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We camped in the lee of any outcrop we could find and burned charcoal from our packs to put a little warmth into our food The snows south of the Bitter Ice would thaw occasionally Maybe two years would pass, h summer would melt them back to bare rock in all but the deep places, and so the ice alked on was never thick enough to cover every rise and fold of the land The Bitter Ice itself, however, that glacial sheet never ht retreat a mile or three over the course of lifetimes And the land beneath it hadn’t seen the sun in centuries, maybe since Christ walked the world Maybe never

On the long h an icy waste, no one talks You keep your mouth closed to seal the heat in your body You cover your face and watch a white world through the slit that remains You put one foot before the next and hope that it’s a straight line you’re plotting—letting the rise and fall of the sun guide your progress And while you try to force your body along the straightest path, the paths your hts wander Old friends revisit Old times catch you up once more You dream With your eyes open, and with the plod and plod of numb feet to punctuate each minute, you dream

I dreah tower, older than sin and shtly better His nurses cleaned hinity every day, though he never seemed to lack for more

Garyus probably would have thanked any god that could give hi, even in a place like this And even at the end of a day of such labour, bone-cold, bone-tired, hunched within my misery, I wouldn’t have swapped with him

My great-uncle had lain there year upon year, placed by age and infirmity on death’s doorstep The Red Queen had told us that there really was a door into death, and it see on it since the day he’d come broken into the world

Inin past his shutters, when Garyus had folded e-knuckled, liver-spotted, and tremulous “Your mother’s likeness,” he had said “Keep it safe” And safe meant secret I knew that, even at six

I’d sat and watched that old and broken hed at them as children do, sat silent and round-eyed when the tales turned dark Most of that tireat-uncle And none of that tih of course it seeht the Sister should be someone’s sister

I wondered if Garyus were scared of his twin, the blind-eye woman, his silent sister Could a person be scared of their twin? Would that be like being scared of yourself? I knew that htened that they would let theht, choose the dishonourable path, the easy path rather than the hard Me, I trusted ht—for Jalan Kendeth The only times I scared ht, those few tiotten the better of er

How ifts for children, know of his sisters’ battles? I looked at those memories now as a puzzle Was there another way to see the is obvious until someone tells you “the lump is a dent” and suddenly you see it—as a bu out—they all are, every rise and hollow reversed, the i flipped around, and try as you like you can’t see it as before: solid, unauous, worthy of your trust

Did Garyus know his younger sister thought she knehere death’s door lay?

“Jal” A tired voice “Jal”

I thought of Garyus, the Red Queen’s brother, eyes aglitter in that narrow bed Older than her, surely? Had he known her plans? How much of all this had that crippled old man set in motion?

“Jal!”

Shouldn’t he have been king? Wouldn’t he have been King of the Red March if he weren’t broken so?

“JAL!”

“What?” I stumbled, almost fell

“We’re stopping” Snorri, bowed and tired, the ice wastes th He raised a hand, pointing within his glove I followed his direction Ahead of us the walls of the Bitter Ice rose without preaination

• • •

We ate despite the effort it took, fu the last of our kindling, lighting the charcoal to heat a pot and knowing there would be no heat but what our bodies made from then on