moving his muscles so that he didn’t even feel like he was the one fighting. A detached, hazy interaction that had ended with blood on his hands and a body at his feet.
That shock of realizing that the things William had been teaching him weren’t games, but tools tokill people, was one of the most jarring moments of his life. He’d always known what fighting would result in, of course—but he hadn’t understood it,feltit, until that moment.
