Page 17 (1/2)

"Of course, when Iquite so childish"

"Well, Laurent, we couldn&039;t very well fly in a teas"

"True But what&039;s a country house without dogs, Nara?"

"Dogs aren&039;t fashionable on Hohed "So I&039;d noticed"

Zai turned down the heating in his uniforh to keep him warm inside Navy wool The snow crunched under his boots with the bright sound of a recent fall Perfect powder for sledding

If only he had a long, flat stretch of it and a tea with a smile "I&039;m relieved to see that you Vadans don&039;t slavishly follow the Emperor&039;s taste in thesewrong with catsstrictly speaking"

The trail began only a few meters from the door It was shiny and slick, as if incised into the snoith lasers On the mountain side of the trail the snow had beena half-cylinder of ice that wound doard around the peak On the other side looinous drop

Zai felt a bit dizzy, possibly froht, they hadn&039;t slept much in the last three days

He took a deep breath "\ hope your house knohat it&039;s doing" "Soether too much," Nara said "It has an excess of ti, which seemed quite modest from the outside Most of its bulk was hidden within the stone of the limmer of a hundred polarized s Not all looked out froardens this , or at least some of them The warrens that had produced three days of sumptuous meals seemed endless

That sort of decadence always resulted when iven tootighter by the day

"I get the feeling it can still hear us," he said

"Probably" She shrugged in her coat

Laurent pulled the glove froh the short, yellow-gray fur

"Paracoyote," Nara said

His eyes widened "You&039;re wearing a canine? That&039;s a crihed "They&039;re a pest on Vasthold, to say the least"

Zai wondered if Nara kne extraordinary it was to coer than an insect On Vada, hunting was only allowed on stocked private lands, a sport for the unthinkably rich "Vasthold is fortunate that terrafor has taken so well Did you kill it yourself?"

"No, I haven&039;t hunted since I was a kid" She sshot This was a political gift froroup But taken in the wild, with a bow, I think"

Zai shook his head "We have no wild mammals on Vada"

He placed the sled on the snow

"I wish I could take you on a proper sled ride, Nara With a team of huskies, across a floe of new sea ice"

"Sea Zee? You mean without land underneath?"

"It&039;s very smooth when it&039;s new"

"No, thank you" "Well, after a few days of strong wind, pressure ridges break up he landscape"

She laughed "It&039;s not thebut ice between me and an ocean!"

"There is safety equiph--"

"When?"

He cleared his throat again "Perhaps we should get started"

"Yes I&039; us intentionally Afraid Df heights, Laurent?"

He looked down the trail The surface looked sos&039; feet, certainly He wondered if the runners vould find any purchase to keep the off the mountain, but they had no way to control their speed

"Not heights"

"What then?"

"Putting my life in the hands of an Al"

She smiled, and sat down on the front of the sled "Come on, Laurent It&039;s a very clever house"

It was marvelous

The sled accelerated quickly, like a dropship spiraling down a gravity well Laurent clung to it fiercely, his fingers wound into the leather straps that held it together The runners found the ruts pre-cut deep into the ice and stayed in the comfortably with the turns

The trail seemed never to pass into the shadow of the ht fro with the war sun But his eyes still reduced to slits against the wind, the crisp air turned freezing by their velocity

Nara leaned back into Laurent&039;s chest, laughing hysterically, her ars She arm, and her chaotic hair 229 brushed his cheeks He squeezed his knees together tightly to hold her in the pluainst him

After four turns around the htened The rise hid the terrain before theain," Laurent shouted as the sled came almost to a halt

"I don&039;t think it&039;s done," Nara said, shaking her head "Are you familiar with the term &039;roller-coaster&039;?"

"I don&039;t think-- Godspite!"

The sled had crested the rise, revealing a gut-loosening decline dotted with giant boulders The trail ahead was lined with high snow banks, but the ruts guiding the runners suddenly disappeared, leaving the sled free for the straight decline The slope was forty-five degrees at least

"It&039;s trying to kill us!" Zai shouted

"We&039;ll see!"

Laurent and Nara clutched each other, screa, as the sled dropped into the canyon of ice

After the acceleration of the first radually between icy walls The exposed interior of the glacier was deep blue, the color of a clear Vadan sky on the Day of Apogee In the rift&039;s protection, the air was still except for the wind of their passage, but Laurent held his lover closer He touched his lips to her left ear, which was bright red and as cold as the metal buttons of her coat

"Re down ti This lasts forever"

She reached back and put a gloved finger to his lips softly, and Laurent felt foolish It wasn&039;t right to speak of these things This was a fragile endlessness, soon followed by an onrushing of events that would part them for decades

Tomorrow, they would take the suborbital back to the capital The co of the Lynx was set for the day after On Ho an entire night and filling the great square before the Diamond Palace with supplicants, zealots, and status-seekers After that, Captain Zai had only afor Legis

But he had these ht of years and the depredations of the Ti that was now Laurent wondered if it were possible that any alliance formed across days could really last decades Or would what they&039;d shared in this icy waste prove illusory, born of torturous memories, lack of sleep, and the romance of its own improbability?

Of course, Laurent realized, as real or unreal would be deterenuine in itself; what had happened in these four days would be given ainst the rest of the world

The sled was slowing, and Laurent Zai sighed softly to hi of the future, he had missed the present

Nara kissed him and stood They were at the blind end of the rift

"What now? Climb out?" He looked back up the trail at the kilometers-distant house, just visible on its mountain peak It would take hours

Nara shook her head and pointed to a patch of icicles, which shattered as so metal rumbled behind it A door opened, and warh the tea gardens, I think," she said "I hope you don&039;tin a drone elevator"

Laurent sain?"

"Of course Asbroke inside him, but the fissure didn&039;t open onto the fa hard, almost hysterically as he lifted the sled Nara sathered hihter still played at the edge of hearing It was a wonder he hadn&039;t brought an avalancheVdown upon the in the corner of one eye

"Laurent?"

"I was just thinking, Nara: You have a very clever house"

Part 3

WAR PRIZE When a single nation&039;s arainst each other, all is lost

--ANONYMOUS 167

Dead Wo of darkness

There were no words, just gray shapes issuing frohts upon her optic nerve So dark that whispers rode the ears Her blindness s were es of desire, the pleasures of flesh, all the appetites of drama, expectation and dread, hope and disappointuished terrain of uncertainty had been flattened into an arid plane And soon, the Other explained, she would entirely forget the phantom shapes of those extinct emotions

It led her toward a bloodred horizon

She didn&039;t knohere they were headed, but she felt no worry The Other explained that worry was one of those s

The dead woain

The red horizon opened up--like the slit of opening one&039;s eyes