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Chapter 47: Say It With Me
For a long time, nothing happened.The salon was so quiet that Rowan could hear the chandelier ticking as it cooled. Two hundred and twelve people stood or sat in rows, in silver and white, and not one of them moved. The boy with the bloody nose stared at the floor. His hands, hanging at his sides, had begun to shake."Private Dray," Vale said sharply. "Eyes forward."He didn't obey.Mei's voice dropped to a whisper. "It's okay," she said. "I'm not mad. I just want to hear you."The boy's lips parted."I...""Private.""I don't..." His throat worked. His face crumpled. "I don't want to anymore."It wasn't loud. It was barely a breath. But the word seemed to ring in the silent room, and the light in the chandelier flickered as if someone had struck it.Vale went white."Eli," she said. "Think very carefully.""I'm tired," said the boy. Tears ran down his cheeks. "I'm so tired, ma'am. I want to go home.""No," said someone else.It was a woman near the door, a corporal with her hair tie
Chapter 46: The Offer
Vale let the heat go slowly, like a woman lowering a heavy curtain.The chandelier stopped swaying. The cracked glasses fell quiet. One by one, the soldiers along the wall climbed to their feet, wiping sweat from their faces, and took up their posts again as if nothing had happened. Not one of them spoke. Not one of them looked at the woman in the white gown.Rowan watched them, and the hair rose on the back of his neck."Sit," Vale said. "Please. I won't do that again unless I'm provoked.""You've been provoking us all night," Tess muttered."Sergeant Calder, I have been the soul of courtesy." She smiled, and sank into her chair with a rustle of silk. "Mr. Ashby. You have questions. Ask them.""How many bonds do you have?""Two hundred and twelve.""Do they know what they are?""They know they are warm. They know they are fed. They know that when the world ended, they were given a place at a table." Vale sipped her wine. "That is more than most people can say.""Did you ask them?""E
Chapter 45: The Perihelion
They never caught him.Tess drove like a woman possessed, with the troop carrier's engine screaming and the treads throwing up fans of ice. Ivy hung on to the dashboard and swore in two languages. In the back seat of the second crawler, Rowan watched the small dark shape of Cassian's snowmobile grow smaller and smaller against the glow on the horizon, until it vanished into a wall of white."He's got a twenty-minute head start," Mara said."I know.""We'll never close it.""I know.""Rowan...""I know." He pressed his forehead against the cold glass. "Mei said they want him willing. If he walks in on his own, they won't need to force anything.""Then what do we do?""We follow. And we hope they're polite about it."The ship appeared out of the blizzard like a mountain.It was an icebreaker, enormous, black-hulled and red-funneled, locked into the sea ice with a hundred meters of frozen cable. Searchlights swept the plain in long white arcs. A helicopter sat on the aft deck with its ro
Chapter 44: Lily
Rowan picked up the radio.It was a battered thing, held together with electrical tape, and it buzzed in his hand like a trapped insect. He didn't look at Helena. He thumbed the transmit key and spoke in a voice so calm that it surprised him."Major."A short pause. Static. Then, smooth as warm oil, "Mr. Ashby. I had hoped you would be asleep.""I was reading.""How charming.""I'm going to say this once." He felt Helena sway beside him, her breath coming in thin, ragged gasps. "We accept your terms. Forty-eight hours, as agreed. We'll fly to Solace. But if Dr. Marsh's daughter is harmed in any way, if anyone on that ship so much as raises a voice, the deal is off."A long silence."You've learned things quickly," said Vale."I had good teachers.""Lily is perfectly safe. She's been well fed and warm. I might even say spoiled." A faint, dry chuckle. "I'll see you in two days. Do give my regards to Dr. Marsh. She did try so hard."The line went dead.Rowan set the radio on the floor, v
Chapter 43: Forty-Eight Hours
"We kill her," Tess said.The council chamber went very quiet. It was past midnight. The wood stove had burned down to a bed of red coals, and nobody had bothered to feed it. Twelve people sat around the oak table in the gloom, with half-eaten bowls of soup cooling in front of them and a map of the harbor spread across the wood."No," Sabine said."She admitted it. Out loud. In front of witnesses.""She also has a helicopter, fifty trained soldiers, and a fifteen-year-old girl in a cell.""So we take the helicopter.""And then?""And then I put a bullet in Vale's head and sleep for a week.""Tess," Mara said gently."I'm serious.""I know you are. That's what worries me."Tess slammed a fist on the table. The bowls rattled. "She built the freeze. She made us into rats in a maze and watched. I'm not going to sit here and debate parliamentary procedure while that woman gets to fly home to a hot bath.""Nobody's asking you to," Rowan said.She glared at him."I'm asking you to be patient
Chapter 42: The Schedule
Nobody in the room moved.Tess had her hand on her holster. Sabine's pencil had snapped in half between her fingers. Mara stood with one arm braced around Reuben Hale's shoulders, her face gone hard and white. Outside, the wind scraped the boarded windows with a long, dry sound, like a fingernail on glass.Major Teodora Vale didn't flinch. She stood by the fire with her gloved hands behind her back, and the stove's glow made her silver braid look almost gold."Say that again," Rowan said."I said it was a schedule." She spoke calmly, like a woman reading from a menu. "Mr. Hale is quite right. I had hoped to introduce this gradually. But I've always respected honesty, and it seems you've earned it.""You knew," Delphine whispered from the corner. "You knew the freeze was coming.""I knew when."The words fell into the room like stones into a well."Eleven Wells," Vale said. "Drilled over eight years, in eleven carefully chosen sites. Each one tapped a reservoir of heat so enormous it c
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