Our Lady of the Ice

  “Yes,” Marianella said. “I’m meeting a friend.”

  “Whatever.” The driver tucked the money into an envelope and sped off, leaving Marianella standing on the curb. Eliana lifted her head enough that Marianella saw the glint of her eyes. She almost didn’t want to walk across the street, almost didn’t want to face Eliana head-on.

  It had to be done, though.

  Marianella took a deep breath, lifted up the hem of her dress, and walked over to the park gate. Eliana watched her through the tangle of her hair. Her eyes were red from crying, and Marianella could make out an almost imperceptible vibration in her shoulders.

  She stopped a few paces away from Eliana. Let the fabric slide out of her hands. They stared at each other in the shimmering, cold darkness.

  “I’m sorry,” Marianella whispered.

  “Is he dead?”

  The question was hard, edged in ice. Marianella shook her head.

  Eliana looked away, off in the direction of the smokestack district. “I couldn’t get in,” she said. “The gate was locked.”

  “I know. I can open it.” Marianella wondered why Sofia hadn’t let Eliana in. Surely she’d seen her crying on the surveillance recorders. It was probably because Eliana was human. Sofia could be so cruel sometimes.

  Marianella walked over to the gate and folded her hand around the lock. Energy bolted through her palm; for a moment she felt frazzled and lit up. Then the gate clicked open. She dropped her hand away and looked over at Eliana. She was crying again, silent tears running in rivers over her cheeks.

  “Oh, sweetie,” Marianella murmured. She glided over to Eliana and knelt down beside her, not caring about the damp, oil-stained cement. For one shuddering second she was afraid that Eliana was going to pull away from her, but instead the opposite happened, and Eliana collapsed onto her shoulder, weeping loudly. Marianella held her close and stroked her hair and made calming noises as though Eliana were a frightened animal.

  “He tried to kill you!” Eliana wailed.

  I know, Marianella thought, but instead she said, “It was Ignacio who wanted me dead. Not Diego. We need to get inside the park before—” Eliana wailed more loudly, and Marianella didn’t let herself finish. Before Ignacio comes looking for us.

  Gently, Marianella lifted Eliana to her feet. Eliana was as pliant as a doll, leaning up against Marianella for support, her steps ­trembling and weak. Together, they walked through the gate, leaving Hope City behind them.

  Marianella guided Eliana over to a nearby bench and then went back to shut and lock the gate. She looked through the bars, out at the empty street. The streetlamps flickered, casting jittery shadows on the outside. It made her think that someone was out there, lurking, watching, with a loaded gun pointed straight at her heart. She didn’t like being in view of the street.

  She turned away and walked back over to Eliana.

  “Let’s get you a place to wash up,” she said softly, pulling Eliana up to standing. She would take Eliana to the Ice Palace, at least for the night. Sofia would be there, and Marianella needed to speak to her.

  They walked along. The only sounds were their footsteps and Eliana’s crying. Marianella wondered if Eliana was in shock. Already it felt as though Eliana were walking through some other plane of existence, like she wasn’t aware of Marianella’s presence at all.

  Finally, the Ice Palace appeared in the distance, the spotlights turned on as if to act as a beacon. Sofia and her generators. Maria­nella guided Eliana along. A maintenance drone slid across the pathway, chirping once to acknowledge Marianella before it disappeared into the shrubbery, on its way to whatever it’d been programmed to do. Marianella wondered if it was one of the newly sentient ones, if it had tripped the wires that had caught fire and exploded in that power plant.

  A figure moved up ahead on the path. Marianella’s machine eyes kicked in, and through the darkness she saw that the figure was Sofia. Eliana stirred against Marianella. The muscles in her shoulders tightened.

  “No,” Eliana said, and her voice pitched more loudly into a shriek. “No, no! She’s going to hurt me.”

  “It’s just Sofia,” Marianella said. Sofia stopped and gave Eliana a cold look.

  “What’s going on here?” Sofia said. She looked at Marianella’s dress. “You’re bleeding.”

  “It’s not my blood,” Marianella said automatically. Eliana gave a sob, and Marianella immediately regretted saying it.

  “What happened?” Sofia’s eyes swung back and forth between Marianella and Eliana. “Was it Cabrera? Did he hurt you?”

  “He tried, yes.” Marianella squeezed Eliana tighter. “Please, Sofia. She’s very upset. Let me put her up in one of the palace rooms.”

  Sofia’s eyes narrowed. She studied Eliana, who was shaking more violently now, her head buried in Marianella’s shoulder.

  “Please,” Marianella said.

  “You’d do it even if I said no,” Sofia said. “Get her out of here.”

  Marianella sighed with relief. “Come along,” she whispered to Eliana, and together they shuffled up the path.

  “I don’t want to stay here,” Eliana said when they were finally inside the palace. “I don’t—just let me go home.” She struggled against Marianella, but Marianella held her tight.

  “It’s not safe,” she said. “You’ll need to stay here, at least until we know what to do about Ignacio.”

  “Diego will keep me safe!” Her shout bounced off the walls. Then she covered her face with her hands and crumpled down onto the floor. Marianella stood there, awkward, watching Eliana’s shoulders shake. Marianella doubted that Diego had ever been able to keep Eliana safe, but she didn’t dare say that out loud.

  * * * *

  Marianella didn’t bother to sleep that night. She took a long, scalding shower, rubbing hard at the places on her skin stained by Diego’s blood. Afterward, she sat in the place beside her window where she liked to pray. She said the rosary three times, once for Diego and once for Eliana and once for herself, for forgiveness. When she finished, she dropped the rosary into a shining pile of beads on the sill and stared out at the gloomy park.

  The dome lights came on, that slow mechanical sunrise.

  A maintenance drone buzzed into the room. Marianella jumped at the sound of it, her nerves raw after last night. It was a park drone, still running on steam. A bell chimed deep inside its shell. It had a message for her.

  “What is it?” Marianella said, anxiety turning her clammy. She stood up and walked over to the drone and knelt down at its side. It chimed again.

  “I know, I know,” she muttered, even as her thoughts trembled. Why was a drone coming to her room? Sofia wouldn’t have sent it; she always visited herself. It certainly wasn’t bringing word of a culling. Ignacio?

  Marianella removed the paneling on the shell and hooked herself into the drone’s system. Immediately she was flooded with a message in the jittery ones and zeros of the drone’s language: she had a visitor at the gate. Alejo Ortiz.

  Marianella withdrew her hand and let out a long sigh of relief. In the aftermath of the attack, she hadn’t once thought of him. He wasn’t going to be happy with her, running out of the Midwinter Ball like that. At least not until she explained.

  “Thank you,” Marianella said to the drone, replacing its panel. She changed out of her dressing gown and into a pair of slim trousers and an old sweater, the two items of clothing that were closest at hand. The dress from last night was puddled on the floor, the fabric arranged so she couldn’t see the blood.

  Marianella went out into the park and made her way toward the front gates. Out in the freezing air, she felt a flicker of fear that this might be a trap—that it hadn’t been a park drone who’d come for her, but one of Cabrera’s drones, programmed to lie. But then, there was no way Sofia would let that happen. She might be radical and antihuman
, but she wouldn’t let any harm come to Marianella. Of that much, Marianella was certain.

  Still, Marianella slowed her pace as she neared the gates, and took a meandering path through one of the overgrown gardens so she could see the person waiting at the gate before he could see her. She moved as lightly as she could, weaving through the vines and tangled branches like a dancer. Soon, the gate materialized into view, all those wrought-iron fairies guarding the entrance. Marianella felt a pang of regret, seeing them and remembering how she had walked through them last night with Eliana weeping at her side.

  A man waited on the city side of the gate. Tall, television-star handsome. Alejo.

  Marianella let out a deep breath of relief and pushed out of the garden, onto the path. Alejo looked up at her in surprise. She reached up to smooth her hair away and found a dead leaf ­crackling beside her temple.

  “Good God, Marianella,” Alejo said. He wrapped his fingers around the bars and pressed up against the gate. “Did you sleep out here?”

  “No, of course not.” Marianella arrived at the gate, where she undid the lock. The gate popped open. Alejo gave a gasp of surprise and lifted his hands away.

  “That’s quite a trick,” he said, grinning. But then this grin vanished, and he peered at her closely, as if she were a book he needed to study. Marianella looked away.

  “What happened to you last night?” he said softly. “You just ran off.”

  “I had to,” Marianella said. “You ought to come inside, by the way. It’s not safe on the boundaries.”

  “What? Why not?” Alejo squeezed through the open gate, and Marianella pushed it shut, relishing the comfort of that metallic twang as the latch sank into place.

  “Ignacio,” Marianella said. “Cabrera. We can talk in the garden.”

  She began walking toward the interior of the park, but Alejo hung back, marveling up at the bursts of colored blossoms decorating the trees.

  “This place,” he said, shaking his head.

  She waited for him, let him relish whatever childhood memories he had of the park. His nostalgia didn’t last long. He dropped his gaze back down to her and said, “Now, what’s this about Ignacio Cabrera?”

  “He was at the ball last night.”

  Alejo’s expression didn’t change. Always the consummate politician. “That’s not possible. He certainly didn’t receive an invitation.”

  “He must have come uninvited.” Marianella walked toward the garden again, and this time Alejo jogged to catch up with her. The overgrown trees arced, unmoving, overhead—filtering dapples of green and white across the path. “At any rate, he saw me.” She told Alejo the rest of the story as they walked. Her voice sounded like it came from outside her head, like it was humming with a peculiar feedback. She told Alejo everything, even about how she had beat Diego in the alley, because he was the closest she had to a confessor in this moment.

  She finished just as they arrived at the entrance to the garden. One of the metal gates hung sideways, broken in its frame.

  “That’s terrible,” Alejo said in a low voice. “Absolutely terrible. You should have come to me. My associates were there. You didn’t have to put yourself at risk like that.”

  Marianella slipped into the garden. She’d rather harbor this heavy guilt than know she had invited the aid of a terrorist.

  “It was easier that way,” she finally said, and settled into a place on the cleanest bench. “To just run. I’m sorry, I am, but—”

  “You don’t need to apologize, for God’s sake.” Alejo sank down beside her. “I’m just glad you’re not hurt.” He paused, tilted his head, looked up at the trees. “This is a problem.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” Marianella glared at him. “I don’t think he’ll even let me pay him off at this point, do you? If he wants me dead so badly?”

  Alejo rubbed his hands over his forehead. “The man’s primary focus is money,” he said. “It always has been. I take it you didn’t try to negotiate with him last night?”

  “Negotiate!” Marianella cried. “I didn’t even see him! Negotiation was the farthest thing from my mind. I was just trying to get Eliana and myself out of there alive.” Her voice hitched. She remembered the sting in her knuckles as she slammed her fist into Diego’s forehead, knocking him unconscious. It had been necessary, a necessary evil, the only way to escape—at least, that’s what she had thought last night. In the sallow light of morning, Alejo’s suggestion of a negotiation seemed almost reasonable.

  “I did what I thought I had to do,” she whispered. It was more to herself, but Alejo drew his arm around her shoulder and gave her a quick, brotherly squeeze.

  “You were scared,” he said. “We can figure some other way out of this.”

  “There is no other way.” Marianella stared straight ahead. “He won’t take my money.”

  Alejo was silent for a moment. In the distance Marianella heard the clicking whir of one of the performance robots, sneaking its way through the park’s path, avoiding her and Alejo.

  “My associates,” Alejo said slowly. “You know they’d be willing to—take care of him for you.”

  Marianella’s breath lodged in her throat. She felt dizzy. “Kill him, you mean. Just say it.”

  “Fine, yes, kill him. He certainly wouldn’t be the worst person they’ve targeted.”

  “Wouldn’t it go against the cause?” Marianella’s question was more mocking than she’d intended, and she squeezed the bridge of her nose. “You’re the one always saying that they aren’t mercen­aries for hire.”

  “I say that, but they really kind of are.”

  She could feel Alejo staring at her. Waiting for an answer. She didn’t tell him that Sofia had offered the same thing, that it had given her a sick feeling in her stomach like the world was falling apart.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t want to kill him. I don’t want to—be like him.”

  “You already beat up one of his men.”

  Shame rose fast in Marianella’s cheeks. She stood up in a rush of anger. “That was self-defense.”

  “So is this, for God’s sake!”

  “And I didn’t kill him. I could have, but I didn’t.” She turned to face Alejo, found him gazing up at her with a calm expression that only unnerved her further. “We have to find some other way. If not my money—” She closed her eyes, trying to think.

  “We have to do something,” Alejo said. “It’s not just about you—and don’t take that the wrong way. I certainly don’t want to see you dead. But he’s going to try to find you. He’s going to investigate you. And once he does that, he’s going to find out about the dome, and he’s going to want to destroy it.”

  Marianella took a deep breath. She slumped back down onto the bench beside Alejo. She was no longer angry, only defeated. And Ignacio had defeated her.

  “The dome,” she said weakly.

  “Yes, the dome.” Alejo leaned in, pitched his voice low. “Let the AFF handle it. One assassination, and he’ll be gone.”

  Marianella pushed her distaste aside. She had to try another approach. “He’ll be gone, but what about the rest of his organi­zation?”

  Alejo didn’t answer.

  “Are you going to kill all the rest of them too? The men loyal to him? Surely he’s grooming someone to take his place, and they’re going to want to know why the AFF took him out. What if they trace it back to me? The threat of my identity is always there. Always.” Marianella shook her head. “And you can’t just keep killing people to get your way. You can’t.”

  “Then what do you suggest we do?”

  “You go to him,” Marianella said. “You pay him off. I can send you the money. We should have done that from the beginning. He told me flat out that he wouldn’t kill you.”

  Alejo leaned back on the bench and crossed his arms over his chest. “That
puts my career on the line.”

  “So send one of your AFF friends to do it!” Marianella threw up her hands. “Tell him I’m part of the AFF, that they want to protect their own. I can send the money to you.” She hated that, hated the idea of aligning herself with terrorists. But it was better than letting herself become a murderer.

  “You’re willing to let Cabrera think you’re part of the AFF?” Alejo laughed. “Not what I expected.”

  “These are desperate times,” Marianella said.

  For a moment, Alejo let his politician’s mask slip, and he looked sad.

  “This is my act of desperation,” Marianella said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  SOFIA

  “What do you want?” Sofia let the door slam shut behind her. Cabrera was writing something with a ballpoint pen and didn’t look up at her when she walked into the room.

  “Hello, Sofia. It’s nice to see you, too.” His pen continued to scratch across his paper. Sofia didn’t sit down. She knew this wasn’t about reprogramming more icebreakers, because if that had been the case, he wouldn’t have told her to come alone, and they would be meeting on the docks, at night—not in his office, during the middle of the afternoon, the day after Marianella had stupidly slipped out of the amusement park to attend a fund-raiser gala for her damned agricultural domes.

  “Please, have a seat.” Cabrera finally looked up, his face pleasantly expressionless. He set his pen aside. “I have a proposition to discuss with you.”

  Sofia stared at him. The record player was still set up behind the desk. A disc of vinyl gleamed in the office lights, but the turntable was still.

  “I don’t need anything else from you,” Sofia said.

  Cabrera studied her. “Odd. I thought you were still waiting on something.”

  The programming key. Sofia could picture it, the little sphere of burnished metal filled with interlocking numbers. With it Araceli could unlock all the secrets of her code—without it, her plan was much more difficult.