Snow Like Ashes

  “To arms!” he cries, and that’s enough to send every sleeping soldier into instant readiness, whipping to their feet and scrambling for weapons.

  I grab the door, yank it closed, and sprint for the other closed door. This is close, too close, and by the time the soldiers in the barracks open their door, I’m shaking the last closed door—locked—and spitting every curse I’ve ever heard.

  “Snow and ice and frost above.” Luckily Sir likes to test Mather and me with inane challenges like Pick the lock on this chest, your supper’s inside. His tests and the finger-length hook-pick I keep in my hair finally prove useful, though I certainly don’t plan on telling him that. I tuck one of my knives under my arm and busy myself with the lock.

  The soldiers stumble out of their room. Herod draws closer. The lock doesn’t budge, whether because I’m too twitchy or my hands are slick with sweat or I just need to practice more lock-picking. My chances of making it out of this room shrink with each breath I take, each strangled dance of my heart as it sputters against the anxiety filling my body.

  “Who needs a key?” I growl as a I rear back and hurl all of my weight into kicking through the lock. It breaks open, sending the door thudding against the wall. A set of stairs curls downward with sconces lighting the way.

  “Stop!”

  I whirl. Herod stomps into the hall and his lumbering bulk freezes across the room. Such a perfect chakram shot; damn my shaky arms. But soldiers fill up the center, most half dressed, clutching weapons and blinking away the blur of sleep. Too many to take all at once.

  Herod glares at me and his face reddens. “Winterian!”

  I slam the door behind me, but my kick broke the lock so the door refuses to close. Though it means I’ll lose one of my knives, I jam it as hard as I can through the lock and into the wooden frame. It’ll hold enough to give me a better lead.

  The stairs get slick the deeper I go, the walls coated in what smells like donkey waste. This isn’t just a cellar, and on a deep inhale, I realize exactly where I’m going, where they hid the locket half: the sewers. Oh, fun.

  A few stifled breaths later, the sound of gruff voices echoes up at me. I test my arms—not quite as shaky—and draw out my chakram, tightening my hand around the familiar, worn handle.

  “Hurry! There’s a ruckus above. Best we move quickly.”

  I stop at the last turn in the staircase, the glow of lantern light strong. They’re close. Chakram-range close. My favorite kind.

  “I’m not touching that thing. You know what it is! You pick it up.”

  The other man growls. “I’m your superior! I order you to pick up the damn locket piece.”

  I smile. There’s my cue. “Now, boys, no need to argue. I’ll pick it up.”

  I emerge from the staircase with my chakram wound back, ready to soar through the air. We are indeed in a sewer—a tunnel stretches around me, holding a river of murky waste lined with foot-high walkways on each side. One man and a few horses wait on the farthest walkway, another man stands ankle deep in Lynia’s filth. Very few men, but any more would draw too much attention, and we’ve moved in on this location so quickly, Angra hasn’t had time to do more than send Herod here.

  Behind the men, one of the wall’s bricks has been removed and in the hole, illuminated by a few lanterns, shines a blue box. Relief fills me up. After years of searching, half of the locket is finally within reach.

  I aim my chakram at the captain, the one with his boots mucked up with sewer gunk. His eyes swim over me. “The Winterians are sending girls to do their dirty work now?” he sneers. “Why don’t you put that thing down before someone gets hurt?”

  I push out my bottom lip and widen my eyes. “This?” I lower the chakram. It’s now aimed at the captain’s left thigh. “They gave it to me and said throw! I don’t even know how it works—”

  The soldiers jeer, a deep-throated chuckle that says this is a fight they’re sure they’ll win. I let the chakram fly as the captain moves forward, my body bending into an arch. The chakram soars through the sewer, slices clean through the captain’s leg, and continues its spin back to me in one elegant circle of purpose. He screams and drops into the sewage, grabbing his thigh like, well, like I just sliced through it.

  “Oh.” I run one hand down the flat side of the blade. “That’s how it works.”

  The other soldier eyes me from the opposite walkway, his hands out like he might start dancing. Or running. Probably the more likely option. But then he smiles, and his shift from scared to amused is so abrupt that a flicker of disquiet tightens in my stomach.

  Magic.

  The word flies through my mind like it was there all along, a quiet pulse of knowledge that told me everything felt off. Wrong. And it was wrong, all of it, because the soldier drops his arms and pulls his shoulders up straight, his body morphing before me. Bones cracking and reforming, muscles stretching with a sickening rip. The soldier isn’t a soldier, at least not a nameless, nothing soldier, and the captain I shot laughs from his still-fetal position, his anticipation laced with pain.

  That wasn’t Herod earlier. Of course it wasn’t. Herod wouldn’t waste his time mingling with the city master; he would be here, with the locket half, waiting to intercept thieves.

  Herod finishes transforming until the only thing light about him is his golden hair, green eyes, and pale skin—the rest of him is shadow, a testament to his master’s evil. He’s huge too, his head nearly brushing the ceiling, and thick in the shoulders, the body of someone who was born holding a sword. Which does not sound like a fun birth for his mother.

  I lean forward to launch my chakram but Herod lunges off the platform, takes one step through the sewer gunk, and throws his body at my knees. I trip off the walkway and go down in the middle of the sewage, my breath knocked out by both Herod’s body and the sudden immersion in feces. He grabs the chakram and slides it onto the walkway, out of reach, before pinning my arms above my head in a painful twist, sneering at me as feet thunder down the staircase. The not-Herod and his men have broken through the door.

  This could have gone better.

  I wiggle in his hands, something in my pocket digging into my hip—a weapon? No—Mather’s lapis lazuli ball. The only thing it’s good for now is as a painful reminder of Mather, of Winter, of how he’ll never forgive himself if anything happens to me.

  Herod’s fingers tighten around my arms and I flinch. His grip is just above my one remaining weapon—the knife in my sleeve.

  “Sir!” A soldier rushes into the sewer. It’s the not-Herod, slowly morphing back into his own form. I’ve heard stories of the magic Angra uses his conduit for, beyond controlling his people. Tales whispered when people returned from missions in bloody tangles of broken limbs, memories shared in the heat of fever and agony. Angra uses his magic to induce visions so real they drive his people mad, to snap Spring traitors’ bones and tear out organs while his people still live, and for transformations like this one.

  As Herod drags me up, the only solace I find is that both of us are covered in sewage.

  “Bind her. We’re taking her to Angra,” he orders, and steps way too close to me as a soldier loops rope around my wrists. “Scared, soldier-girl?”

  I force myself to look him in the eye. I don’t have the luxury of fear. When we’re at camp in the safety of our tents and Sir explains all kinds of horrific possible deaths to me, I can’t be afraid. Fear is a seed that, once planted, never stops growing.

  But I was there when Gregg, one of our soldiers, stumbled back into camp six years ago. He and his wife, Crystalla, had been captured while on a mission in Abril and thrown into the nearest work camp. Gregg told us about it, babbling in the grip of madness about the toiling work, the decrepit living conditions—and the brutal, inhuman way Angra made Herod kill Crystalla. Gregg barely escaped with his life, and even that he lost a day later, when the injuries Herod gave him proved too much for his body to handle.

  A tremor runs through me, and I kn
ow Herod saw it. That seed of fear.

  I cannot die like Crystalla.

  A soldier lifts me onto a horse and ties my wrists to the saddle. Hope flutters in my chest—they didn’t check me for weapons. Whether because of the chaos of my intrusion or the need to get the locket half out of Lynia as fast as possible, I don’t know—but I still have my knife. I still have a chance.

  Herod eases the locket box from the hole and holds it for a moment, looking up at me. That face, that mocking twitch around his lips—this is the monster in Gregg’s story, the one Angra uses to destroy his enemies in the most brutal ways possible. Angra doesn’t like getting his hands dirty, not when he can watch as his puppets dance around in such glorious shows by using his Royal Conduit to control them. Why be the dog when you can be the master?

  Herod tucks the box into the saddlebag nearest me. Before he mounts, he grabs my chakram off the walkway, tossing it between his hands and eyeing me with that taunting sneer. He leaps onto his stallion and slides the chakram into the saddlebag on the other side of his horse. There’s no way I can get it now.

  “You try to escape and you’ll be dead long before we reach Abril,” he warns.

  I suck in a breath, twisting my wrists as imperceptibly as I can until my knife drops into my palm. “And I’ll kill you before all of this is over.”

  Herod smiles, the bloodlust on his face glowing more strongly. Nausea twists my stomach in unrelenting knots—he likes when I fight back. Something to keep in mind.

  With a shout, Herod tells the men to leave. He grabs my horse’s reins and pulls me forward, my leg bumping against his saddlebag. I can feel it, the small square box pressing into my shin. The only thing separating it from me is a layer of leather.

  I need to keep him distracted, focusing on body parts other than my hands.

  “How are they?” The question is quick and sharp. They, the Winterians in the camps.

  I swallow. Two of the ropes are cut. One more …

  Herod turns to me. He smirks, pulls my horse close so that I’m hip to hip with him. “The backbone of the Spring Kingdom. Though you Winterians die too quickly for my taste.”

  A few more fibers cut, and the rope falls off my wrists. I fight the urge to stretch my poor, abused arms and concentrate on Herod, on letting him think I’m resigned to my fate.

  I turn to him, meet his eyes, and lean a little like I’m sliding toward him in my saddle. “Well, there’s one Winterian I know who isn’t dying. At all. And he’s going to destroy Angra.”

  Herod does exactly what I hoped he’d do: he lets go of my horse’s reins long enough to slap me. The slap yanks my hand up, the hand that I had managed to slide into his saddlebag and wrap around the small blue box.

  I kick my horse, hard, and launch down the sewer’s walkway, all so fast that Herod still has his hand in the air before he realizes I’m free—and I’ve got the locket half.

  “No!” he screams, gravelly voice reverberating off the stone walls.

  I urge my horse on, galloping beside the muck of the sewer until we escape into darkness, out of the lantern light. Arrows fly past but smack off the stone, lost without something to aim at. Hooves pound behind me, shouts and curses follow, and I make a mental note to always, always put a knife in my sleeve when I go on missions.

  The horse seems to know where he’s going, so I just urge him faster. Surely he’s as repulsed as I am by the stench and remembers how he got down here—too bad his new rider is covered in sewage. I gag, finally calm enough to feel the stick of feces all over me.

  I shift on the reins, keeping my other hand pressed so tightly to my stomach that tomorrow I’ll have a box-shaped bruise there. A mark of my heroics—Meira, the first soldier to retrieve half of Winter’s locket. A well of pride springs in me, and I hold on to the feeling as tightly as I clutch the box.

  The horse curves around one more turn and we fly up to the surface. The cool, fresh night air makes me smile and I kick the horse faster, faster. Not quite free yet.

  We’re only seconds from the north gate when the guards stationed there realize what’s happening. They scramble for the lever that will close the iron bars over me, but it’s too late—I push the horse on, throwing a glance at the guard who first stopped me on my way in. His eyes widen with recognition, so I rip off the black cap that covered my hair as I whizz past, galloping across the bridge over the Feni River. White strands stream around me, some matted with sewer muck, but most tossing in the wind. A living snowstorm, a vibrant white reminder that they haven’t enslaved every Winterian. Some of us are still alive. Some of us are still free.

  And some of us are half a locket closer to taking back our kingdom.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  5

  I MAKE IT back to camp in two days, stopping only for a handful of half-hour breaks. I don’t see Finn along the way, but I have to believe it’s because he sped back to camp with just as much ferocity and beat me there, not because he didn’t make it out of Lynia.

  I leap off my horse, poor steaming thing, and lead him to a narrow stream where he slurps down water like he’s never tasted anything so sweet. As he drinks, I lunge across the stream and stumble up the hill, prairie grass pushing against my thighs. There, under a clear blue sky, sits our camp, like I never left at all.

  A horse bearing Lynia’s golden L on its livery stands in the corral—Finn got back safely. I relax, inhaling the earthy scent of dried grass. No other prisoners of Herod’s will come stumbling back into camp bloody and broken. Not today, anyway.

  I pull my shoulders back and stride into camp with as much dignity as I can muster, considering I’m still caked with dried sewage. No one’s around, though, no one poking at a crackling breakfast fire or scrubbing clothes at the well. Which means almost everyone will be in the meeting tent, the largest of our dull yellow-and-brown structures. I don’t bother alerting anyone to my presence—I fling back the flap and stomp in, leaving clumps of gunk on the faded brown carpet.

  Our five men cluster around a dented oak table in the center of the room. Each face scrunches in varying states of worry, from silent grimacing to outright shouting, so caught up that they don’t notice me at first.

  “We’ve got to send someone back for her! Each moment we waste is another moment she could be dead,” Greer shouts. His deep voice carries farther than anyone else’s, but he rarely, if ever, speaks out in meetings. The skin on my arms prickles. If he’s worried enough to talk, they must be pretty concerned.

  “I never should have let her go,” Sir growls. “How did you lose her, Finn?”

  The tent flap rustles into place behind me, and the men turn as one, their words dying in their mouths as five shocked faces stare up at me. Five faces with eyes in various shades of blue; five faces aged by war and death and sixteen years of nomadic living. A few of them still have bandages from their last mission tied around their limbs.

  “Don’t work yourselves into a panic, gentlemen—I’m alive,” I announce, forcing arrogance to cover just how exhausted I am. I make sure I bump Finn with the most gunk-covered part of my cloak when I squeeze between him and Henn. The locket box tears from my palm like a block of ice that stuck to my skin and clunks against a stack of maps on the table.

  Silence. Shocked, stunned, I-have-to-be-dreaming silence. My chest cools with the softest, most delicate tingle of pride. Like placing the locket half on the table completed this mission, and now that it’s done, now that I succeeded, I’ve finally proven what I’ve wanted for so long. This. That I can help Winter. That I can use what I’m good at—thinking on my feet, ranged-fighting, stealth—to help my kingdom.

  I step back, pride urging a dopey grin across my face. Staring at me is the usual lineup: Sir, Finn, Henn, Greer—and Mather.

  My smile fades, pulled away by a dull thudding in my chest. Mather is the only one whose a
ttention didn’t get sucked to the box the moment I placed it on the table. His jewel-blue eyes are unreadable as he stares at me, his face locked in an expression that’s either joy or horror. I choose to think it’s joy.

  “Meira.”

  I flinch and turn to face Sir, who stands, lifting the box.

  “Yes?”

  He doesn’t look at me, just flicks the lock and lifts the lid, his face gray with dreamlike surprise. I can’t see the locket half from here, but I know what he’s looking at. Sixteen years of fighting, of hoping that once we reunite our conduit’s two halves, we’ll be closer to getting our kingdom back.

  “You …” Sir looks up at me. Back at the box’s contents. Back at me.

  I’ve rendered Sir speechless. Oddly, that small victory makes me feel lighter than getting the locket half and surviving Spring did.

  Sir starts to ask something but takes a deep breath, coughing as he inhales the stench emanating off of me. “Alysson!” he wheezes. “For the love of all that is cold, will you draw Meira a bath?”

  I laugh as Alysson hurries in behind me. She reaches for me, twitches when she realizes what she’ll be touching, and settles for simply ushering me out of the tent with a wave.

  “And when you’re done, Meira,” Sir calls, “you’re going to tell me everything.”

  “Yes, Sir,” I reply, not bothering to hide my gleaming smile.

  As I leave, Sir’s voice trickles after me. “Snow above. She actually did it.”

  It’s not praise, but it makes me smile just the same. Yes, I did do it.

  It takes five buckets of water, two bars of soap, and a small fire to get rid of the sewer gunk. Once the last of my ruined outfit is crackling away in the flames, Alysson departs to care for my stolen horse. I pull on a clean, white shirt and thick, black pants—sweet snow above, clean clothes—and leave my wet hair to dry in the wind as I trek back to the meeting tent.